College Presidents Research Articles

Scholarship, management, and leadership in academic administration: The case of Canadian university presidents and provosts

Scholarship, management, and leadership in academic administration: The case of Canadian university presidents and provosts

Performing Anti-racism: Universities Respond to Anti-Black Violence

Higher education institutions (HEI) are communities nestled within and a part of the local, regional, and national contexts. Increasingly, college and university presidents have begun to comment on local and national events, particularly as these events make their way onto campuses. This study examines 99 presidential statements from both public and private institutions, disseminated in the week following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Using critical race discourse analysis (CRDA), the findings consider how institutional discourse constructs a history of advancing racial equity, leverages institutional mission and values, includes institutional and personal calls to action, and the intersecting use and exclusion of explicitly racialized discourse. Despite institutions discussing race and racism, they frequently construct these topics and their attendant needs as external to the institutions. These findings expand the exploration into institutional discourse in response to racialized incidents on campus and beyond. How institutions use these opportunities to move beyond performative rhetoric towards action and institutional change represents a significant opportunity to transform colleges and universities in ways that support racially minoritized communities both on and off-campus.

Down, set, spread: The association between college football and COVID-19

Objectives Before the Fall 2020 semester, college presidents and the NCAA made decisions about playing college football. The current study aims to examine the association between college football games and COVID-19 infections at universities. Participants More than 1,800 college campuses nationwide from The New York Times database on COVID-19 cases on college campuses. Methods Random effects negative binomial regression is used to analyze the association between college football games, membership to college football organizations, and COVID-19 cases at the universities studied. Results The number of football games played was significantly associated with higher COVID-19 cases at the universities studied. Membership to certain college football organizations was also significantly associated with higher COVID-19 cases, particularly FBS and Power Five conferences. Conclusions These findings provide a baseline for subsequent analyses across other sports and advocates for continued assessment of protocols that ensure the safety and well-being of student-athletes, fans, and university communities.

“Dead but Standing Erect”: Why Southern Conference Members Left to Form the Southeastern Conference

Thirteen institutions left the Southern Conference to form the Southeastern Conference during 1932. Why did these schools leave the Southern Conference? Previous historical research portrays the large size of the Southern Conference and the desire to pass academic reforms as reasons for the Southeastern Conference’s formation. This article argues that the university presidents and other administrators at Southeastern Conference institutions formed it to enhance the legitimacy of their member institutions. Throughout the Great Depression, the conference’s administrators pursued increased legitimacy by attempting to reform academic eligibility rules, allowing football games to be broadcast over the radio, awarding athletic scholarships, allowing member institutions to compete in emerging postseason football bowl games, and hiring a commissioner. This instance of conference realignment is historically significant because some of the policies implemented by the Southeastern Conference contributed to its rise as one of the top revenue-generating conferences in college athletics.

University presidents as policy entrepreneurs: Evidence from U.S. universities engaged in prestige behaviour

AbstractThis article examines how university presidents who led their institutions to achieve Carnegie “R1 Highest Research Activity” managed policy tensions created by prestige priorities and worked with groups and coalitions internally and externally. Striving to achieve R1 status requires U.S. universities to re‐calibrate their focus, resources, and messaging both internally and externally. Using four elements of policy entrepreneurship (PE), the three cases included in this article illustrate the critical role of university presidents as PE in maintaining a sustained effort over an extended period. University leaders displayed their social acuity and built teams by cultivating their social and political capital with influential constituents and groups. As PE, university presidents were deliberate and thoughtful about the language they used to define and describe policy problems and solutions. The findings expand our understanding of the role of university presidents as PE.

Designing Climate Action and Regulations for sustainaBility (DCARB): Framework and campus application

With increased understanding of the impacts of climate change, institutions across the world are committing to achieve carbon neutrality and other emissions reduction targets. Within academia, the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment was created as a highly visible public contract with over 300 active signatories. Existing climate action planning tools rely on significant subjectivity and previously conducted project analysis. This work presents an optimization framework that develops a long-term planning tool tailored for use by academic institutions. Further, we highlight the potential for ecological solutions and land management as economically competitive actions for campuses. The presented tool, known as DCARB (Designing Climate Action and Regulations for sustainaBility), features an ability to quickly optimize multiple pathways towards carbon neutrality based on user-input and parameter variability. We showcase DCARB through an application for The Ohio State University to demonstrate the outputs of the tool based on current projects outlined in the institution’s climate action plan. Additionally, parameter variability is analyzed to explore how solutions might change due to data uncertainty or application to other campuses. The results encourage urgent action as they can provide cheaper pathways towards neutrality, including immediate consideration of land-based actions. Additionally, applications of the tool highlight challenges for achieving neutrality such as a reliance on market-based offsets, future market volatility, proper carbon credit accounting, and planning for future social and behavioral actions.

