Gaspard Weiss

Gaspard Etienne Weiss (1901–1989) was the founder and served as the first President of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies (MIFS), from 1955 to 1968, the longest serving President of the school. Weiss was a graduate of the University of Paris and the University of Lausanne, and formerly an employee of the French government, serving there in an intelligence and propaganda capacity during the height of World War II for the Minister of the Interior. Weiss came to the United States from Paris in 1948 with his wife. Between 1948 and 1951, he taught at Smith College, University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and the Ohio State University. Meeting a fellow educator during this time, Dwight Morrow Jr., he was convinced to move to Monterey in 1951. He began teaching French at the Army Language School in June 1951. He was the highest-ranking French instructor at the Presidio of Monterey, and served as the chairman of the French department there.

In 1945, Gaspard and Louise Weiss were convicted by the Cour de Justice de la République at Poitiers of having been Nazi collaborators, the alleged crime of which was having shared intelligence with the Nazis, and were sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia.

After his tenure as president, in 1968, he moved to Arcata, California to join the faculty of Humboldt State College, later known as California State University at Humboldt, teaching French there until his retirement in 1975.