A Radical Spirit: Professor Justin Champion
It is strange to lose a mentor, and stranger still to lose a friend. There are those that reflect upon academic lives by the books that are written, and papers produced. These are measures you excelled in but they are only scratch upon the surface of the gift your life gave to us all. Academia is not about volumes of papers, nor citations crammed in. Its about your attitude, your philosophy, your life. The students you inspire and the life lessons you gift to others. It’s the knowledge you accrue and how you gift it to others. Obituaries will mention your high achievements — your professorship, your position leading the Historical Society, your lead in the 800 year anniversary of Magna Carta. They will focus upon your works. I would like, if I may, to add to them your spirit.
I was lucky enough to be a PhD student of Justin Champion. Fresh off my LLB and a Masters in Classics, I embarked upon a project with him focused upon Early Modern history. I knew History to GCSE and came armed with basically no relevant background. This was not a problem for Justin. Indeed, within a year he had seen my enthusiasm for the controversial and suggested I add in “just a chapter” of work on the trial of Charles I. He had been trying to get someone to investigate the trial for years. I agreed to add in a chapter on it, stood up to leave, stopped myself and asked instead: “Could I just re-focus my entire thesis around the trial instead?”. A plain, excited look met me: “Yes” and we spoke for two hours more
Justin threw me onto a path that led me to innovate tirelessly. What struck me is how he approached the manic research patterns I would throw at him. Disappearing for a couple of months I would return with a new method I had researched, and some totally new approach I wanted to take. Every time, without fail, Justin listened. I would wait to hear the inevitable rejection of my ideas as far too outlandish for historical research — no matter how good their reasoning. But this was never his approach. Every time, without fail, he listened and then added to them. Every time a new suggestion, more enthusiasm. Every time he would suggest funding routes, and revel in how much other established historians would dislike it — but how strongly argued it could be. He would take these new ideas and improve them, give me grander plans. He was, quite literally, an inspiration at every turn.
This was Justin Champion. The spirit of the man: a radical through and through.
Justin abhorred received wisdom, and challenged anything that stood still long enough to be considered established. He had no fear of confrontation. His opinions were deeply, honestly held and always challenging. But, for his students, he kept his assessment to himself. I once asked him what he thought of an idea of mine. He responded only with silence — a first in my conversations with Justin. I realised, instantaneously, he would never tell me if he agreed or not — he never wanted me to know. Instead he threw all his efforts into supporting me, threw all of his energy into helping me argue the case. He never wanted to direct, only assist, only support. He wanted his students to find answers on their own, challenge what they saw. He hated authority, and would never allow himself to be one.
Justin was a radical. A kind, supportive radical. An intellectual, interested, deeply caring radical.
Though I was a lawyer with no understanding of history, he guided me through study into the history of Christian theology, political and legal conceptual analysis, social history and my innovative approaches to documentary historical analysis. He gently prodded me towards sources, and let me take them where they led me. He never allowed History to define the work that I produced. Instead, all that mattered was my assessment and desire for the truth.
In a world of publication numbers, and internal bickering between academics, Justin ushered it all away. Rules were made to be challenged. Power to be broken.
One of the greatest gifts that Justin gave me, was an understanding of the beauty, complexity, and importance of the bible. Though I had once been a Christian and feared the book for the weight of the word of God was crushing, Justin encouraged me to view it as it was: something indescribably important to our cultural and political history. Justin gifted me the beauty of the Bible — a gift my faith had torn from me — he gifted me also an understanding of the intellectual roots of our democracy, of law, of the fundamentals of our society and our culture. He taught me what it was to be a supportive, radical un-afraid mentor. These are lofty achievements for one man to claim — and they are only the experiences of one of his students. Some things are impossible to place a price upon — but Justin tried even that. When I required an extension for my thesis, I was to be charged some sum of several hundreds and a few pence — within an hour Justin had forced a change. He had valued the time of his illness as missing tuition — tuition that the college should be forced to repay. His estimate of my missing tuition just so happened to be the exact sum, down to the penny, that they had quoted I was to pay. Within a few minutes, they had wiped the debt.
I knew Justin only after he knew his illness would eventually take his life. Doctors didn’t tell him (and he didn’t find out until later) but they had been given only 6 months to live. Justin, the radical, lived 6 years more. Those six years took me through my PhD entirely. I saw him relatively recovered, on chemotherapy, off of medication, travelling to the USA to do research, manage full teaching loads, take early retirement. Throughout all of it, at every point, he was there for me.
In the closing few months of his life, I undertook my viva. I gave him the option of attending or not — I wanted it to be his choice. Wanting to attend, but unable due to health, I informed Justin of how it went. Whilst good overall, the innovative ideas were outside of usual historical practice and they wanted them gone. Justin, barely able to leave his house, but ever ready to challenge orthodoxy, hurried off a series of citations for me to fight my case.
Justin was a scholar, a brilliant man, and a public historian. Obituaries will speak of those achievements, but you were so much more than even all of those great things. Your spirit was radical, and radically kind.
I am deeply saddened I never asked what your favourite Bible quote was. I wish I could end this piece on it. Then again, ending pieces like this with a quotation is done far too often, and conventions are like rules — built to be broken.
Rest that radical spirit in peace, Justin. Rest knowing you have passed some part of that spirit on into others. My mentor and friend. Thank you.
