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Monday, December 04, 2006
Awkward Seating In today's Inside Higher Ed, UD's blogpal, Ralph Luker, notes that "this has been an unusually troubled year for endowed chairs in American higher education." From Enron to Stephen Ambrose, embarrassing organizations and people have endowed august positions at American universities, causing problems for the schools. Yet one should put things in perspective. It's unlikely, writes Ralph, that "any American institution will ever have to decide whether to create the Adolph Hitler Chair in Holocaust Studies" (this example makes UD wonder whether Ralph has been reading Don DeLillo's novel, White Noise). Some endowed chairs honor slightly to extremely icky people and things, admittedly; but universities should accept most of the chairs anyway and "put the money to good work." |