On Fri, 19 Dec 2008, Michael Smith wrote:
> This guy is a university president? Aren't they supposed to be, like,
> literate?
>
> What's the back story here? Why is this man in the job he's in?
Michael, I'm sure you know the job of a University president is to raise money. The provost runs the university.
In Kerrey's case, he's an ex-Senator from Nebraska who is famous both for being a war hero (medal of honor) and a reputed war criminal (massacring women and children a few weeks before the medal of honor engagement, in a manner which he correctly says was SOP in Vietnam free fire zones, and which of course to any rational person makes it even more outrageously horrible). Also for once going out with Debra Winger. Perfect fund raising material. Gravitas central. Essentially the New School hired him because they wanted him to duplicate the perceived success of John Brademas at NYU. Brademas was the Democratic whip in the House of Representatives before he became president of NYU and raised its profile and budget. The New School trustees were figuring, hey, we want a Washington guy of our own to do that for us.
Kerrey got grief over the war criminal thing when he was first hired. A New York Times reporter wrote an article on it; two guys in his squad went on record flatly deny his long-accepted lies that he stayed outside the hooch while the massacre was going on; and he admitted more than he had in the past. But that all got squelched and forgotten by 9/11, which happened only a few months later.
The war crime scandal was thereafter replaced by the more mundane conflict that he's had horrendous relations with the New School faculty for as long as he's been there. The last provost recently quit simply on the grounds that he couldn't stand him, which makes 2 provosts in the last 2 years, and 5 in his 8 years. Now there's no provost or assistant provost, meaning all tenure hearings and new appointments are all on hold until new ones get appointed. Basically there's chaos across the board as people in every department look toward next month when they should be making people offers. Presumably because of that, last week the faculty passed a no-confidence motion in him. A purely symbolic action, but still, things are a mess.
Perhaps all these visions of havoc at the top contributed to inspiring the students that this was a good opportunity. Certainly it's part of why they demanded input into the provost, asst. provost and possible presidential searches.
Michael