The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation

As of 2021, West Virginia's two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Bluefield State and West Virginia State, are the only two in the country that have a majority white student body. Both compete today in NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports and receive much less funding than the state's largest public colleges, Marshall University and West Virginia University. Despite such demographic and financial changes in the past fifty years of West Virginia higher education, there is a rich history of African American colleges and high schools in the state, and this is especially true for African American athletic achievement. For example, the Pittsburgh Courier voted Bluefield State in 1927 and 1928 and West Virginia State in 1936 as Black-college national co-champions in football, yet neither college enjoyed much athletic-program success following desegregation. The story of how these two colleges changed from national African American football powerhouses to majority-white universities is but one analyzed within The Black Athlete in West Virginia, but it is perhaps the central, most critical theme.In what is the work's strongest chapter, the authors trace how Bluefield State and West Virginia State became the first HBCUs in the United States to join a white-colleges-only athletic conference, in their case, the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC). Both university presidents were strong believers in desegregation, and both initiated the process of joining WVIAC themselves within months of the Brown v. Board ruling. Within about six months, WVIAC college presidents met and approved both schools’ applications to join. Just like that, a West Virginia collegiate sport league was integrated, a relatively direct process that contrasts with the turmoil-filled integration stories present in chapters on Marshall and West Virginia University. But like so many civil rights stories, this simple narrative was not so cut and dry.Joining the WVIAC was celebrated among most in the two colleges, but some felt African American academic leadership betrayed Black athletes and that WVIAC membership was a step backward. First, the best African American teams from West Virginia colleges had a chance of being recognized as the national Black-college champion. This honor, typically determined by the votes of Black newspapers, was forfeited with WVIAC membership. Next, while desegregation was recognized by an overwhelming majority as a social good, the growing number of white students at each HBCU—especially Bluefield State—led to social conflict within a decade of joining the WVIAC. “While other campuses erupted in protests over the Vietnam War,” the authors write, “Bluefield's black students protested what they believed was a move by the state of West Virginia to make Bluefield State a white college and to erase its cultural heritage as a historically black college” (150). A bomb planted by an unknown perpetrator exploded in the campus physical education building in 1968. In response, the university closed its dormitories, effectively making the college a white commuter college (the surrounding county population was just 7 percent African American). Throughout all this, Bluefield State maintained a strong basketball culture largely comprised of out-of-state African American players, and social division grew.The only shortcoming in this well-researched book is that its title is a misnomer. It would have been better named “The Black Basketball and Football College Athlete in West Virginia.” Of the book's ten chapters, four are exclusively about basketball, and another four are more generally about school integration, with basketball and football serving as major cultural landmarks. Women's sports, high school sports, and other men's collegiate sports do receive an occasional mention, such as future US Olympic wrestler Bobby Douglas, but more of these examples would have provided greater depth. For instance, famed African American sportswriter Wendell Smith played baseball at West Virginia State College. Smith claimed that a white Major League scout told him that he would never be signed to a lucrative contract due to professional baseball's color barrier, at which point Smith promised himself to fight for baseball integration. He would go on to be a pivotal character in Jackie Robinson's story, which began for Smith on a baseball diamond just outside Charleston, West Virginia. Regardless, this is a strong contribution to sport history, to the history of school desegregation, and to West Virginia history. Anyone with interest in any of these topics should consider this work a top priority.

The strategic role of community college presidents in activating student success outcomes

AbstractUsing statewide, local‐level, and institutional data, presidents identify an area of opportunity to serve their communities using strategies that increase college access, enrollment, retention, transfer, and program alignment to the labor market. This article reveals how data informed specific actions to improve student success of a diverse set of community colleges signaling key strategies that practitioners can emulate.

