After 30 Years, Mr. Mansdorf is Retiring

Ava Karaganis, Grade 12, Editor in Chief

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Mr. Mansdorf is an iconic presence at the High School of American Studies. As one of the founding teachers of the school, Mr. Mansdorf has played a fundamental role in the uniqueness and excellence of an HSAS education. He has taught A.P. American history, Economics and many electives – including Europe Between the Wars and Europe and the Holocaust. Among several positions, he was the advisor for our Model U.N. and tennis teams and was even the founding advisor for Common Sense and our literary magazine. After 30 years of teaching, he has decided to retire. From just 80 students on the top floor of the APEX gym in 2002, to today’s flourishing student body of over 400, Mr. Mansdorf has seen HSAS evolve and change. He leaves students and teachers with reflections about his time at HSAS and some advice. As he puts it, he asks us “to appreciate his pearls of wisdom and to take notes.”

After attending Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, Mr. Mansdorf completed his undergraduate education at Tufts University in 1979. “There was so much less worry about the cost of education or the job market in those days” he said.  His initial goal was to be a sportswriter or a spy after reading too many John Le Carre novels. “I studied American history, just kind of out of default,” he said. He remembers his advisor, a British History professor, encouraging him to take European history courses, but at first he did not understand why. 

His interest in European history began in 1977. His grandparents left a small inheritance his sophomore year, with which he used to travel. “I went to Europe for three weeks, and it changed my whole life. I walked out of the train station in Amsterdam and said, “There’s a whole world out there and  I don’t know anything about it. When I got back to school, I started taking European history, international relations and political science courses.” Following a semester at the Institute of European Studies’ program at the London School of Economics (where he met his wife) during his junior year, he double majored in history and political science, graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1979.  A favorite course was “Understanding International News” which led to a life long obsession with reading the New York Times on a daily basis. Mr. Mansdorf then received a masters degree in international relations/international business from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1981.

In 1982, after rejecting opportunities in the international banking field which would have locked him into an office on Wall Street, he was hired as an assistant trader for a meat exporting company – Gerber Agri-Export Inc.  “I became the poultry export king of the US over the next two years. I worked for a senior trader who no longer wanted to travel so they sent me to Singapore, the wet markets of Hong Kong, the jungles of Malaysia and all over Western Europe. I really got to see the world when it was still very big at a young age. I did everything from commodity purchasing and sales to booking ocean freight and foreign exchange trading. Then I worked for one of the largest grain companies - Bunge Corporation, exporting wheat to Russia and China.”  I met some incredibly intelligent and street smart people from all over the world.” While Mr. Mansdorf appreciated the adventure of his job, after about five years, he really missed school. “I was still reading history books when I should have been studying grain supply and demand tables.”

In 1988, Mr. Mansdorf enrolled in night courses to become a history teacher. He took education classes and did student teaching, While the idea of teaching fueled his intellectual curiosity, salaries were too low to support his family and purchase a home, so Mr. Mansdorf became a cocoa trader with Grace Cocoa - the world’s largest cocoa processor. Three years of lecturing in international business courses in Baruch College’s MBA program, though, had confirmed a love for teaching. 

In 1996, on one of his many business trips, Mansdorf spoke with his children on the phone from Paris and had a realization. “My gravestone is going to say, ‘Here lies Arnie Mansdorf who sold 100 million pounds of cocoa,’ and that'll be it,” he said, “I was missing everything from my kids' childhood. I wanted more.” 

At age 40, Mr. Mansdorf got his first teaching job at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.  He loved Clinton because “you taught all levels, so it was a very good experience. The school had a great culture. The students worked hard, and you could really teach them. I fell in love with teaching from literally my first day in the classroom.” Myra Luftman, an assistant principal at Clinton and later the first principal of HSAS, was his mentor. In 2002, Mansdorf, along with Ms. Rice, followed Luftman to HSAS. Along with the other teachers, Mr. Mansdorf helped build HSAS from the ground up. “We were building the school from scratch, and because there was a real need for good schools in New York City, it didn't take long to build a reputation but so much work went into planning.”

 Mr. Mansdorf is responsible for HSAS’s  three year American History course. “I take great pride that I was the one who designed that. It was based on my high school — Saint Ann’s in Brooklyn — where we had a three-year biology program.”

 “This is a really unique place to teach history,” he said. In contrast to most high school and college courses, he can spend three weeks teaching Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal and two weeks on Harry Truman and containment.“ Also, the teachers here really love the profession. They are very interested in what they teach. We all read books constantly and bring them into the class. That’s why we rush to finish a traditional one year course in three years.”

According to Mr. Mansdorf, one great aspect of HSAS is the rigor with which one can teach: “The kids are very bright, and they are willing to do a lot of work. They grab everything you bring into the classroom. You can teach here at a level that a college professor may not be able to reach because we meet four times a week.

Additionally, he highlighted diversity as one of the school’s strengths. “It started out as a very diverse school because we were getting students from all over the Bronx and northern Manhattan, and Harlem, and Queens. When the school's reputation was better established, we started getting wealthier kids, but with the broadening of the Discovery program, we're back to more diversity. Mr. Mansdorf loves teaching because helping his students succeed is fulfilling and meaningful. He enjoys working with students from the Bronx or Manhattan whose parents perhaps didn't go to college and helping them get into colleges with merit scholarships. He says, “When they go to college, they are successful because of the education that they have had here. You could say that their lives would not have been the same if they had not come to this school, and maybe even if I had not taught them. That's a real honor. It is a blessing to feel like you've accomplished something like that.”

“I think I give them the foundation and methodology to succeed, not just here, but in later life. It's not that I'm teaching them to love American history or that they're going to become historians or politicians. But so many of the students that  I've taught come back and say “you were really tough on us, and that really was needed.”

Mr. Mansdorf’s class is known for its rigorous note-taking, long essays, and lengthy readings. But he believes this discipline is valuable: “I stress a lot of old-fashioned teaching, note-taking and memorization. Many students initially complain that all I’m asking them to do is regurgitate. While that is necessary for a good grade, I hope that my students realize that factual knowledge is also the foundation for creativity. In the sciences, people don't really question that much, but in the humanities, sometimes that gets lost.”

As for his legacy, Mr. Mansdorf has a strong sense that he built something that is going to last. “Because I've only been teaching juniors and seniors, very few students will remember me in two years. But I'll always know that we built one of the best schools in the country,” he said.

For many years, Mansdorf put off his retirement: “I did not retire earlier because I was never burned out. Even now, I still really enjoy the subject and teaching. But now it’s time to start giving attention to my three grandchildren Henry, Julian and Riley who are all under 4 years of age.”

Whoever will replace Mr. Mansdorf will have a lot to live up to. A teacher as dedicated and passionate as Mr. Mansdorf is hard to come by. For his successor and all future teachers, Mansdorf’s advice is this: “I believe the whole idea of teaching is that you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to really love reading. There's nothing else I would rather do. If you don't really like kids, then don't teach at all. Some of my favorite students were the worst students when I first met them.”

And for the class of 2026, the last senior grade that Mr. Mansdorf will teach, here is what he has to say, “Make sure you do something in your life that you've enjoyed. You have to be practical but you will never succeed if you are not passionate about your work.”