#UK Covers Up a Historical Mural, and Other Acts of the Liberal Cultural Taliban

The University of Kentucky today covered a mural painted by Ann Rice O’Hanlon eighty years ago because it portrays slaves working in a field. "The reason given," said Kentucky writer Wendell Berry yesterday in an opinion article in Lexington Herald-Leader protesting the decision, "is only that it shows people doing what they actually did. Black people did work in tobacco fields. Black musicians did play for white dancers. Indians did seriously threaten the settlers at Bryan’s Station."

If we're going to start covering up images suggestive of past misbehavior—behavior that did happen, despite our desire to cover it up, can we now cover up our UK insignias on account of its having repeatedly (and successfully) been sued for racial discrimination in hiring and firing? Or how about UK's mismanagement of Robinson Forest, a 14,786 tract of forest left in trust to UK, 3,885 acres of which it allowed to be mined or leased for strip mining and 800 more acres it more recently tried to make available for clear cut logging?

Let he who is without sin cover the first mural.

The action by UK is a part of a larger movement of people who think that the proper response to uncomfortable aspects of our history is to cover it up by covering up images, changing names on buildings, and eliminating or destroying historical markers and sites.

This is all accomplished under the assumption that, in destroying the evidence of our past failures, we somehow strike a blow for justice; that in destroying the records of our past, we somehow rectify it.

Soon no one will know our historical crimes. And we can all pretend that nothing bad ever happened.

All this is our own cultural equivalent of the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan or ISIL's destruction of mosques, tombs, and churches. How can we condemn them for doing the same thing we ourselves do?

What will we do, twenty or thirty years down the road, when we become embarrassed about how we acted in trying to erase our own history? Destroy the records of the destruction of our past?

How absurd we are going to seem to our historical selves?

My op ed on UK's Gaskell Affair in today's Herald-Leader

My article on the Gaskell Affair at University of Kentucky was published in today's Lexington Herald-Leader.

It highlights the university's doublespeak on diversity, as evidenced by its actions toward Gaskell, who was up for the position of observatory director at UK until it was discovered he was "potentially evangelical."

Why is the Kentucky Human Rights Commission sitting on Martin Gaskell's religious discrimination complaint?

Martin Gaskell, who has sued University of Kentucky for religious discrimination, filed a complaint with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights in May of 2008 and still has heard nothing. Exactly how many years does it take for the Human Rights Commission to process a religious discrimination complaint?

While the Human Rights Commission, which is sponsored by the state and paid for by taxpayer dollars, can't find the time to answer religious discrimination complaints, it seems to have plenty of time on its hands to engage in liberal political advocacy. While Gaskell's complaint gathers dust in the Commission's inbox, they were hard at work fashioning a resolution calling on the Kentucky General Assembly to include sexual orientation in the state’s civil rights statute.

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights isn’t chartered to lobby state government; it’s chartered to enforce the Kentucky Civil Rights Act. It needs to lose the taxpayer funded political activism and get on the stick.

While the Human Rights Commission was working feverishly to advance a liberal political agenda, cobwebs were forming on this man’s religious discrimination complaint. If the Civil Rights Commission can’t find the time to deal with religious discrimination, which is part of the current civil rights laws, why is it asking for an expansion if its mission?

A court recently gave a green light for Gaskell’s suit to move ahead, and it the suit is expected to come to trial on February 8. The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is a tax-payer funded organization chartered to combat discrimination.

Gaskell ran the student observatory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is widely published in the field of astronomy. Internal UK e-mails suggest he was the most qualified candidate for the position of Observatory Director at UK until it became known that he was a Christian. When this fact was discovered, a number of staff and faculty conspired to prevent him from getting the position, according to Gaskell.

When Gaskell failed to receive any response from the Kentucky Human Rights Commission, he filed suit.

He shouldn't have had to.

