Southern Bookman

Farewell, Dave Hickey, the last gonzo

Dave Hickey like Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson brought an intense personal sensibility to journalism.

The last of a generation that began with Wolfe and Mailer's "new journalism," Hickey gained cultish fame with his 1997 collection "Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy."

The essay collection champions Hank Williams, Liberace, Stan Brakhage, Norman Rockefeller, Chet Baker and other popular artists with the same attention he gives to Cezanne, de Kooning, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. In an essay on basketball, he praises Julius Erving and James Naismith's original game rules.

Hickey, who like Thompson and Mailer defined himself as an outlaw rebelling against prevailing cultural strictures, died Nov. 12 at age 82 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He'd been battling heart disease for years.

A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Hickey as a child moved with his family to Los Angeles. He ridiculed Texas' provincial boosterism, but never lost the state's contrarian viewpoint. When Hickey was 11, his father, a car salesman and jazz musician, killed himself, a major influence on Hickey's independent outlook.

Rootless as a young man, Hickey opened an art gallery in Austin called "A Clean Lighted Place," which struggled against the Texas capital's parochial aesthetic values. He then moved to New York City, where he managed a gallery, reportedly quitting in protest of a Yoko Ono exhibition.

Discovering himself as a writer, Hickey was editor of Art in America before finding a home as a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, becoming the most famous representative of that school since Jerry Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels.

In one of the best essays in "Air Guitar," Hickey celebrates Las Vegas for its freedom from New York City and Los Angeles' cultural dogmas. He also loved Las Vegas' wide-open entertainment and gambling culture.

"Air Guitar" and the influential chapbook "The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty," earned him a MacArthur "Genius grant," in 2001, the proceeds of which he fed into Vegas slot machines.

While he appreciated mass popular culture, he also called for a return to rigorous standards in judging artworks. He blasted the contemporary art world for its commercialism and turn from traditional artistic values.

Like his journalistic predecessors, Hickey was accused of machoism, although he considered underappreciated abstract painter Joan Mitchell the best artist of her generation. Feminist critics saw his defense of beauty as elitist. At the end of his career, he published "25 Women: Essays on Their Art." That too was viewed as paternalistic.

Hickey wrote for a variety of publications, including Art News, the Village Voice, Texas Monthly and Rolling Stone. Along with art and popular music, he also wrote about television and the movies.

In "Air Guitar," he recalled the Texas writer Grover Lewis, and Lewis' friendship with Larry McMurtry, ground also covered by a McMurtry memoir.

Hickey biographer Daniel Oppenheimer wrote a warm appeciation of Hickey for Texas Monthly, the first to report Hickey's death.

As Oppenheimer details, Hickey like other literary exiles remained stamped by his native land.

 

Washington's National Museum of African-American History an overwhelming experience

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History was packed on the day after Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor's race with a racially loaded campaign.

From ground-floor exhibits illuminating slavery's horrifying story to ascending levels portraying reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the black community, the museum soars to the top with displays of African-Americans' essential contributions to music, theater, film, television and literature.

Progressing upward on the museum's ramps is an overwhelming emotional experience, leading from despair at the bottom to joy at the top.

Youngkin triumphed over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe by raising the specter of "critical race theory," a grad school construct never taught in Virginia schools.

Youngkin ran an ad of a white woman explaining how her now adult son was upset as a high school student by reading an unnamed book later identified as Toni Morrison's "Beloved," a graphic portrait of slavery.

The sanctimonious woman denounced McAuliffe for vetoing a bill when he was governor that would have allowed the removal of books from classrooms.

At the museum's fact-laden slavery exhibits, a mostly middle-aged crowd of blacks and whites stood in shock and sorrow. The exhibits detailed how European ships from the 15th through the 19th centuries shipped millions of Africans from their native countries to the "new world," chained and packed together in foul cramped spaces.

Portugal started the slave trade in 1441, and transported 5.8 million Africans until 1836, the highest number among European nations. Before abolishing the trade in 1807, Great Britain enslaved millions and sent them to its colonies.  France, the Netherlands, and even Denmark were other leading traders.

A listing of ships and their six to eight-week voyages based on insurance records gives factual, disturbing accounts of the death toll on each journey.