Preface

International Conference on Animal Research for Eco-Friendly Livestock Industry (ICARELI) 2021 was held in Surakarta 23 November 2021. The scientific conference was performed by Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia in virtual platform due to COVID-19 pandemic. This international conference aims to explore recent researches on eco-friendly livestock industry which is in line with sustainable development goals.The conference consisted of plenary and panel sessions. During plenary session, all of the invited speakers from Japan, USA, South Korea, Germany and Indonesia were able to present live for discussions although there was time difference between continents. Professor Siti Nur Hidayati from Middle Tennessee State University, USA gave talk about impact of climate change to tropical biodiversity. Professor Heekwon Ahn from Chungnam National University, South Korea discussed about mitigation of livestock emission. Prof. Masato Yayota from Gifu University, Japan talked about eco-friendly animal feed resources. Professor Carlos Hermosilla from Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany made a talk about environmental effect on host-parasite interaction. Prof. Sutrisno Hadi Purnomo from Universitas Sebelas Maret, Surakarta delivered a speech about crops-livestock integration for zero-waste farming.The Organizing Committee received 123 manuscripts. There 107 participants were able to give presentation during conference. The participants presented their scientific results live by zoom platform provided during conference. All talks and discussions during conference were well recorded. There were 7 breakout rooms of zoom provided according to conference scopes i.e.: eco-friendly animal feed resources; nutrition, forage and pasture, sustainable animal production system; animal biodiversity, ecology, and conservation, organic farming; eco-friendly animal products processing and technology; food safety and security of animal resources; animal waste management and bioenergy; socio-economic studies on sustainable animal farming; and animal health and welfare. The 55 presented manuscripts out of 107 total received were screened for IOP: EES publication and went through a double-blind review in the Morressier platform.The ICARELI 2021 was successfully held by all support from the university president, dean, students volunteering in the event, and all of third parties involved. We are very glad that although this conference held as the first time and during Covid-19 pandemics, the event was joined by all of the participants with enthusiasms. The editorial team, reviewers and participants were also able to learn fast in the Morressier platform during reviewing process with the responsive work of Morressier team. Therefore, the proceedings of ICARELI 2021 can be published and hopefully able to give values to the community.List of Editors, Scientific reviewers of proceeding, Scientific committee of conference, Organizing committee are available in this pdf.

How not to become a monument: Post-it politics and the statue of Kim Hwal-lan

On the sunny afternoon of 30 May 2013, a large group of students from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, began to cover up a bronze statue overlooking the campus lawn with a colourful mosaic of handwritten Post-it notes. Erected in 1958 to commemorate the pioneering career of Kim Hwal-lan (1899-1970) as university president, educator and feminist, the statue subsequently became a site of controversy when her associations with imperial Japan became the subject of national critique in the late 1990s. The students’ ‘Post-it protest’ thus exposed South Korea’s ongoing, troubled process of reconciling its colonial and post-colonial past. This article revisits the flash mob protest staged by the students to examine its artistic and political significance, and to trace the competing histories of erecting and defacing statues in the context of late twentieth-century South Korea. If the vandalization and toppling of monuments from their pedestals has been traditionally practised and recognized as a spectacular visualization of resistance, this performative campaign arguably suggests an alternative mode of engaging with contested monuments beyond the binary logic of preservation versus eradication, remembrance versus erasure, glorification versus condemnation.

Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University by Richard White

Reviewed by: Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University by Richard White George Robb (bio) Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University. By Richard White. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2022. Pp. xviii, 362. $35.00 cloth; $16.05 ebook) In 1885, railroad tycoon and robber baron Leland Stanford and his wife Jane founded Stanford University in California as a memorial to their dead son Leland Jr. Twenty years later, Jane died in Hawaii under mysterious circumstances, almost certainly murdered by strychnine poisoning. Once her body was returned to San Francisco for burial, the local authorities quickly quashed the poisoning verdict, ruling Jane’s death the result of natural causes. In this well-researched and entertaining book, Stanford University historian Richard White sets out to solve the mystery of Jane Stanford’s death. Who Killed Jane Stanford? reads like a classic Agatha Christie “whodunnit,” in which the murder victim is revealed to have been a thoroughly unlikeable person whose every associate, from Stanford University president David Starr Jordan to her Chinese servant Ah Wing, wanted her dead. While many people had a motive to kill Jane Stanford, Richard White must determine which suspects also had the means and opportunity. White is well-placed to undertake this investigation, having twice taught a course about the case at Stanford and being thoroughly acquainted with the university’s archives. Nonetheless, it is no easy task to work a cold case more than a century later, especially when much of the original evidence no longer survives. [End Page 203] The victim, Jane Stanford, was a wealthy and powerful woman, having gained control of her husband’s vast fortune upon his death in 1893. While the press extolled Mrs. Stanford as a pious philanthropist, she was also a bully who tyrannized everyone she had authority over. She micromanaged all aspects of university affairs, from faculty hires to the cost of doorstops in campus buildings. An ardent spiritualist, Jane claimed that she consulted her dead husband and son on all important decisions, or as White pithily states, “ghosts ran the university” (p. 67). Jane kept Stanford University on a very tight leash, as the initial endowment was quite meager. The university would only acquire the bulk of the Stanford fortune upon her death. Stanford University benefited from Jane’s death, but so did some of her relatives and employees that she left bequests. Jane’s killer was persistent, poisoning her twice before she died. The first attempt took place in San Francisco on January 14, 1905, when rat poison containing strychnine was added to a bottle of Poland Spring Water on Jane’s bedside table. The second, successful, poisoning took place six weeks later in Hawaii on February 28. On that occasion, Jane ingested pure strychnine that had been mixed into bicarbonate of soda, which she took for indigestion. In unravelling the mystery surrounding Jane Stanford’s death, White reveals much about the social and cultural life of Gilded Age America and the operations of police departments and civic authorities. Ironically, in Hawaii, a thinly populated American overseas territory with few modern scientific facilities, local officials conducted a thorough and highly professional investigation. The conclusion of the Honolulu coroner’s jury that Stanford had been poisoned “with felonious intent by some person or persons unknown” is undoubtedly true (p. 211). Whereas in San Francisco, the largest and most sophisticated city in the western United States, the authorities made a mess of things, replacing the Hawaiian homicide verdict with the preposterous finding that Stanford had suffered a heart attack after a bout of over-eating. As White argues, a cover-up was underway, motivated by a desire quickly to secure Stanford’s vast fortune for the university and the [End Page 204] state of California. A long, drawn-out murder investigation could delay settling the estate. Likewise, a finding of suicide, as some contemporaries suggested, might lead to Mrs. Stanford being declared insane, thus casting doubt on the validity of her will. In exploring the various issues raised by Jane Stanford’s murder, the book...

Philosophy of disciplinary punishment of university faculty in Syria: فلسفة العقوبة التأديبية لأعضاء هيئة التدريس في الجامعات السورية

This research examines the philosophy of disciplinary punishment in terms of the definition of disciplinary punishment, the principles governing it, the types of penalties imposed by the Board of Discipline of Teaching Staff and the manner in which the Board is set up to impose disciplinary punishment on university faculty The main objective of this research is to show the extent to which these disciplinary sanctions contribute to achieving compatibility and a fair balance between the public interest that relates to the proper functioning of the education facility without harming the rights and guarantees of the faculty member in universities, as well as protecting him from the arbitrariness of the administrative authority when signing it. In this study, we followed the analytical approach to study the principles that govern disciplinary penalties and the types of these light penalties imposed by each of the university president, and severe penalties also imposed by the competent disciplinary board stipulated in the Syrian Universities Organization Law. It was concluded that the Syrian Universities Organizing Law specified disciplinary penalties for faculty members exclusively, and the Syrian legislator did not specify disciplinary violations exclusively in the Universities Organizing Law, and did not link each disciplinary violation with the disciplinary punishment ensuing from it, but left the assessment of this to the competent disciplinary authority and we recommend the Syrian legislator Determining a specific disciplinary penalty for each disciplinary violation, in order to protect the faculty member from the arbitrariness of the administrative authority in imposing penalties, although it is difficult to identify all violations, due to their large number and differences.

