In Memoriam: Julian Heicklen

March 9, 1932 - March 11, 2022

One year ago, my Zadie passed away. He lived a vibrant and rebellious life, and died with no regrets. He was passionate, irreverent, silly, and always dedicated to doing the right thing, and through his activism and antics instilled in me his deep commitment to justice and also to total nonsense.

Clay Risen of the New York Times captured Zadie’s spirit far better than I can, so I’ll pull out a few choice quotes from his obituary here. Really, though, you should just read the whole thing.

On his activism in support of jury nullification:

Julian P. Heicklen, a charismatic, cantankerous chemistry professor who dedicated his retirement years to a series of public protests in defense of civil liberties, culminating in his 2011 indictment for jury tampering, died on March 11 at his home in Teaneck, N.J. He was 90.

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Starting in 2009, he regularly appeared in front of the federal courthouse on Pearl Street, in Lower Manhattan, demonstrating in favor of jury nullification, a controversial practice in which members of a jury who find a law unjust vote not guilty, regardless of the facts of a case, thereby nullifying the law.

On his protest strategy of playing dead:

Dr. Heicklen’s protests at the Pearl Street courthouse were drawing the attention of law enforcement by his second week. When officers moved to arrest him, which they did several times, he would fall to the ground, limp, forcing them to carry him away to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he would be given a psychiatric evaluation and let go. He signed his release forms Ayn Rand, after the philosopher and novelist, or John Galt, a character from her book “Atlas Shrugged.”

On thinking outside the box: 

Dr. Heicklen moved to Pennsylvania State University in 1967, where he became popular for his unorthodox instruction. To drum up interest in his courses, his daughter said, he would hand out campaign-style buttons and appear in class in a cape; he brought in Penn State gymnasts to demonstrate chemical reactions and cheerleaders to add a little spirit to the proceedings.

He remained active in civil liberties and civil rights, but it was only after he retired in 1992 that he became what one might ungenerously call a gadfly.

“Ungenerously” is a dead giveaway that Clay Risen never met the man—Zadie would have been overjoyed to be called a gadfly. 

On advocating for legalization:

Along with regular, unsuccessful runs for public office on the Libertarian Party ticket, he made weekly appearances at the main gates at Penn State, where he would light a marijuana cigarette to protest drug laws. He was arrested several times.

I imagine the New York Times copy editors getting out their style guide, saying to each other “Steve, what’re we supposed to call a joint these days? Marijuana- oh, a marijuana cigarette. Alright, put marijuana cigarette then.”  

On chutzpah: 

He was indifferent, if not openly hostile, to the legal system. At one arraignment hearing, in 1998, he simply left the courthouse after a judge was 20 minutes late. He was rearrested at his home — coincidentally, at 4:20 p.m. — and brought before a different judge.

“You arrested the wrong man,” he said, according to The Daily Collegian, a student newspaper at Penn State. “I appeared, but the judge didn’t.”

Zadie had no concept of capitulation to authority, nor any inclination to censor himself in the interest of diplomacy. He kept the entire Heicklen family on our toes, never knowing who he was going to piss off next.

At his funeral, I shared the eulogy below, reproduced in full.

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Eulogy of Julian Heicklen

“Julian Heicklen was born at an early age. At 8 days, he was circumcised. This was so traumatic that he did not walk or talk for a year.” Such begins the self bio of my Zadie, libertarian activist, chemist, bridge player, and grandfather extraordinaire, and my personal hero. 

Zadie set us eulogy-writers up for success. He lived a life of activism and adventure, full of twists and turns that kept his wife and three daughters on their toes at all times. When, in 2012, the government authorized the indefinite military detention of any citizen suspected by the government of terrorism, Zadie packed his bags and moved out of the country within a week in protest. He saw the world in black and white, and when he witnessed a moral wrong, he would be on the front lines fighting it. Even in his civil disobedience, he was full of surprises. A regular tactic of his when getting arrested would be to fall over and play dead—a terrifying thing for an octogenarian to do, which left police frequently unsure whether to rush him to the ER or to jail. His strategies were unconventional, but they fit cleanly into his view of the world as black and white—he knew what worked, and would be willing to do it no matter how outside the ordinary. 