The British ship Mary set sail on Oct. 1, 1701, with 143 out of 179 slaves surviving to the end. The Dutch vessel Philadelphia arrived with 298 survivors from the 312 slaves that started its trip on Feb. 22, 1760. The Dutch ship Carolus Secundus, named for British monarch Charles II, had 176 survivors from the cargo of 425 who started out on Nov. 14, 1705.

Charles II granted his brother James, the Duke of York, a charter in 1660 for the Royal African Company, which shifted to the slave trade from its original plan to traffick in gold. James later ascended to the British throne.

Out of the millions of Africans transported across the Atlantic, a relatively small total of 400,000 came to North America before the U.S. Congress outlawed the slave trade in 1807. 

But the end of the Atlantic trade began a horrendous new chapter of domestic slavery in the United States in which families were divided and conditions worsened on deep South plantations. Slaves were bought and sold in barbaric markets and transported within American terrritory.

By 1860, the U.S. slave population had increased to 4 million. The invention of the cotton gin in 1792 made slavery essential to the Southern economy and the production of cotton for British textile mills.

Ensuing exhibits highlight the slaves' perseverance and ingenuity. Slaves turned to music and religion, and were skilled in carpentry, masonry, agriculture and cooking. Slaves built the White House, U.S. Capitol, plantation homes, universities and commercial buildings.

The museum's prevailing theme is that African-American history is essentially American history.

Designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye and the late architect Philip Freelon, the museum opened in September 2016, a stunning architectural addition to the National Mall's institutions and monuments.

The ornamental, bronze-colored metal lettice honors the ironwork done by slaves and their descendants in Louisiana, South Carolina and elsewhere, according to the museum's web site. The museum's massive windows give views of the slaves' creations, the White House and Capitol.

Leaving the museum, we stood for a moment to view the Washington Monument, honoring the nation's first president and Revolutionary War hero, who owned hundreds of slaves who kept his Mount Vernon plantation running. Across the way, sunshine glowed upon the Jefferson Monument, a memorial to another slave-owning Founding Father.

In a brisk breeze, we walked to the Lincoln Monument, where families took photos before Lincoln's majestic statue.

As I read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Memorial Address printed on adjoining walls, I looked up at his solemn visage, reassured that his words of reconciliation would one day prevail.

 

 

 

 

 

LSU soap opera continues as Ed Orgeron moves on

LSU athletics director Scott Woodward in a hastily arranged news conference Sunday with ousted football coach Ed Orgeron said he hopes in the future to "hang out on the bayou" with his fellow Louisiana native.

Those good times eating crawfish jambalaya likely won't happen. Following news that the embattled Orgeron will step down after this season, reports of volatile animosity between him and the LSU administration kept coming, like tremors from an earthquake.

Woodward and Orgeron's awkward display of friendship didn't lessen the painful reality that Orgeron is leaving his dream job just 21 months after leading the Tigers to the 2019 national championship. As in previous seasons, turmoil had quickly swamped LSU's national success.

On the day after the Orgeron led his decimated LSU team to a 49-42 upset over Florida, LSU announced it had reached an agreement for the LaRose, La., native to leave after this season, taking a $17 million buyout.

Negotiations for Orgeron's ouster followed LSU's embarrassing blowout loss to Kentucky the week before the surprise victory over Florida. Earlier, LSU lost to UCLA and Auburn, crashing hopes that the Tigers would regain national prominence after a dismal 5-5 record in 2020.

Indefatigable Sports Illustrated reporter Ross Dellinger, who broke the news Sunday about Orgeron's deal with LSU, documented a series of angry outbursts by Orgeron, including a chair-throwing incident over a "hype video." Orgeron's bewildered players, and Woodward, reportedly witnessed Orgeron screaming in frustration in the locker room following the UCLA loss.

The Athletic's Brody Miller, also outshining the New Orleans-Baton Rouge Picayune-Advocate in reporting on the breakup deal, disclosed that Orgeron attempted to pick up a woman he encountered at a service station who turned out to be the pregnant wife of an LSU official. Orgeron's wolfish advances reached the administration.

After divorcing his wife of 23 years immediately after the championship, Orgeron brought girlfriends to the athletic department offices and allowed their children to participate in practices, WBRZ-TV  reported. (My late father was the station's general manager for years).

