Fellows

I've done a lot of creativity research (see, e.g., There's No Such Thing as Creativity: How Plato and 20th Century Psychology Have Misled Us. Cambridge University Press, 2022) and dabbled in some other areas (e.g., Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will. Oxford University Press. 2008). Much of my teaching has focused on teacher training. See http://users.rider.edu/~baer/ for more information. My wife (also a D'port fellow, although never a D'port student because when we went to college many decades ago Yale allowed no female undergraduates) and I have taught college-credit courses (The Development of Children's Imaginations and Multi-Dimensional Children's Literature) at Disney World, a place we both love.
I also love and play a lot of tennis.

As head of the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, I focus on romantic-era musical performance practice, especially as documented on 78rpm grooved discs. This enables me to teach and lecture extensively at Yale, at prominent universities here and in Europe, and at major conferences. I also provide consultation and support for a broad array of topics additionally captured on a variety of recording types and formats, including jazz, American music theater, the spoken word, and political speeches. I am both a performing musician and scholar. As a performer, I am artistic director of The American Baroque Orchestra and a guest conductor throughout North America. I also play baroque viola. I teach conducting and lead the school choir at the Mahanaim Music Institute as well as teach conducting workshops. This aligns well with my scholarly and administrative activities as head of The Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings. In addition, having served on numerous commissions, I am a vegan animal justice advocate. I currently am a member of the advisory board for Connecticut Votes for Animals, and as a former board member and co-president of The Animal Haven in North Haven, CT, I currently volunteer there several times a week.

I co-created the television series How I Met Your Mother, and served as co-showrunner for the entirety of its 9 year, 208 episode run. Before that, I was a producer for the animated series American Dad!, and a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman. More recently, I am the author of the novel The Mutual Friend, and an occasional guest lecturer at Columbia University. I live in Manhattan with my wife and three children, though I'm originally from Cleveland, Ohio. (Go Guardians!) In my free time I sing, play guitar, and write songs for my band The Solids - our most famous composition is the How I Met Your Mother theme song. (That's me singing the "ba ba ba ba" part.)

I have been a museum librarian for over 30 years the last 19 of which have been at Yale. I specialize in British library collections and am proud of my accomplishments in advancing student and scholar discovery of, and access to, collections. I serve on many committees at the museum and at Yale but my most rewarding activity is as a Personal Librarian to first and second-year students in Davenport College. I am a practicing print maker/artist - focusing on woodcuts and exhibiting in Connecticut and New York. I am also a budding wood worker and a (very bad) guitar player. I have three children, one of which is a toddler who doesn't allow me to do any of the above.