Robert Christopher "Chris" Lakey

Chris had the most engaging smile of anyone I know in graduate school. It was because his sense of humor was so strange and attractive. He found what was cool and weird and just about everything and didn’t take everything entirely seriously at the same time. He was somehow both, to me, deeply medieval and ironic at the same time. And of course, he had serious things to say. I loved talking to Chris about music most of all. I looked up to his opinion about rock ‘n’ roll and its history in every conversation. He what’s the kind of person who would draw you to eerie parallels between, like, The Beach Boys and Godspeed You Black Emperor, and despite overwhelming odds, correctly defended Animals as Pink Floyd‘s best album. His record collection is inseparable from my memory of him. Hopkins denying Chris tenure was one of the great injustices I have personally known, and I have never stopped being angry about it. It’s not just that Cris is brilliant scholarship and citizenship were not given their due. It’s that Chris was actually the humanist you want to have a beer with in the humanity-challenged academy. Chris was your friend, never your frenemy, and someone I wished would be my colleague forever.