Orgeron was also named in a Title IX lawsuit over rape cases involving former LSU running back Darius Guice. He also angered black players for expressing support for Donald Trump and not displaying empathy following the George Floyd slaying. The coach reportedly was unaware of a campus march by black and white team members in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Woodward stated at the news conference that LSU decided to change so soon after the national championship because of the Tigers' disappointing on-field performance.

After losing key coaches and players from the championship team including 2019 Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow, the Tigers struggled to a 5-5 record in the pandemic-shadowed 2020 season and opened this year with the loss to mediocre UCLA. After Hurricane Ida, the Tigers had to leave Baton Rouge to practice in Houston before traveling to Pasadena, Calif. for the game against the Bruins.

But Orgeron's vaunted team was also listless in wins over McNeese Sate and Central Michigan, and blew a fourth quarter lead to lose to Auburn at home for the first time in 20 years.

The devastating 42-21 loss at Kentucky pushed Woodward over the edge. While negotiations for Orgeron's leaving were in progress last week, Orgeron was somehow focused enough to engineer the win over Florida, although LSU had lost most of its 5-star recruits to injury or academic ineligibility.

For LSU fans, the bizarre end to the Orgeron era replayed the melodramatic finales of Nick Saban and Les Miles.

A couple of years after winning the national title, Saban abruptly left to coach the Miami Dolphins, quickly spurning the NFL team to find unprecedented success at Alabama, LSU's bitter rival. Pressure to compete with the Tide has dominated LSU football during the Miles and Orgeron eras.

Miles also won a national championship before alienating Tigers fans with his stone-age offense, nutty behavior and increasingly frequent losses. Former AD Joe Aleva unceremoniously fired Miles only four games into the 2016 season, replacing him with Orgeron, who quickly revitalized the team with a few speed bumps such as a loss to Troy and conflict with former offensive coordinator Matt Canada, now with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Like Miles before him, Orgeron will leave a wounded program, no matter how well the Tigers fare for the rest of his lame-duck season.

At the press conference, Baton Rouge native Woodward made no mention of Orgeron's off-field controversies that have blazed across LSU fans' message boards and social media platforms.

A photo surfaced last season of Orgeron in bed with a woman. But, as late Gov. Edwin noted when he said he would only lose a Louisiana election if found with a dead girl or live boy, Orgeron's womanizing wouldn't have led to his ouster if he had kept winning.

That's all that matters, Woodward made clear. After reaching a lucrative deal with gambling promoter Caesars Entertainment, Louisiana's flagship research institution will have ample money to buy out Orgeron, as well as pay millions to some big-time coach.

The "student athletes" Woodward mentioned in passing will have to make do with "NIL" agreements, or seek to transfer to schools elsewhere. Orgeron assured fans that he will still be recruiting players during his long farewell.

Prospective LSU coaches have been put on notice: winning will be judged above all else.

 

New Yorker shines with Paul McCartney interview, Thomas McGuane short story

The New Yorker's current issue proves again that we boomers refuse to go gently into that good night.

Longtime Editor David Remnick unshelves his writing skills in a long profile of Paul McCartney, who at 79 seeks to reframe the Beatles legacy and his subsequent career.

The issue also offers a vintage short story by 82-year-old Thomas McGuane. "Not Here You Don't" examines the environmental deterioration and declining ethos of freedom in Montana, McGuane's longtime home.

Those who experienced 1960s pop culture first-hand can also relish film critic Anthony Lane's typically insightful review of Daniel Craig's last James Bond film, "No Time to Die." Recent film-goers will mourn Craig's farewell as earlier Bond fans did the exit of Sean Connery.

Remnick's revealing piece on McCartney arrives at a big moment for the pop superstar. A remix of his latest album, "McCartney" III," is topping the charts, and he's publishing a collection of his lyrics dating back to his teen years. Poet Paul Muldoon wrote essays for "The Lyrics: 1956 Through the Present."

The biggest event is the long-delayed arrival of a re-edited version of the 1969 film "Get Back," which takes a lighter view of the Beatles' breakup than the original movie. Peter Jackson's film, taken from 56 hours of material, will be streamed on Disney Plus at Thanksgiving.

