Sheldon Hackney’s “Spring-From-Hell,” continued

The day after Commencement, I began the ticklish business of mediating a solution to the Water Buffalo case. I communicated with the advisors of both sides, and my message was the same: no one is benefiting from the situation. After a tense week of discussions among themselves and with their advisors, the women decided that they would drop their charges against Jacobowitz. They had come to the conclusion that they would never get their side of the story out until the case was ended and they could speak publicly.

They announced their decision at a press conference on May 24. They made it clear that they were upset that they had been required to remain silent while they were ridiculed in the press, and that they felt thoroughly abused because their side of the story had not been told. With regard to the incident itself, they said they had heard Jacobowitz call them not just water buffalo but “black” water buffalo. Moreover, his shouts were part of a general barrage of insults, including “the N word” and the “word for a female dog.” Of course they were offended. Professor Peggy Sanday, their advisor, Professor Houston Baker, and Trustee Gloria Chisum Gr’60 Hon’94 had all been extremely helpful to the students as they thought their situation through. In addition, those three appeared at the press conference and spoke sympathetically about the plight of the complainants, bound as they had been to silence.

No effects of this effort were discernible in the press reports about the news conference or later. The WSJ editorialized on May 25 that the case “revealed what the descent of America’s campuses into the mire of speech codes and harassment codes has wrought. What they have wrought, namely, is an assault on free expression and reason that is virtually without precedent in a modern, free society.” I wondered about what the WSJ thought of the death squads in Guatemala, Pinochet in Chile, the dirty war in Argentina, apartheid in South Africa and similar situations, but it would have been churlish to raise those questions.

In the fall, with the events of the previous spring safely put to rest, and with me out of the way, Provost Marvin Lazerson appointed a Board Of Inquiry to find out what had gone wrong with the judicial process the previous spring. Jacob Abel, former chair of the Faculty Senate, and one of the most respected members of the faculty, was the chair. The Board issued its report in April 1994. The Provost welcomed their report because, he said, it described how the judicial process had failed when it had become politicized. The report also concluded that Jacobowitz had not been treated fairly, but the five young women had been treated even worse and had suffered more harm. The JAO was criticized for allowing Alan Kors to manipulate the process on behalf of Jacobowitz. The board also made some sensible recommendations: the process needed to be speedier; mediation should be used more; and there should be a group (note: not the President or the Provost) that supervises the bringing of serious charges by the JIO.

Displaying his knack for deft understatement, Alan Kors, as quoted in the April 5, 1994, DP, said, “The farce continues, and the members of the committee should be ashamed of themselves.”

In addition to my function as a cudgel with which conservatives could batter President Clinton, and as the anti-hero of the running narrative that conservatives had created that was designed to undermine the moral authority of liberalism, there is an additional large lesson to be learned from the journalistic treatment of the events of the spring. Those who shaped the public perception of them were not trying to inform the public so much as to capture its attention.

When the mainstream press first learned of the Water Buffalo story, they learned it from the WSJ editorial page. The story line was already set. In addition, the Water Buffalo story was easy to shape into a story of an innocent individual oppressed by a cruel bureaucracy. It had an appealing victim, Eden Jacobowitz, who was tested but eventually triumphed over a bullying university. It needed an identifiable villain, all the more satisfying if he were powerful and privileged, and much better if he were a person rather than a group or an abstract idea. I was available for that role. For the story to work well, there could be few ambiguities or contradictions, few bothersome realities that would get in the way of the plot. It had to be stark. For instance, the counterclaims of the black women students on the sympathies of the public must be muted. The hero had to be protected from any suspicion that he was engaging in unattractive mob activity. Procedural due process had to be portrayed as obfuscation and inhumane bureaucracy. Their strategy worked beautifully.

However, it did not succeed in blocking my appointment. After a tough grilling and floor fight, I was ultimately confirmed by the Senate 76-23 (including 22 Republican Yeas) as chairman of the NEH.

As I have thought back on my experience during the spring of 1993, I have come to realize that I survived because I was able to escape from the story that had been created by the conservative masters of mass media. I could do that only when the setting shifted to the United States Senate, an arena in which face-to-face relationships are still important. There, in my old-fashioned way, I could present myself to the audience that was to decide my fate. I could tell my own story.

History Professor Sheldon Hackney Hon’93 was Penn’s president from 1981-1993 and chairman of the NEH during the first term of the Clinton Administration. This article is excerpted from The Politics of Presidential Appointment: A Memoir of the Culture War, ©2002 by Sheldon Hackney and published by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, Alabama (1-866-639-7688).

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