February 2, 8:53 p.m.: Reverend John Langan, the Rector of the Georgetown Jesuit community, has sent out an e-mail explaining that Witek passed away at 76 years old after struggling with cancer for several years.

“The funeral Mass for Fr. Witek will be held in Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart on Saturday, February 6, at 10:00 a.m. The Jesuit Community will also welcome guests to Wolfington Hall for visiting hours from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. and from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. on Friday, February 5,” he writes.

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Father John Witek, a professor and Jesuit who taught at Georgetown University for over 40 years, has passed away. University Spokesperson Andy Pino said that Witek died Sunday morning.

A former PhD student at Georgetown University, Witek’s areas of expertise were East Asia, China, and Japan, with a particular focus on Jesuits in Asia. While at Georgetown, he edited a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary originally produced by the first two Jesuits in China, Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri. Only one original copy of the dictionary exists today. He was also involved in the enormous undertaking of editing the Monumenta Sinica, a volume of letters sent among Jesuits traveling in East Asia in the sixteenth century.

According to his faculty biography, Witek could read eight other languages besides English. Last semester, he taught History of Asian Cultures I and History of Japan I. He taught History of Asian Cultures II and History of Christianity in China in Spring 2008.

Voice news will have more this Thursday.

Sunday’s Washington Post had a nice writeup of the late Georgetown Professor Walter Giles (SFS ‘43, GRD ‘45) in which Bill Clinton (SFS ‘68) and some of his classmates reminisce about his stringent classroom practices by T. Rees Shapiro. Giles, a constitutional law and American government professor, used to lock the door of his lecture hall five minutes into class against tardy students.

“If students were not prepared and wanted to avoid the humiliation of being called upon without an answer, they had to approach the professor before class began and plead ‘nolo contendere,’ or no contest,” Shapiro writes.

For his part, Clinton remembers falling asleep in Dr. Giles’s class during a lecture on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Dr. Giles said the ruling was easy to understand, “unless, of course, you’re from some hick town in Arkansas,” which sent the class into stitches and startled Clinton awake. Clinton recalls never falling asleep in the class again.

According to his Washington Post obituary Giles graduated from the School of Foreign Service in 1943. He returned to Georgetown after serving in the Army Air Forces in World War II and earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in government in 1945 and 1956. He taught government for 43 years until he retired in 1990. He passed away as a result of congestive heart failure at 89 on October 9.

Photo from the The Washington Post