University Social Responsibility: Challenging Systemic Racism in the Aftermath of George Floyd’s Murder

In this paper, we examine university discretionary interpretation of the 2020 social upheaval that emanated from George Floyd’s murder as an element of university social responsibility (USR) policymaking. The paper addresses two research questions: (a) What are university presidents’ implicit and explicit social justice responses to George Floyd’s death and the idealistic protests of 2020? (b) To what degree are principles of social justice embedded in universities’ intellectual roots and social responsibility? Using a sample of university presidents’ public statements in response to George Floyd’s death and the idealistic protests of 2020, we analyze the response and responsibilities of universities in the struggle for a just society. We cross-check mission statements and strategic plans to corroborate universities’ public statements with their institutional philosophies, mission, and action plans relating to discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and systemic racism. We use critical discourse analysis and the Voyant Tool to perform a textual analysis of 62 university presidents’ letters and mission statements. They all denounced the dehumanization and inequitable treatment of Black people. An important implication of our work is the sharp difference in the depth and forthrightness of responses by university presidents across university types. Some presidential letters are forthright in their denouncement of the murder of George Floyd and systemic racism, while others were, at best, vague in their approach. Presidential letters disclose their institutions’ priorities, organizational identities, and social responsibility convictions. Overall, mission statements and strategic plans included addressing systemic racism and inequality. While there is no ordered symmetry between presidential narratives and institutional action, we anticipate social responsibility as a core institutional value. We argue for social justice anti-racist platforms as critical dimensions of USR. We call for university milieus that promote a fair and just society among all stakeholders.

Community college president shares insights about moving through pandemic, into future

Now in the third year of her presidency of Tarrant County College in Texas, Kenya Ayers‐Palmore, Ed.D., describes the past two years as exhilarating, at times exhausting, and the honor of a lifetime.

Leaders and Universities - Revelations of Charismatic Presidents

Contemporary China is the China of reform, and without reform, the development and prosperity of well-established institutions, politics, and culture will be impossible. Universities, as critical institutions that teach, educate, and lead society, require continuous reform in the face of fierce international competition and the relentless push of multicultural waves. In retrospect, a university’s success is inextricably linked to its “famous teachers” and “famous presidents.” While the direction of development varies by university and the reforms implemented by university presidents vary as well, there are some commonalities in presidents’ leadership models that can be learned. The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities between the charismatic figures represented by Cai Yuanpei and the significant role they played in the reform and development of universities, in order to provide useful inspiration for the reform of contemporary university presidents.

Overdose deaths involving non-BZD hypnotic/sedatives in the USA: Trends analyses

There is sparse knowledge on overdose deaths resulting from non-benzodiazepines and gabapentinoids usage. We examined overdose death rate across demographics categories and the overdose death trends over time. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (USA), we identified 21,167 persons that died with an overdose ICD code as the underlying cause of death and had a T42.6/T42.7 ICD code, which include gabapentinoids and z-drugs, among their multiple causes of death. The overdose death rate was calculated per 100,000 persons for every year between 2000 and 2018. We used joinpoint regression analyses to assess trends over time. We identified a rise in the proportion of deaths with a T42.6/T42.7 ICD code between 2000 and 2006 (yearly change: +0.06) and between 2006 and 2015 (yearly change: +0.32). From 2000 to 2008, the proportion of deaths with any other T code rose significantly (yearly change: +3.56). Between 2008 and 2018, there was also a significant rise (yearly change: +1.31). From 2000 to 2015, the proportion of deaths with a T42.6/T42.7 ICD code with any other T code rose (yearly change: +2.58). From 2000 to 2015, the proportion of deaths with a T42.6/T42.7 ICD code with a concurrent benzodiazepine T code rose (yearly change: +1.98). From 2000 to 2005, the proportion of alcohol T codes rose non-significantly (yearly change: +0.35). Finally, the proportion of alcohol T codes fell significantly between 2008 and 2018 (yearly change: - 0.74). Deaths due to non-benzodiazepine hypnotics and gabapentinoids increased significantly over the last two decades. Clinicians should not assume that replacing benzodiazepines and opioids with these medications necessarily lowers risk to the patient. This study was funded by an internal grant from the Columbia University President's Global Innovation Fund (PI: Martins).

Latino men and the college presidency: an intersectional analysis of identity, power, and marginalization in higher education

Racially minoritized college presidents represent less than 17% of all college and university presidencies in the United States, and less than four percent are Latinx/a/o. This study explored how Latino college president men, a heavily underrepresented group in the leadership pipeline, ascribe meaning to their intersecting identities while navigating systemic oppression within higher education contexts. By applying a hermeneutical phenomenological approach, this study provided in-depth insights into how Latino men make sense of their masculine identities and leadership development. Findings revealed that influential women or mujeres influyentes in the family significantly shape the masculine identity development of Latino men. Furthermore, graduate school education played a key role in socializing Latino men in the field and was an essential step for achieving the college presidency. Additional findings underscored the biases and stereotypes that Latino men overcome throughout their career trajectories. Implications for research and practice are also included in this study.

