Jonathan Lear, who served as the inaugural Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society from 2014 to 2022, died Sept. 22. He was 76.

A longstanding faculty member in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Philosophy, and a licensed psychoanalyst who practiced out of his office at the University of Chicago, Lear was recognized around the world for his pioneering synthesis of philosophical and psychoanalytic thought. He was the author of several books, including Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (2022), Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006), and Freud (2005). At the time of his death he was developing a book project on the nature of gratitude and its relation to human flourishing.

Lear received numerous honors for his scholarly contributions, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Science and the American Philosophical Society. In 2024 his faculty colleagues nominated him to deliver the annual Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture, which honors research contributions of lasting significance at the University of Chicago.

At the Neubauer Collegium, Lear set a high standard for research excellence. The Collegium was founded to support new modes of humanistic inquiry and interdisciplinary collaboration. Under Lear’s leadership the University realized the potential of this bold endeavor. He oversaw the center’s 2015 launch in its current building and shaped the Collegium’s research vision during its formative phase. He established the Collegium as a global hub for collaborative research and an open forum where teams of scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners from all walks of life could come together and explore questions that transcend any single field or methodology.

“The Neubauer Collegium is committed to the idea that working together we can come to better understand ourselves and the world,” Lear wrote in a report that looked back at the center’s first five years. “By taking the broad range of our thinking into account and facilitating constructive conversations, we can begin to rethink our possibilities. The Neubauer Collegium is above all an aid to the human imagination.”

Lear cultivated a human-centered research environment that embraced creative, experimental approaches to inquiry. During his tenure the Collegium supported 90 collaborative projects led by faculty representing all divisions and professional schools at the University along with 72 Visiting Fellows from 21 countries. He also oversaw the Director’s Lectures, an ongoing series of public talks at which distinguished thinkers share their insights on matters of pressing concern to society. Notable guests included: Quentin Skinner (2015), Marilynne Robinson (2016), Joan W. Scott (2017), J. M. Coetzee (2018), Charles Taylor (2018), Rory Stewart (2019), and more.

Under Lear’s leadership the arts in particular flourished at the Collegium, as part of his comprehensive vision for humanistic research inquiry. This expansive approach was most notable in the Open Fields project, which informed the Field Museum of Natural History’s renovation of its Native North American Hall and led to Apsáalooke Women and Warriors, a major initiative that brought together collaborators from the University of Chicago; the Field Museum; and the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe, with whom Lear had developed lasting ties through his research on Radical Hope. A dual-sited exhibition at the Collegium and the Field Museum, curated by Apsáalooke artist and scholar Nina Sanders, showcased contemporary works by Crow artists, historians, and designers alongside objects in the Field’s collection. More than 60 members of the Crow Tribe traveled to Chicago for the opening ceremony in March 2020, which included a historic parade through the campus Quad along with formal dancing and a “giveaway” at the Collegium. (Lear, Sanders, and Field curator Alaka Wali discussed the project on the University’s Big Brains podcast.)

“Jonathan was, for me, a role model as a colleague, leader, and intellectual,” said Roman Family Director Tara Zahra, the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of East European History and the College. “In my years on the Neubauer Faculty Advisory Board, and then as his successor at the Collegium, I was deeply impressed by his generosity, humility, and intellectual curiosity – as well as his extraordinary integrity.”

The University of Chicago is planning a memorial service.

Read the full obituary in UChicago News.