The University of Miami – very close to becoming (with one scandal and another) the functional equivalent of the Las Vegas Strip – is in a tizzy over whether to delete A-Rod’s name from its baseball stadium. The article quotes one observer:
In cases like these where a donor’s name has been disgraced, their reputation and the purpose behind the gift have to be reevaluated, said Rae Goldsmith, vice president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
“The Enron chair of business ethics is going to send a different kind of message than the Enron chair of the arts,” Goldsmith explained.
Different from would be better, but put that aside. Is it really true that we’d be okay with the Enron chair of the arts but not the Enron chair of business ethics? Isn’t that like saying we’d be okay with the Hitler chair of poetry but not the Hitler chair of race relations? The Madoff chair of creative writing but not the Madoff chair of accounting? Franchement, I think these names have sufficient general renown to make it unlikely that even human kinetics and leisure studies would have them.
August 10th, 2013 at 5:30AM
They should remove his name and return his money. U of Miami has a lot to clean up before they become an institution that parents will want to send their daughters and sons to again.
Shame on them on how they have engaged one scandal after another that you almost forget the earlier ones.
August 10th, 2013 at 11:13AM
I think a building named after Madoff, etc, would be just fine, as long as the name was accompanied by the following prominently-engraved subscript:
NO ONE IS TOTALLY USELESS. YOU CAN ALWAYS SERVE AS A BAD EXAMPLE.
August 10th, 2013 at 12:19PM
david: LOL.