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Another No on Gonzales

The New York Times Ethicist, Randy Cohen, asks whether Texas Tech was right to create a crony-mandated professorship for disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who will be teaching one course for $100,000.

Well, it’s a real brain twister, but Cohen comes up with the correct answer: No.

The only argument his defenders have is that it’s valuable for students to listen to someone who’s been there, at the heart of history, etc. Cohen responds that there’s a difference between people who happen to have been around when things were happening, and scholars able to reflect on those things:

A better way of studying Gonzales’s “direct hands-on involvement” in Washington would be for him to deliver a series of public lectures that students could subsequently analyze under the tutelage of actual scholars, who would earn in a year what Gonzales would be paid for one hypothetical hour of nostalgic palaver… Tech is paying him a lot of money to do a job for which he is unsuited. It was improper for the school to offer and indecorous for Gonzales to accept.

Margaret Soltan, September 1, 2009 12:13PM
Posted in: trustees trashing the place

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4 Responses to “Another No on Gonzales”

  1. University Diaries » Texas Tech has so many … Says:

    […] substantive embarrassments its students could make a fuss about. They pay Alberto Gonzales $100,000 to teach one course a year. They gave millions of dollars to Mike Leach, and, now that […]

  2. University Diaries » “This makes TTU look so bad.” Says:

    […] Texas Tech hired disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – paid him $100,000 to teach one course. […]

  3. University Diaries » Texas Tech: The American University as Pain Slut. Says:

    […] Tech craves pain, whether from Alberto Gonzales or its, er, hit parade of coaches. When the players eventually leave or revolt, or when the […]

  4. University Diaries » “Tech’s long-term debt related to those projects and others currently tops $111 million, about $95 million of which is related to football.” Says:

    […] Provincial? What other university in America would give a disgraced former attorney general/crony $100,000 a year to teach one course? […]

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