I saw the original Beatles film years ago, transported by the band giving an impromptu concert on a London rooftop as office workers and passers-by on the street watched in wonder.

In pushing the film, McCartney looks back on his tortured relationship with John Lennon. McCartney says Lennon caused the Beatles breakup, for which McCartney was blamed at the time. He also says he remained friends with Lennon despite Lennon's harsh public insults, and admired Yoko Ono, whose marriage to Lennon was seen as breaking the band apart.

McCartney in an amusing aside punctures the Rolling Stones, calling the Beatles' major rivals a blues cover band.

Younger generations will  likely wonder what all the fuss was about. Yet watching the Beatles perform their songs will make them understand why their moms and dads, and grand-moms and grand-dads, loved the band's music so intensely.

I'm always happy to see in the New Yorker stories by McGuane and a few other remaining writers of his generation. Contemporary short stories often don't engage me, as was the case in the current special issue of Oxford American showcasing new Southern writing.

The emerging generation of writers formed in college creative writing programs display a similarity of techniques and banality of characters and situations.

In contrast, McGuane makes the reader wonder how he achieves such power from his deceptively simple language. He ties his stories to broader social and environmental changes. As he discusses in a separate interview, McGuane uses the short story to illuminate the West's environmental and political crises.

Like McCartney, McGuane is a master storyteller who remains relevant for younger generations as well as we aging boomers.

 

Louis Menand's "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War" looks at America's postwar cultural renaissance

Louis Menand's "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War" examines how America after World War II gained world cultural leadership along with economic and military dominance.

The massive book is stuffed with biographical studies of the era's significant artists, writers, musicians, philosophers and actors.

Taking their turns on the stage, like characters in a school pageant, George Kennan, George Orwell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Jackson Pollock, Lionel Trilling, Allen Ginsberg, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Isaiah Berlin, James Baldwin, Jack Kerouac, Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael appear.

Menand's barrage of anecdotes and synopses of ideas at times numbs the reader. The Harvard professor and New Yorker writer clarifies difficult concepts like deconstruction and existentialism, while muddying others.

As his title indicates, a major theme is the interplay between French, British and American thinkers and cultural developments. He details how American novelists like Faulkner and Hemingway influenced Sartre, de Beauvoir and other French writers, how British and American artists interacted, and how conflicts and allegiances between French and American cinema flashed upon the screen.

Belying the Cold War reference, Menand ignores writers who heroically resisted censorship behind the Iron Curtain. Solzhenitsyn is not even mentioned, nor are Polish or Czech writers like Milosz and Havel. Americans like Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal are also MIA.

More than enough Western intellectuals come and go, all too often flash-bulbed in truncated studies. No one would wish the book any longer, yet fuller accounts would have improved its continuity.

Menand traces how elite culture - he resorts to the well-worn high-brow, middle-brow and low-brow designations - was consumed by popular taste. A line of increased popularization extends from Lionel Trilling and Clement Greenberg through Susan Sontag and Pauline Kael.

While rarefied, Trilling's "The Liberal Imagination" was a best-seller. Americans' interest in books, serious literature and classical music shifted to rising critical attention afforded to pop music and Hollywood movies. Kael replaced Trilling as a cultural arbiter.

Menand exposes much of the era's artwork as spurious. John Cage's compositions, Rauschenberg's "combines" and Warhol's soup-can paintings draw heavy fire.

Norman Mailer is condemned for his violence - Menand gives a chilling account of Mailer's near-fatal stabbing of his wife - and intellectual ineptitude. Mailer’s essay "The White Negro" is castigated as perhaps the most fatuous piece in American literature.

The book raises the question whether the free world was really that free.

Menand discusses different aspects of the fight for civil rights against massive Southern resistance, profiling Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

In one of his most revealing passages, Menand documents the CIA’s funding of cultural organizations and journals. Writers frequently express a fear of “totalitarianism,” one of the book’s key words. American institutions were seen as no different from the Soviet Union’s.

While socialist thinkers like Arendt and Irving Howe present disturbing racist views, James Baldwin emerges as a hero, holding to his beliefs while withstanding harsh criticism from black and white progressives and white conservatives.

Menand’s comprehensive account of Baldwin's years in Paris and return to the United States lacks an in-depth analysis of Baldwin's writings. As with other subjects, Menand limits his study of Baldwin to a span of years while ignoring his entire life.

