Meet Jim Gilbert, one of Mount Pleasant's most energetic retirees. Of  the hundreds, if not thousands of retired fellows who've settled here in search of the perfect beach or golf course or the trophy billfish, it's  refreshing to find a vibrant, organizer type with giving-back as  his  aim.

And, of all his interesting attributes, Gilbert has a U.S. Supreme  Court case named for him and he was a short-time colleague of, psychologist, B.F. Skinner (d.1990). Few in this town have not met  James E. Gilbert, Ph.D.

Because he's a modest man about his contacts  and  accomplishments, there are some interesting details of this retired  university president's life that make him rather unique in our  community.

He grew up throughout the United States as his father was a career Navy captain who served during World War II and beyond. Jim did a stint  in the naval reserve as a hospital corpsman in the early years of the Cold War. However, his professional life has been devoted to research psychology, national security assignments, and academia.

Professionals associated with the Medical University may know of  Gilbert for his 11-year stint as special assistant to the Provost and in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Lawyers may associate him with the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court case Gilbert v. Homar No. 96-651 [520 U.S. 924, 7 (1997)], an administrative law due process case. 

Mount Pleasant Presbyterian Church members know Jim as elder and a member of the Academy of St. John, an adult Bible study class. With his characteristic laugh Jim interposes that instead of a stipend all he wanted at MUSC was a parking place. To that request, Dr. James B. Edwards, then president of MUSC, responded that he would rather talk about a stipend! Jim received his parking spot and gave back 11 years of research assistance to numerous health-related projects. As far as  the Supreme Court case goes, it was all a part of the job of being a  university president in these highly litigious days.

The art of giving back comes as naturally to Jim Gilbert as does assuming the mantle of leadership. For, as those who know this university academician will attest, when Jim walks into a room, it  isn't  long before someone nominates him for a job that needs doing. It's been  that way for a long time and in a number of situations. Some of the titles that Jim Gilbert has held in his 50-plus years of professional life include: associate professor, associate dean, professor, dean, vice-president, interim-president, and president.

One doesn't get very far in academics or any other field without having  a mentor. One of Jim Gilbert's mentors was world-renown psychologist, B. F. Skinner, one of the founders of the psychological movement known as Behaviorism. Open any U.S. History book, or psychology 101 text and you will find B.F. Skinner mentioned prominently with the ideas of operant conditioning theory and behavior modification. Skinner wrote the best seller Walden Two, a thought-provoking book outlining  a  utopian model for the modern world of the 1950s.

Skinner was able to open doors for the young psychologist Gilbert while the two worked  on a  joint project for the federal government. While completing his undergraduate degree in psychology at the University of New Mexico in 1952, Jim worked with procurement at the atomic weapons facility at  Sandia Base in Albuquerque. Leaving New Mexico, he was hired by the National Security Agency (NSA).

When Gilbert met him, Skinner was  pioneering a technique known then as programmed instruction, a technique  of self-instruction based on operant-conditioning whereby students could  accommodate their individual learning style. It was Skinner who recommended Gilbert for the post of associate dean of University Administration at Northeastern University of Boston. By that time, Jim was a doctoral candidate in psychology at American University. It wasn't  long before Gilbert moved on to Purdue University at Ft. Wayne where he served as dean of Academic Affairs.

Becoming a full-professor at one of our universities is a slippery  slope of acquiring the right combination of credentials, publishing  copious highbrow articles in scholarly journals, and most important of  all, jumping through the hoops in the labyrinth that is university  politics. Becoming a university president requires the ability to transcend the laws of gravity, at least the gravitational forces  controlling university politics.

Gilbert might not pronounce  himself as a Solomon in this realm, but back in 1992 while he was  president of East Stroudsburg University, one of 14 state universities  in Pennsylvania, Jim’s judgment was put to the test.

A campus security  guard was arrested off-campus on felony drug charges. The university  suspended him without pay until his trial. The defendant, Richard Homar, claimed  that he was suspended without a timely hearing. Winding their way  through the appeals system to the Supreme Court, Gilbert, president of  East Stroudsburg University, faced defendant Homar over the  issue of whether a timely hearing had been given and whether suspension of pay was warranted.

In the U.S. Supreme Court, Monday, March 24, 1997, the university’s lawyer, a Pennsylvania deputy attorney-general, was peppered so hard by eight of the nine justices that she had to  abandon her prepared notes and try to respond to the rapid-fire  questions of the justices.

Ten weeks later the High Court ruled in the case of James E. Gilbert, president, East Stroudsburg University, et al, Petitioners v. Richard  Homar with Justice Scalia rendering the 9-0 opinion for the Court. The government does not have to give an employee charged with a felony a paid leave at taxpayer expense.

So, despite the verbal bombardment that the university’s attorney received at the hands of the  justices,  the Court upheld Gilbert’s and the university’s administrative logic.  However, the justices did remand to the lower court the idea of  whether waiting 23 days for a formal hearing was a too lengthy delay.

Gilbert turned to his wife, Betty, in the courtroom and  remarked, “What a great country we live in. Here we have a first-generation American grounds keeper having his case heard by the highest court  in the land and the university being defended by a young  African-American woman! Is this a great country, or what!”

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. You can visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com).