[2] Near the end of his book on Jaurès, Goldberg wrote, "He had the integrity to be partisan, the courage to be revolutionary, the humanism to be tolerant, and the wisdom to evolve...".
As a faculty member, Goldberg carried the history department when it came to attracting large student enrollments that drove departmental budgets.
In an era when professors might receive a round of polite applause on the last day of the semester, Goldberg got an ovation at the end of every lecture, which often ran well over the assigned time.
No one who witnessed his lectures at Madison could forget the drama of his meticulously crafted performances, delivered with an actor's sense of timing.
He would then take off his glasses, look off to the side of the stage as if expecting a cue, and then turn to the audience, waving his finger and declaring, "The point is, you know..."[7] And once he had warmed to his topic, there was no stopping him.
eventually learned to schedule his class in the de facto last slot of the day, 2:25 to 3:15, to minimize students being late for other commitments.
"[7] Another former student, independent film and television producer Sidney Iwanter, recalled that "For a quarter of a century, Goldberg's reed thin voice never faltered; he danced out his words from memory, a verbal misstep was as unheard of as a yawn from the audience.
Upon return to the University of Wisconsin he gained full tenure, and he used his massive student audience to more stridently speak out on pressing issues of the day.
Many demonstrations would start immediately after his afternoon class, e.g. the occupation of the State Capitol grounds by farmer Ed Klessig and his cows in 1977 protesting a freeway through his pastures.
[11] Also out of those meetings (and the Community Union effort) grew the Common Sense coalition which played a role in local Madison mayoral politics for several years.
While sympathetic to Trotsky's form of Marxism, his months of unsuccessful union organizing as a youth, and his outsider status as gay, Jewish and socialist kept him away from being a joiner of parties.
Goldberg also often took a year sabbatical to research, network, and engage politically in Paris, France, from his longtime walk-up apartment at 13, la Rue du Pont-aux-Choux in the Marais, near his beloved sans-coulotte district and the site of the Bastille dismantled in the French Revolutions.
He humorously spoke of an extraordinary encounter at the apartment with nearly-blind Jean-Paul Sartre where Simone de Beauvoir served them boiled eggs (a feminine object) that rolled around on the plates in some kind of post-feminist semiotic revenge.