In Menand’s weakest chapter, he discusses how Elvis Presley influenced the Beatles and Rolling Stones. He discounts the Beatles' accomplishment, calling them mere entertainers, and makes the mystifying assertion that the Stones were more "arty." Beatles fans may wonder how "Honky Tonk Women" and "Get Off Of My Cloud" are more artistic than "Eleanor Rigby," "Norwegian Wood," and "A Day in the Life."

Menand also slights Bob Dylan's career, with a passing reference to how Dylan's switch from acoustic folk to electrified rock was influenced by the Beatles. He ignores Dylan's initial rise as a folk music prophet, and the songwriter and musician's acclaim as the voice of his generation.

In an abrupt transition from a chapter on Kael and the significance of the revolutionary film "Bonnie and Clyde," Menand concludes the book with an abbreviated look at America's Vietnam War disaster. He ends with British writer and Viet Cong supporter James Fenton's observation that "the victory of the Vietnamese was a victory of Stalinism."

Menand's closing indicates that he sees America's defeat in Vietnam as the end of the post-World War II era of artistic ebullience. Yet, the Soviet Union fell, and Vietnam while totalitarian adopted a form of capitalism. The significance of Fenton's statement for Menand is difficult to decipher. A summarizing epilogue would have shed light on Menand's themes.

In a preface, Menand concedes that "The book I ended up writing is a little like a novel with a hundred characters. But the dots do connect." After enduring to the end of the 727-page book, I wasn't so sure.

Sandra Oh's "The Chair" a balm for a distressing season

In this bleak apocalyptic August, I'm grateful for a new Sandra Oh show.

On the heels of HBO's "The White Lotus," Oh's "The Chair" arrives on Netflix. Oh plays a Korean-American woman named to lead an elitist university's sinking English department.

While I liked Oh in her long run on "Grey's Anatomy" and as a free-spirited California neo-hippie in "Sideways," I fell in love with her watching "Killing Eve" on BBC America.

As Eve Polastri, locked in a love-hate obsession with Jodie Comer's assassin Villanelle, Oh blended world-weariness, alienation from modern conveniences, street-smarts and instinctual brilliance. And that face, registering each emotional shift.

"The Chair" is a new variation on the campus comedy genre, in which Oh portrays Ji-Yoon Kim, whose promotion as department head is baited with potential disasters. According to rave reviews, Kim must deal with an aging faculty seen as out of touch, a reduced budget, woke students and academic politics. Along with her academic duties, she deals with being the single mother of a young daughter.

Along with Oh, the superb cast features several other personal favorites: Mark Duplass as a professor on the verge of an intimate relationship with Kim, Bob Balaban as older Chaucer scholar clinging to academic traditions, and Holland Taylor as a tart-tongued medievalist.

Actress Amanda Peet steps forward as  the six-part series' creator, writer and showrunner, along with Annie Wyman. Peet's husband, David Benioff, and Dan Weiss, famed for creating HBO's "Game of Thrones," are executive producers along with Peet. It's the first venture in Benioff and Weiss's deal with Netflix.

As "The Chair" premiers, Oh fans can look forward to a new season of "Killing Eve," which she's filming on location in London.

Anti-vac hostility, delta variant's rise show decline in America's collective intelligence

Smallpox and polio wouldn't have been eradicated if today's anti-vaccine idiocy had existed in the 1950s, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on the Sunday talk shows.

When I was in first grade in the 1950s, our class lined up and marched to the gym to receive shots from a public health official. No one protested.

I believe we received Dr. Salk's polio vaccine; I was given a smallpox shot, and its signature scar, during a regular visit to Dr. Van Gelder, our pediatrician.

But I didn't receive a measles shot; I actually suffered a case of the disease, along with chicken pox and the mumps. Only later was measles considered serious enough to warrant a widespread vaccine effort.

Smallpox vaccinations began in the late 18th century when Dr. Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who'd suffered from the milder cow pox didn't get the dreaded smallpox.

Jenner, who took the name vaccine from the Latin term for cow, inoculated a small boy with material taken from a woman's cow-pox sore. The child never contracted smallpox, and vaccinations gained acceptance. American Revolutionary War soldiers received crude shots taken from cow pox sores.

