Michael Todd Dreyfus

1968 - 2005
Michael (Todd) Dreyfus was born on September 11, 1968 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and died in New York City on September 27, 2005. His death was only recently confirmed. He predeceased his mother, Laura Lee Freeland Dreyfus of Texas, and is survived by his father, Ronald Dreyfus of Florida, and his half-siblings, Stacy Dreyfus of New York and Derek Dreyfus of North Carolina.

Michael grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Corpus Christi, Texas and then left for the East coast to attend college and later graduate school. Like so many others from around the country who come to New York as adults, he embraced living there with gusto. He reveled in the oddities and quirkiness of his fellow New Yorkers. He was one of them, one of us, a quirky New Yorker. The city's diversity invigorated him. His gentleness and openness towards others set at ease all those he met. Indeed, he seemed to have friends from every conceivable walk of life and background. Whether people called him Michael, Mike, or Dreyfus, it was with affection. Michael was a genuinely good-natured and inquisitive person with a wonderful sense of humor. He was funny, cynical, and wry and he often walked around with a bemused look on his face. His laugh was sort of a snicker, although not at all a malicious one, but rather one that invited you to be in on the joke.

At the same time Michael was a unique thinker. He was a pensive and critical person with whom one could discourse and debate a spectacular range of topics. An avid scholar, he especially enjoyed reading continental philosophy in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions. A graduate student first at New York University's Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and then later at the Graduate Faculty at the New School for Social Research, Dreyfus studied Middle Eastern history and anthropology, and continental philosophy. In order to support himself in his studies he worked at the New School for Social Research as Systems Coordinator from 1998-2003, and then also as Assistant to the Assistant Dean from 2001-2003.

A peripatetic soul, Michael always did what he wanted to do, in his own way and in his own time. He wanted to visit the Middle East and did so in 1999 when he traveled to Istanbul and Cairo. Michael was loved by his friends and he is, and will be, missed dearly by all those who knew him well.