About Bob

Born in the Bronx on October 14, 1933, the story of Professor Bob Gurland is a quintessentially New York American success story.  A first-generation, first-born son of European immigrants, after a stint as a professional trumpeter for the likes of big band luminaries such as Gene Krupa, and Lionel Hampton in the 1950s, and a brief stretch as a minor league baseball player in the Bronx Industrial League, Bob settled into his teaching career, beginning with elementary school education on Long Island.  Master’s degrees in education and mathematics followed. After teaching college mathematics at various Long Island universities for nearly a decade, Bob pursued his Ph.D. in philosophy from the world-renowned Department of Philosophy at New York University, studying under the tutelage of Sidney Hook and William Barrett. On the day Bob defended his doctoral dissertation in 1971, NYU presented him with a contract to teach philosophy at the university, which began a teaching tenure at the school for more than a half-century.  

In the mid-1970s, the United States Army hired Bob to develop an undergraduate curriculum in ethics, morality, and practical reasoning to be implemented at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he spent two years training military faculty on how to teach the course material he developed and taught West Point cadets himself.  Bob would go on to lecture on topics relating to ethics and morality to various military and government agencies for decades.

Possessed of a rare oratory gift that is a combination of equal parts wit, clarity of thought, accessibility, warmth, positivity, and genuine concern for his audience, Bob has taught more than 25,000 students from all over the world. He has developed and taught more than thirty substantive philosophy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels and explored with his students philosophical and existential topics relating to power, evil, identity, religion, cultural and social foundations, politics, warfare, humor, logic, metaphysics, sports, music, and the obligations that people owe to each other. To quote Bob: 

“Real teaching is about genuinely connecting with your students as people.  They don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care.”  

He has often summed up his teaching inspiration by noting that he was always “interested in having students be able to appreciate the philosophical dimensions of their lives in the particular arenas in which they were living; to develop intellectual tools to help them make sense of the world and derive valuable meaning from their experiences.”  

In addition to his commitment to his students in the classroom, Bob also served as a resident advisor in the NYU dormitory system for nearly two decades, traveled the world with his students as the faculty mentor to the Dean’s Circle honors program, and helped coach the NYU varsity baseball team.  

On December 12, 2019, Bob taught his last class at NYU, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy: a professor, mentor, and friend to so many that is not only deeply admired but genuinely beloved by students whose lives he has so meaningfully and enduringly transformed. The film Bronx Socrates stands as a tribute to Bob and his career and is an exploration of the unique value of an exceptional teacher, a great man, and his impact upon our modern world.