Today's anti-vac hostility and the rise of the corona delta variant show the decline of America’s collective intelligence. Once public health measures were widely supported. Now, even wearing masks stirs right-wing resistance.

As the virus surges again, The Wall Street Journal continues its pro-corona stance. Don't worry, just live with the disease, the newspaper advised Tuesday. It's nothing worse than colds. The newspaper had no criticism for its fellow Murdoch-owned Fox News' spread of anti-vaccine propaganda, or GOP governors' criminal undermining of vaccine programs.

The new corona outbreak threatens the Olympics, where a number of athletes have received positive tests. The low vaccination rate in Tokyo is shocking; Japan has a reputation for efficiency and widespread social compliance.

Stocks plunged Monday over fears the virus' resurgence will torpedo the economic rebound. Britain threw a premature party after Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared "Freedom Day," despite a rise in cases.

In the United States, Republican resistance is undermining President Biden's efforts to increase vaccines and halt the disease's spread.

In the 1950s, a massive campaign stopped polio. Now, polio would likely win.

 

 

Brett Kavanaugh thrills liberal sportswriters with NCAA broadside

Reviled by liberals during his combative Senate confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is now lauded by progressive NCAA critics.

Kavanaugh blasted the NCAA's foundations in an opinion supporting the court's 9-0 ruling that college athletes must receive compensation for educational expenses.

Going further than his colleagues, Kavanaugh in his witty polemical piece said that the NCAA's rationale for not paying athletes salaries violates laws that regulate the marketplace. He characterized the NCAA as a profit-seeking business rather than an educational organization furthering the ideal of amateur athletics.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion rejecting the NCAA's prohibiting payment for such expenses as graduate school tuition, musical instruments and lab supplies.

The court didn't rule on the broader questions of salaries and payment for use of athletes' likenesses on merchandise and video games, the subject of cases in lower courts.

Writers like the Washington Post's Sally Jenkins cheered Kavanaugh's broadside as a bombshell that will bring down the NCAA and its exploitation of college players. The NCAA has pushed a duplicitous "student athlete" model as coaches make millions and the organization profits from lucrative TV deals for events such as March Madness.

Arrogant NCAA President Mark Emmert has already dismissed Kavanaugh's diatribe, and the bureaucratic monolith could prove more resilient that the anti-NCAA chorus believes.

Nominated by former President Donald Trump and accused by psychologist Christine Blassey Ford of sexually assaulting her at a drunken party when he was a prep school student, Kavanaugh during his confirmation drew intense opposition from women's advocates. The allegations revealed a disturbing history of alcohol abuse. Kavanaugh's anti-abortion views also received scrutiny.

But Kavanaugh has appeared more moderate on the court than opponents feared, although he likely will vote to overthrow Roe v. Wade.

The justice's NCAA fusillade showed that he's one of the court's best writers. In light of media criticism of Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, he amusingly cited newspapers in his examples of businesses for which the NCAA employment model would be absurd.

Kavanaugh coaches his daughters' basketball teams and rabidly follows the Washington Nationals. Perhaps he can find a sidelight as a sportswriter.

 

Sonny Perdue totally unqualfied to lead University System of Georgia

Sonny Perdue wants to push conservative "values" if he's named to lead Georgia's higher education system, the former governor and U.S. Agriculture secretary told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein.

As Donald Trump's ultraloyal crony, Perdue displayed those "values" by ravaging the Agricultural Department's scientific research projects, denying climate change and funneling federal money to corporate farming operations.

"Sonny Perdue might be the least distinguished, least prepared potential university leader I've seen in my life," University of Virginia professor Savia Vaidhyanathan told Mother Jones magazine in an article exposing Perdue's total lack of qualifications for the job.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Perdue appointed as secretary of state to launch Kemp's statewide career, is pushing Perdue's appointment to the post, although the political partisan ridiculed for pushing bass fishing as governor has no experience as an academics administrator. 

Perdue's anti-science views and support of Trump disqualify him from leading a system that serves 340,000 students at 26 schools including the flagships University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. Ethical concerns involving insider real estate deals during Perdue's governorship also make him unacceptable.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools warned that Kemp's blatant attempt to politically influence the board threatens the system's accreditation.

