Fox News photo of Gallaudet protestors in 2006

Two decades ago, those of us who care about such things watched as Elisabeth Zinser, the newly appointed president of Gallaudet University, was repudiated by the student body demanding that the leader of an institution created to serve the deaf had to be deaf.

The trustees had picked somebody conventional. The students said “no.” They did so with brio, the board was persuaded and my friend, I. King Jordan, was ultimately selected. King had been born hearing but became deaf in a motorcycle accident as a young man. It made sense for all kinds of symbolic reasons, I thought, for an institution serving special people to have a special person as their president. And while I lamented the means, I was empathetic with the end. And for two decades President Jordan was terrific.

At the conclusion of his term, the Gallaudet board of trustees ...

(Prior post on Painting’s Edge at Idyllwild, Calif.)

Sunday, 29 June 2008

5:45 a.m. Wide awake for at least an hour. Desperately hungry. Cafeteria doesn’t open for breakfast until 7:15 a.m.

7:15 a.m. First in the cafeteria line. Sheepishly smile at server standing behind scrambled eggs. Experiencing Hans Castorp’s ravenous appetite — is it really the altitude? Greedily stuff in a breakfast twice the size I normally eat.

9:00 a.m. Hubby begins the first of his ten critiques for the day. His lecture will be in the evening. My critiques don’t start til Tuesday, but since I give my lecture (it’s supposed to be about my paintings) tomorrow night, I plan on writing it today. (Problem: I selected the paintings I want to show during the lecture a long time ago, and they’re ready to project on a screen; but the lecture itself is only roughly formed in my mind.) Say goodbye to...

This has been a busy year, indeed. Like so many of you, I have been multitasking on various projects and assignments — teaching, consulting, and writing. And this month has been an over-the-top publishing moment. My memoir, Big Man On Campus: A University President Speaks Out on Higher Education, has been released by Simon and Schuster’s Touchstone Press. While it was in production, I had time to engage in another endeavor — editing a book entitled, Letters to the Next President: Strengthening America’s Foundation in Higher Education. I know how difficult it is to write a book. What I hadn’t realized until I started this project is what hard work it is to edit a book. Good fortune brought me a lot of help, principally from my colleague and associate, Gerry...

I’m in the throes of reading Mary Frances Berry’s biography of Callie House, a 19th century ex-slave and washerwoman from Nashville, Tennessee, who helped lead the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association.

I decided to pick the book up this week for two reasons: (1) My wife just finished going through it as part of a research project on contemporary Rastafarian calls for reparations vis-a-vis the Jamaican government. (2) The film I mentioned in my post last week, Traces of the Trade, ends with a pointed discussion of reparations in the United States.

Before Berry’s book, I had never heard of Callie House’s organized fight to procure “pensions” for newly-freed slaves, a fight predicated on an argument that asked for similar financial assistance to the kind that had already been provided to Union soldiers after the war.

House’s efforts were met with...

The Princeton University Web site this morning announces three gifts from alumni toward our capital fund campaign goal of $1.75-billion . One gift, from a 1974 alumnus is for $4.5-million, for the Princeton Environmental Institute for an endowed professorship, a student prize, and a fund to support academic innovation. A second, from a 1989 alumnus, is for another endowed professorship on Energy and the Environment — no dollar amount is mentioned in the press release, but given the price at which the university normally sells endowed professorships, it must be in the $5 million range.

The third gift comes from Gerhard R. (Gerry) Andlinger, a member of the Class of 1952 (the same class as James Baker and a number of prominent Princeton public figures), who has previously given about $27-million to the University, mostly for work in the humanities. His new gift is of another order...

“Say, shouldn’t there be some numbers on this blueprint?”

Pity the engineers. Kids regard engineering as nerdy and boring, dependent on inscrutable math. On top of that engineers suffer from low self-esteem. And all this despite great efforts and massive expenditures to decorate the image of engineering and draw youngsters to the profession. What to do?

Do what’s been done by other institutions and organizations concerned about public regard. Bring in the image meisters of public relations and marketing. Let these experts plumb the minds of the public, including young children, via focus groups and surveys. And “rebrand,” as others have done. The dairy industry boosted sales with “Got milk?” Pork has prospered as “The Other White Meat,” and commonplace cotton is “The fabric of our lives.” Don’t forget that orange juice “isn’t just for breakfast anymore.”

Traditionalists...

Today’s post was written by Lindsey Keefe, a former student of mine and now a freelance writer in Virginia, who makes insightful as well as unnerving comments about how women in their twenties look at feminism, relationships, and life:

I thought about Nathan last week for the first time in years. He had stunning blue eyes, was a brilliant conversationalist, and, though he had warts covering his hands, was always confident and friendly. I wonder if I should have asked for his phone number, flitted my eyelashes as he carefully scrolled it down with a fat, oversized pencil, writing his 3’s backward. He was my kindergarten classmate.

I wonder if I should have married him.

And why did I start to regret my misappropriated youth — my time creating art and, worse yet, learning to read?

I made the mistake of reading Lori Gottlieb’s

There is something particularly offensive to me in the forging of academic credentials. It compromises and devalues scholarship and the effort that it takes to earn authentic academic recognition. In some ways it is more troubling even than counterfeiting currency, which has less personal integrity on the line.

A rightfully earned degree demonstrates not only that one has completed a tour of academy duty, by passing the necessary courses, but also shows that a person has the grit to master subjects that grow increasingly more difficult as the effort progresses. Someone earning an honest diploma jumps through the required hoops; buying an unearned degree allows someone to display a piece of paper without actual gravitas, substance or knowledge. It is fraud.

Years ago when I was a lawyer for Boston University, I was part of a group of university attorneys that took action against a ...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

Yesterday, I posted a link to the Living Wage Calculator, and casually & rhetorically — but not accurately — said that you could use it to calculate eligibility for food stamps.

That’s because in order to actually keep writing, instead of simply howling my outrage, I have a flip tendency to handle rhetorically, ironically, and sarcastically the actual, bitter experience of faculty, students, and staff cheerfully exploited by half-million-dollar-a-year pigs at the trough and their cronies in the trustees’ skybox.

Food stamps are a federal program, administered by individual states. There are generally eligibility calculators made available by the relevant agencies in each state, such as this one in Oregon.

There are often special eligibility rules for students, such as in Massachusetts.

If you are eligible for food stamps in you...