And yet, despite these curveballs, he was in many ways remarkably consistent. If you’ve ever been in the Heicklen household, you can probably repeat back verbatim his stories of how he stole a house, single-handedly won the Yom Kippur war for Israel, or had a municipal law declared unconstitutional. He loved telling stories, embellishing all the right details but with such regularity and repetition that even his electrifying life felt commonplace. He was steady in his opinions, was a predictable regular at the bridge club, and had many one-liners that we could all finish the end of. 

One of his favorite such one-liners, which he would say to whoever happened to be in the room, was “you’re in charge!” He was at the bottom of the totem pole and he loved it. Most of his life, this meant Bubbie was in charge, and he’d remind everybody that she’s the big boss. It didn’t take long to catch on. When I was three years old, I went up to him and said “You know what—Bubbie knows everything. And Zadie, you don’t know anything!” The only time he was at the top of the food chain was when he played the role of God at the end of Chad Gadya, after his fourth glass of Slivovitz. Normally, he was so happy to follow the lead of whoever else was making the rules, even as he would declare the hierarchy around town. 

But that shouldn’t be confused for any sort of reverence for authority. As much as he loved to take a backseat to the rule-making at home, when he saw injustice from atop, he would use all his power to protest. And when he saw a need, he would fill it. He regularly ran for office when the local Libertarian ticket would otherwise sit empty. When, in the 1960s, he was head of the action committee of the Congress of Racial Equality, and witnessed segregation in the California housing system, he devised a “dwell in.” This worked as follows: A Black couple would visit a house on the market, and inevitably be told it had already been sold. Zadie would then visit the same house, which was now magically available, ask to have the keys so he could take some measurements, and bring in a throng of protesters to sit in the house. They were arrested for trespassing, leading directly to the integration of housing in the state of California. 

While Zadie not being in charge at home was a sign of trust and deference for Bubbie, this did mean she got stuck with all the laundry—I hope somebody up in heaven knows how to use a washing machine. But while the household chores broke down along traditional gender lines, he took great joy in his wife and daughters’ brilliance and ambition. Zadie loved to tell stories of how, when he and Bubbie played bridge together, they’d sit down at the table, and Bubbie would strike up a conversation with the ladies about local lunch options. Their opponent would underestimate her, dismiss her wildly aggressive bids as overconfidence, double, and get wholloped when Bubbie played a perfect hand. He held his daughters to extremely high standards, and never wavered in his confidence in them, pushing them to bring the same joy for research and creative pursuits that he did.

He brimmed with confidence, in his family but also in his own opinions and actions, even as, per his self bio, he “engaged in all sorts of socially unacceptable behavior.” This confidence sometimes led him to extremity, and certainly made many people around him nervous. In college, I received an email from a university rabbi, that included the following line:

“I am sitting on a bus on my way home listening to this RadioLab episode on jury nullification and I think they are interviewing your grandfather on it. Is that him? He sounds amazing. Seems like such a special and caring person.”

Followed by another email, a few minutes later:

“Oh.... just got to the part where he is talking about killing cops and judges. Pretty intense…”

Zadie managed to terrify the NPR podcast producers, local law enforcement, and anyone tuning in to that week’s episode of Radiolab, “Null and Void.” To a casual listener, he sounds like an angry old man who has spent too much time on the internet. Listening to this podcast episode, though, you might notice something jarring. Around 40 minutes in, Zadie begins to cry. He is discussing a deeply emotional topic: the minutiae of a case of jury nullification and the government’s attempts to curtail that right, and he gets choked up, in evident pain at the notion that citizens’ civil liberties are being taken away. He apologizes to the host for breaking down. He says: “I’m sorry. I think about these cases that I just can’t believe what’s happened to this country. I can’t believe how corrupt this country has become.” His vulnerability is palpable. 

His bio closes with the following line: “He has the delusional idea that he can transform the United States from a totalitarian government into a free society.” By Zadie’s metrics, we still have a long way to go. But, through a life of surprises and commitments, irreverence and deference, confidence and vulnerability, he has moved us several steps closer. Zadie, we will miss you so much, and we hope that your confidence in us will propel us forward and make this world a more just place.

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Once we’d wrapped up our eulogies, we each grabbed a shovel and threw dirt onto his casket. My mother and her sisters said Kaddish, and my brother and I paid our respects as well, throwing a final marijuana cigarette into his grave.