Community College Presidential Leadership: How Presidents Think and Act to Support the Holistic Needs of Their Students

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore how public community college presidents draw upon data, their core values, and lived experiences to make decisions about how they can best respond to the holistic needs of their students. Method: Utilizing secondary elite focus group data with 15 community college presidents in Texas, we employed a general qualitative approach to analyze the data through a conceptual framework that integrates community college leadership and holistic student development theory. Results: Our findings revealed that community college presidents make decisions primarily through select data sources such as external survey organizations and their own core belief systems. Although community college presidents agreed on the most pressing day-to-day issues affecting community college students today, the way in which they framed their decisions and perceptions varied across individuals and institutional contexts. As such, common strategies for addressing holistic student support are presented in this study. Contributions: The residual effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are expected to impact community colleges in the short and long term. As a result, community college presidents are pressed to develop leadership competencies to enhance their decision-making process. This study offers timely implications closely tied to community college leadership and student development theory to inform how community college leaders can enact relevant, data-driven policies, and practices to support their students holistically.

Literary Theorist to University President: An Interview with Steven Knapp

Literary Theorist to University President:An Interview with Steven Knapp Jeffrey J. Williams (bio) Those in literary studies will know Steven Knapp from his 1982 essay "Against Theory," which he co-wrote with Walter Benn Michaels. Though focused on the question of intention in interpretation, it was taken as a challenge to doing theory in general and drew a stream of responses over the next decade. Knapp also wrote two books dealing with literary issues such as personification and literary value, but in the 1990s he began working in administration as a dean, provost, and, from 2007 to 2017, president of George Washington University. Oftentimes administration, especially upper administration, is opaque to scholars and critics, so this interview aims to shed light on what chief officers actually do. In addition, Knapp discusses "Against Theory" and his transit through some of the central locations of theory in the 1970s and 1980s: Yale, Johns Hopkins, and Berkeley. Born in 1951, Knapp attended Yale (BA, 1973), taking courses with Harold Bloom and other influential critics, and Cornell (PhD, 1981), studying with M. H. Abrams, Neil Hertz, and others there. His first professorial job was at Berkeley (1978–94), where he encountered Michaels, Frances Ferguson, Joel Fineman, and Stephen Greenblatt, who started the journal Representations in the 1980s and forged the New Historicism. "Against Theory" is sometimes taken as marking the shift from an emphasis on theoretical speculation to one on cultural and historical context, but Knapp's critical work has not been New Historicist. His first book, Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge (1985), sorts through the problematic relation of the literal and the figurative and the status of allegory in literary history, and his second, Literary Interest: The Limits of Anti-Formalism (1993), takes up some of the issues of "Against Theory," the role of authorial intention interpretation and the distinctiveness of literature. First published in Critical Inquiry 8 (1982), "Against Theory" prompted a cycle of responses, the first round of which, with rejoinders from Knapp and Michaels, is collected in Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (ed. W. J. T. Mitchell, 1985). A sequel, "Against Theory 2: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction" [End Page 473] (Critical Inquiry 14 [1987]), enjoined a series of responses in law and philosophy as well as literature. Although he had served on various committees and as vice-chair of graduate studies in the English department at Berkeley, Knapp had not served in a full-time administrative position until he moved to Hopkins as dean of Arts and Sciences in 1994, stepping up to provost in 1996 through 2007, when he was appointed president of George Washington. After completing his second term he returned to teaching English, though in February 2020 he again answered the call to administration, becoming president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (encompassing Art, Natural History, the Science Center, and the Andy Warhol Museum). Though with less time for his own scholarship, he has pursued an interest in religion and belief, resulting in Philip Clayton and Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith (2011), which spurred a series of responses and a reply, collected in Confronting the Predicament of Belief: The Quest for God in Radical Uncertainty, edited by James W. Walters, Clayton, and Knapp (2020). This interview took place on March 9, 2022, at the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was conducted by Jeffrey J. Williams and transcribed by Catherine Evans, a PhD student in the Literary and Cultural Studies Program at Carnegie Mellon University. jeffrey j. williams: You've gone from being an English professor to a university president, and now are president of the Carnegie Museums. I don't think that people have a good idea of what university presidents really do. We see them at graduation and sometimes they're quoted in press releases, but can you say what university presidents do, in your experience? steven knapp: First of all, I must say it's rather varied, because the institutional structures vary so much. I happened to have been a dean and provost at a very decentralized private university, Johns Hopkins University, after having been a faculty member and in various vice-chair positions at a...