As a Trump insider, Perdue again boosted Kemp's career by persuading Trump to endorse Kemp's campaign for governor during the Republican primary. After the 2020 election, in which Perdue's cousin and fellow Trump backer David Perdue lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff, Kemp drew Trump's ire for refusing to challenge President Joe Biden's narrow victory in Georgia.

With mounting opposition from faculty and students, the Board of Regents has suspended its chancellor's search. Earlier, an executive search company stepped away, apparently because Perdue's appointment appeared more and more in the bag with the support of Kemp's inner circle.

The 74-year-old Perdue's interview with Bluestein in Friday's AJC is his first public avowal that he's pushing for the post. Perdue told Bluestein that he narrowly sees the university system's mission as boosting the state's economy. So much for the free pursuit of knowledge.

Over the last 30 years, the Georgia university system's national reputation for academic excellence has skyrocketed. Outgoing Chancellor Steve Wrigley and his predecessor Hank Huckaby, state GOP political insiders, brought little distinction to the system. The appointment of Perdue would be a terrible reversal.

 

 

 

 

Denial of tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones at University of North Carolina continues dismal Southern history

The University of North Carolina Board of Trustees' decision to deny journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones a tenured position continues the Southern tradition of political interference over public universities.

As with other cases at some of the South's most esteemed schools, the attempt to intimidate Hannah-Jones and the UNC Hussman School of Journalism involves journalism, protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

With great fanfare, UNC journalism school dean Susan King announced in April the appointment of Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur fellow Hannah-Jones to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.

Hannah-Jones won her Pulitzer for leading The New York Times' "1619 Project," which probed the pervasive influence of slavery and racism in American society.

Several noted historians criticized the "1619 Project” for suggesting that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, rather than winning economic and political independence from Great Britain.

Conservatives blasted the project, claiming it falsely moved the republic's founding to 1619, the date American slavery began, from 1776.

Hannah-Jones wasn't a victim of conservative canceling; she received a five-year non-tenured professorship at the school, with tenure review at the end of her appointment.

The Board of Trustees claimed that she was denied the tenure given past holders of the post because she's had a non-academic career, although she holds a master's journalism degree from UNC and has held university fellowships. 

She won the Pulitzer for her essay expressing the aims of the "1619 Project." Her editorial leadership of the project, to which several university professors contributed, also shows a high level of academic skill. Her MacArthur grant is supreme qualification for tenure.

A board member anonymously admitted to a reporter that conservative political pressure led to the move. The "1619 Project," along with "critical race theory" programs, are the new lightning rods for right-wing criticism.

Hannah-Jones won't be cowed by the move; she retains her position as a writer for The New York Times Sunday magazine and agreed to take the non-tenured post at UNC.

But the decision delivers a warning to the school's academic leaders that their actions are under scrutiny. That will make them less willing to hire professors who hold controversial views or undertake innovative programs.

The action is the latest in the South's dark history of political coercion of academic freedom.

Huey Long, known for his ostentatious support of LSU in the 1930s, strong-armed the firing of an LSU Reveille editor who criticized him. Outside of the ouster of the student newspaper editor and meddling in LSU football and the band's routines, the Kingfish pretty much kept his hands off the state university, which rose in academic prestige during his years.

Southern governors' resistance to integration and the civil rights movement led to firings of student newspaper editors Willie Morris at Texas and Bill Shipp at Georgia. Alabama's George Wallace, Mississippi's Ross Barnett and other Southern governors sought to prevent blacks from entering state universities during the 1960s.

One of the strangest incidents of political intimidation of school journalism also occurred at LSU in the early 1970, as the counterculture at last arrived at the conservative "Ole War Skule.”

As editor of the LSU yearbook "The Gumbo," my former Baton Rouge Morning Advocate colleague Joel Levy published photos of LSU students that revealed open sexuality and marijuana use. That led to an outburst of legislative outrage and a brief spate of national attention. Sadly, I recently learned about Levy's death, far too young. She was an unsung hero of free expression.

Southern conservatives feel pride at their public universities' sports success. But through the years, they've sought to curtail academic freedom.

The assault against free inquiry at the University of North Carolina tarnishes its legacy as a beacon of higher education in the South.