Posted on 06/26/2007 11:29:21 AM PDT by rhema
As the founder and sole member of the Sheldon Award Society, I am dedicated to identifying the worst college president of each academic year. So far the presidents or chancellors of Berkeley, Georgetown, DePaul, and countless other universities have copped the Sheldon. Somewhat mysteriously, none offered to resign.
The award is a statuette that looks something like the Oscar, except the Oscar features a man with no face looking straight ahead, whereas the Sheldon shows a man with no spine looking the other way.
The award is named for Sheldon "Water Buffalo" Hackney, the former president of the University of Pennsylvania and the Babe Ruth of modern Sheldonism.
The president of Tufts University, Lawrence Bacow, looked the other way when a student-faculty committee put a conservative Tufts publication on trial for publishing two parodies. One was a mock Christmas carol making fun of racial preferences in college admissions, the other a satire on Islamic Awareness week.
The publication, the Primary Source, was convicted of harassment for what would pass as free speech on most other campuses. The committee ordered the publication not to run any unsigned articles in the future, a rule not applied to other campus publications. The committee also hinted that funding would be cut if other controversial articles were published.
Mr. Bacow or his staff apparently snookered the Tufts commencement speaker, Mayor Bloomberg. The mayor's speech mistakenly praised the campus for respecting free speech in the controversy, although a harassment verdict had already been announced.
Another perennial Sheldon candidate, Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, had a notable year. In October, rioters prevented speeches by two Minutemen, members of a volunteer group that patrols the Mexican border reporting illegal immigrants.
Mr. Bollinger, a first amendment scholar, might have shown a commitment to free speech by inviting the
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Nancy Zimpher....University of Cincinnati
Actually I think Houston Baker, one of the loudest of those attacking the lacrosse players, was not one of the 88 who signed the ad. He was later hired away by Vanderbilt University so is no longer at Duke.
What are her qualifications? You could email them to John Leo to consider for next year's Sheldon.
I found an email link to John Leo at Townhall.com. I don't know if it's still current.
All are good nominees, but there can be only one:
Richard Brodhead - Duke University
I’m with you. Gene Nichol gets the award for sheer volume of asinine academic behavior.
Dick Broadhead or is it Brod Dickhead? He’s the one.
Ha! No wonder everyone looked so tired when it ended. We happened to be on vacation there at the time, and were exiting the Williamsburg candy store. Next time, parents, go to the Williamsburg candy store instead, and get one of those chocolate covered pretzels with the crushed Skor bar coating. Yum!
I nominate the President of Duke
“... I think Houston Baker ... was not one of the 88 who signed the ad.”
Yes, he is #5 on the list. He also wrote and disseminated a letter castigating the Duke administration for “protecting” the lacrosse students by not immediately branding them guilty. For this letter, Baker was publicly rebuked by the Duke Provost.
HA! At my graduation, the speaker droned on for over an hour. The topic was ‘brevity.’
No, he was a military officer. Not a lib, just very long winded.
A military officer! That in itself is encouraging. Think how many college presidents and faculty would suffer apoplectic paroxysms if any member of the military spoke on their campuses.
Read this about Mr Houston “the racist” Baker:
By the time he left Yale in 1970, its program in African-American studies was widely regarded as the nation’s best. He went on to teach at the University of Virginia and then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture.
While they were living in Philadelphia, Mr. Baker, his wife and their 10-year-old son were robbed and brutally attacked in their home by two black men. His wife, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, now a research professor in African-American studies at Duke, was raped. Eventually she wrote a book about the ordeal, “Surviving the Silence: Black Women’s Stories of Rape” (1998). Although Mr. Baker has not written about it specifically, the experience “has affected everything,” he said.
http://www.racematters.org/blackcaptivewhiteculture.htm
Did Myles Brand ever get one?
>> Only problem with a tax-supported state college is that those living below the poverty level aren’t paying the taxes that keep William and Mary’s doors open. <<
Actually, that’s not true at all. Virginia has a very high sales tax, and its income tax is very regressive. There’s even a tax on owning a car, which was supposed to be phased out, but wasn’t, thanks to Democratic Governor Mark Warner.
“Virginia has a very high sales tax,”
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Where’d you get that info from? VA’s sales tax on food is 2.5%. It is 5% on non-food. Not exactly “very high.”
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