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“How can Ruth Simmons serve on a board of one of the most ruthless banks on the planet, [which] work[s] to profit on the inflation of bubbles in poor and minority communities?”

Just found this plea, back in January, for Brown University’s president, Ruth Simmons, to resign as a director of Goldman Sachs. It’s from a group of activists who want, among other things, financial reform.

The writer notes the stupendous hypocrisy of a champion of social justice profiting for a decade from her consort with vampire squids.

A commenter on the post addresses President Simmons directly:

When you resign, please do so in a news conference and articulate clearly in it the offenses of Goldman Sachs that force you to dissociate yourself from it. By doing so, you would use your resignation as a tool to induce Goldman Sachs to improve its business practices.

Of course we know that when Simmons resigned (she’s still on the board of directors for a few months), she merely muttered something about time constraints. She thus missed one of thousands of chances she must have had, given her long-term position at the pinnacle of the organization, to influence Goldman Sachs for the better.

Margaret Soltan, April 26, 2010 8:41AM
Posted in: the university

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3 Responses to ““How can Ruth Simmons serve on a board of one of the most ruthless banks on the planet, [which] work[s] to profit on the inflation of bubbles in poor and minority communities?””

  1. david foster Says:

    off-topic, but thought you’d be interested in this article about on-line education.

  2. Lincoln Says:

    How could she do it? The old fashioned way: it’s called losing one’s soul.

  3. Michael Tinkler Says:

    I have time constraints – but I had to apply to teach a term abroad to get out of serving on the Committee on the Faculty.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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