Pedagogic Pound: "What is it the professors don't know?"

Pedagogic Pound:"What is it the professors don't know?"1 Robert Spoo (bio) SUPER SCHOOLMASTER: EZRA POUND AS TEACHER, THEN AND NOW, by Robert Scholes and David Ben-Merre. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. xxi + 199 pp. $95.00 cloth, $32.95 paper. Ezra Pound was a nonconformist in the college classroom, both as a teacher and as a student. He was an unpredictable, feet-onthe-table lecturer during his brief stint in 1907-1908 as Professor of Romance Languages at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.2 He excused students from examinations if he thought them either too intelligent or too hopeless to benefit from testing.3 Yet he had presumably impressed the college's President, who had hired him after a half-hour interview despite his bohemian neglect of "a coat. a collar. a neck-tie. also my shoes were not shined."4 Pound's most memorable interactions with Wabash students were extramural, and these were remembered chiefly because they defied the conventions. By 1907, the college had declared itself nonsectarian, but its Presbyterian origins still magnetized the moral compass of the place. Observance of the proprieties was enforced by a town-and-gown vigilance so keen that a professor's rooming-house habits could quickly become the talk of what Pound sneeringly called the "facultate."5 He ostentatiously smoked in his rooms despite a state law that banned the sale and possession of cigarettes,6 and he spiced his pedagogical pronouncements with high-tempered cursing. Certain scandalized students made a beeline for the President's office "to complain," Pound said, "erbout me orful langwidge and the number of cigarillos I consume."7 He decided that having to correct stacks of French and Spanish papers four times a week was "perfectly ridiculous," and he back-burnered this drudgery in favor of "jamming out mss" of his own verses (Poet 57). He was on track to publish and perish. Then as today, colleges found it hard to dismiss an eccentric personality unless there was some really flagrant breach of the rules. Pound was ready to oblige. He had scarcely settled into teaching duties when he wanted to "abandong me 'igh callin' and skidoo to paats more plush lined than Hoosier" (Parents, 2 October 1907, 93). [End Page 335] He changed lodgings four times during his six-months at Wabash, restlessly trying to achieve, and escape, respectability in the closely surveilled town. At one point when he was living in a rooming house favored by traveling actors, "two stewdents" walked in on him as he was "sharing my meagre repast with the lady-gent impersonator in me privut apartments" (Poet 59). The scandal of this probably innocent scene had hardly died down when Pound rescued a burlesque entertainer from the bitter Indiana winter and allowed the young woman to sleep in his bed as he lay on the floor, wrapped in his topcoat. The President of Wabash called for his resignation, and he gave it. But the facts were shaky, and the President offered to recall Pound, perhaps fearing that the young instructor was being unfairly maligned. Newspapers in South Bend and Logansport had already caught the scent and printed allusions to Pound's "alleged gay habits."8 But he declined the invitation to return to the fetters of the facultate, deciding instead to "go to ze sunny Italia" (Parents, 17 February 1908, 103). He launched upon his expatriate career in March 1908, sailing for Gibraltar aboard the Cunard Royal Mail Steamship "Slavonia." Of the Crawfordsville scandal, he airily told his father that he had had "more fun out of the fracasso than there is in a dog fight & hope I have taught 'em how to run a college" (Parents, 17 February 1908, 103). This "showman and charlatan," as one of his Wabash colleagues remembered him, would never again occupy a formal teaching post.9 Yet he would never stop teaching. Pound liked to have learners gathered at his feet, literally, but such audiences were only possible outside the formal classroom. A Wabash alumnus recalled the student soirées that he hosted in his lodgings, "seated . . . on a chair, while his disciples and satellites disposed themselves gracefully...