UK Rankings down, Lee Todd's salary up

My friend Bob the Economist (Robert Martin, emeritus Boles Professor of Economics at Centre College) slamming the ridiculous salary raise for outgoing University of Kentucky President Lee Todd:

In a tone-deaf moment, the UK governing board, on the occasion of President Lee T. Todd Jr.'s retirement, decided to increase his total compensation for his last year to $825,000.

A firestorm of anger and outrage has been burning over excessive executive compensation for the last two years, and here is the UK board shoveling Kentucky coal on to the fire. Further, can it be true that board members have not read nor heard about the Goldwater Institute's report? If not, why are they serving on UK's board?

The Herald-Leader quotes trustees who say they cannot hire a new president unless they significantly increase compensation. Interim board chairman Billy Joe Miles said the president's job is more important than the governor's job (apparently not more important than the basketball coach's, however).

Since this new compensation is about double what the U.S. president makes, it means being UK president is more important than being president of the United States.

See this is how it works: you head a university that says it is going to become a "top 20" research university but instead goes down in the rankings, and then increase the presidents salary by 50 percent.

Can Todd take the trustees with him when he leaves? Please?

The "Character Thing" at Kentucky's universities

In a pre-game interview before last weekend's University of Kentucky football game with the University of Miami at Ohio, UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart went on and on about how important it is that coaches at the school be models of character.

Nevermind that this is the guy who hired Billy Gillespie, the more important point is that one wonders what Barnhart would have to say about U of L President James Ramsey's mishandling of the Rick Pitino scandal (after which you try to change the subject). In fact, the pink elephant in the room of the whole discussion was Pitino. And although it was Ramsey, not Barnhardt, who is to blame for the whole Pitino fiasco, it is hard to believe that winning isn't King at UK just like it is at U of L.

If Billy Gillespie had had the same record as Pitino, and had a DUI, what would Barnhart and Todd have done? If Gillespie had been successful at coaching and continued to avert an actual DUI charge because of the kind of legal leniency that traditionally seems to apply to successful big college coaches (and that was apparently applied to Gillespie in past encounters with state troopers), what would Barnhart and Todd do?

It's hard to believe they wouldn't do the same thing Ramsey did. But I'd love to be proved wrong.

University of Kentucky scores a "C" on its core curriculum in national report

For Immediate Release
August 22, 2009

The University of Kentucky received a grade of "C" from a national organization that monitors what colleges and universities teach. In its report, "What Will They Learn?" the American Council of Trustees and Alumni gave it a mediocre rating on its general education requirements, and specifically criticized its natural science requirement because it could be met my taking courses which didn't teach natural or physical sciences.

"That a school attempting to be a 'Top Twenty Research School' would have a weak general education requirement in science is pretty pitiful," said Martin Cothran, senior policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky.

"No credit given for Natural or Physical Science," said the report of UK, "because the Natural Sciences requirement may be satisfied by courses from anthropology, political science, and psychology; and the College Laboratory or Field Work Experience requirement includes courses from the social sciences."

While crediting UK for its requirements in composition, language, and math, the report docked the state's flagship educational institution for weak requirements in literature, U. S. government/history, economics, and science.

The report evaluated whether 100 major institutions require seven key subjects. "What we found is alarming," said the report's authors. "Even as our students need broad-based skills and
knowledge to succeed in the global marketplace, our colleges and universities are failing to deliver."

The report comes during the same month that UK earned a lower ranking in the U. S. News and World Report national university rankings for the third straight year, falling from 112 in 2007, to 122nd in 2008, to 128th in 2009.

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Income Diversity at UK: Lee Todd gets a bonus

While the University of Kentucky is raising tuitions for its students, University President Lee Todd has been voted a $145,500 bonus by the UK Board for the 2007-2008 school year.

I'm really not against giving financial incentives to good people, and Todd is giving $50,000 of it back to the university, but the symbolism of this is not good. This goes into the same file as the State Senate's office redecorating plan.