Robinson G. Hollister
Robinson G. Hollister died September 14 at the North Hill Community in Needham, Massachusetts. He died quickly and seemingly painlessly, likely due to complications from a fall two weeks earlier. Born in 1934 to Jean Ackerman Hollister and Robinson G. Hollister, Sr., he grew up in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, much loved by his three sisters.
In high school his swimming and track coach “saved him” from getting into trouble. “Sonny” (as he was called until adulthood) competed in every track event except the pole vault, and became the New England champion in backstroke in college. Swimming was a lifelong passion, and he spent many hours helping his sisters, wife, daughters, and friends develop a love for swimming and improve their strokes. He was a dedicated member of the Swarthmore Swim Club 1,000 lap club, and his main criteria for buying land in Vermont was the ability to have a swimming pond.
Rob majored in economics at Amherst College (class of ‘56), and then went on to pursue his Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University. He taught economics at Williams College (1962-64). In the summer of 1965 he returned to Stanford to finalize his degree and began dating Valerie Dutton. In just a few months, Valerie was scheduled to depart for Africa with the Peace Corps. Rob proposed to Valerie, promising to take her anywhere in the world she wanted to go, but Valerie decided to stick with her Peace Corps plans and headed off to stateside training. While at the training, though, she changed her mind and called him to come pick her up. Rob always claimed Valerie agreed to marry him in order to avoid the dreaded rabies shot everyone else was receiving while she made the call.
Instead of Africa, the newlywed couple headed off to Paris, where Rob worked for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While in Paris, Rob and Valerie developed a love for wine, and they received a Julia Child cookbook, forever transforming their culinary lives.
Returning to the United States, Rob joined the War on Poverty effort in 1966 with the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). He played a major role in the design, implementation, and analysis of the New Jersey Negative Income Tax Experiment. This was the first large-scale use of a random assignment experiment, previously used in medicine, to assess the impact of a public policy. This use of randomized experiments was new and controversial at the time, and Rob became a leading advocate and expert in this field, convincing policymakers and his fellow scholars that this approach was crucial for properly assessing the effects of a program. He went on to work over the years on randomized evaluations of anti-poverty, job training, education, and child care programs. The use of random assignment experiments set the stage for what might be called the “causal revolution” that took place in microeconomics beginning in the 1990s. Today random assignment experiments are widely accepted by policymakers and economists as the gold standard, indeed the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to development economists for their use of this method.
Rob spent a few years at the University of Wisconsin and its newly created Institute for Research on Poverty before joining the economics department at Swarthmore College in 1971, where he taught until his retirement in 2015 at the age of 80. Known across campus for his “uniform” of shorts and birkenstocks, Rob was widely recognized for his dedication to his students—going out of his way to help them find jobs and provide them with support and counseling. At Swarthmore he co-founded the Public Policy program and remained a passionate advocate for it even past his retirement.
He did keep his promise to see the world with Valerie, including several trips to Africa (one famously involving getting lost in Kenya on a dried lakebed with his two-year old daughter and pregnant wife, while taking a “shortcut” he saw on a map), and sabbaticals in Malaysia, France, Italy, New York City, and Berkeley.
Rob was deeply dedicated to his family. He was close with his sisters, introducing them to contemporary literature, jazz music, and inspiring and supporting them in their athletic pursuits. A condition of his marriage proposal was a commitment to take care of his mother Jean, and building an addition for her to live in for the final years of her life. He was fiercely proud of Valerie’s accomplishments as an artist. He rarely interfered in his daughters’ lives, but supported them in everything they chose to do. They grew up with the knowledge that they were loved and respected.
Rob had a laid back personality, but also a great sense of humor. He was an inveterate punster. Initially given license to name Valerie’s paintings, this was soon taken away when the puns threatened to distract from the art. A painting of a lower torso wearing a pink bathing suit, “Rosy Posterity,” still hangs in his living room today. He loved to imitate accents and spoke beautifully accented French (but with poor grammar). He famously horrified his teenage daughters by walking like the comedy character Monsieur Hulot down the streets of Geneva. Well-known for refusing to be serious when someone was taking a photograph, “family picture day” when he was young would draw a crowd curious to see what he would do next.
Rob loved helping and connecting people. He held many dinner parties, often with the aim to form connections between strangers or foster a sense of community in the economics department. Over the years, Rob and Valerie opened their home to people as they faced new transitions in life, including their nephew living in the U.S. for the first time, the daughter of a close friend, and one of Valerie’s sisters.
Rob’s commitment to helping others was put to the test when Valerie began to suffer memory problems. Over the course of her very long and slow decline with Alzheimer’s, Rob was a dedicated and loving caregiver. In 2015, they moved to the North Hill Community in Massachusetts to be closer to their children and grandchildren. There Rob was able to find a new community, sharing with them his knowledge of policy issues and becoming famous for playing his harmonica and singing songs in the hallways. Every Bastille Day he insisted on singing the “Mareillaise’’ in one of the dining halls. In the final years of his life, Rob struggled with the deterioration of his vision. He was carried forward by his determination to see the end of the Trump era, his love of music, and his connection to his daughters.
Rob is survived by his wife of 57 years, Valerie Hollister; two of his sisters, Jean Boardman and Christina Hila; his daughters Arusha and Matissa Hollister; and his grandchildren Tikal and Ankaa Hollister-Carlson. A Zoom memorial will be held on October 23, 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Please contact m73hollis@yahoo.com for information.
In lieu of flowers, please direct any gifts to the Robinson G. Hollister Summer Opportunity fund. Donations can be made online (choose “Other” and enter fund name), or through a check made out to Swarthmore College (with the fund name noted in the memo) and mailed to Institutional Advancement, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081.
