Jeffrey P. Kaplan, PhD

Taught linguistics at San Diego State University 1981-2019. Before that, at Northeastern U. in Boston, Melbourne University (Australia), U. Arizona. Lived in Tanzania '66-'67 as Peace Corps volunteer. I used to be able to badly speak Swahili.

Half-retired from teaching at San Diego State in 2015, completely in 2019.

Now live in beautiful Bellingham, WA.

(1) Soph yr: Basketball Coach Pete Monska invited kids to join the team based on their performance in intramurals. I wasn't any good. I desperately, truly desperately, wanted to make the JV team. During basketball practice, every day, I sat by myself atop the bleachers in the gym. For days. Weeks? I watched practice. Then - is there a god? - one day Monska turned to me, before practice, and casually uttered the magic words: "Kaplan, go down and get dressed." I was gone, down to the locker room, and back up, dressed for practice, in a flash. Monska had taken pity on me. I still wasn't any good. I sat at the far end of the JV bench all season.

(2) Senior yr: There was a county- or state-wide civil defense drill. Citizens practiced taking shelter against the H-bomb by standing under the Woolworth awnings. I conducted a one-person demonstration against this, walking down the middle of Main St with a basket of anti-war leaflets (provided to me by my leftist mom, a member of the Women's Int'l League for Peace and Freedom).

(3) Also senior yr: In the mock election, Nixon beat Kennedy roughly two-to-one, with one vote, by me, for Adlai Stevenson.