• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

W&M President Breaks Mold ; Selection of Liberal Nichol to Head Staid School a Novel Choice

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 September 2005, 06:00 CDT

He has been a football quarterback, talk-show host, lawyer, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, law professor, law school dean and dissident critic of society's flaws.

Now, Gene R. Nichol is president of the College of William and Mary.

At a school that recently has chosen such politically conservative figures as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for the ceremonial post of chancellor, Nichol's presidency is a novelty.

A passionate and outspoken liberal throughout his career, he has argued in scholarly articles, books and newspaper columns that society should do more to help the poor, provide universal health insurance and do better at living up to the principle of equality.

Just last year, an essay of Nichol's touching on all those topics was published in a book titled "Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent."

"I have been involved in pressing what I think of as the work of liberty and equality," Nichol said in a recent interview. "I've done it as a litigator, I've done it as a writer, I've done it as a teacher, I've done it as an activist, I've done it as a scholar. I think I did it as a law school dean as well."

But at William and Mary, where he took office in July after six years as dean of the University of North Carolina School of Law, Nichol's political philosophy is not the quality most noticed by students, professors and high officials.

"I think he's the kind of guy who really connects with people well .*.*. no matter what their politics," said Ron Rapoport, a government professor. "They see him as someone who will really provide a lot of leadership, a lot of direction and a lot of intellectual excitement."

Nichol, 54, first created a buzz on campus last winter when he spoke to students and faculty members as one of five candidates presented for public scrutiny by the school's presidential-search committee.

While other candidates concentrated on such nuts-and-bolts topics as fundraising and the need to raise faculty salaries, Nichol spoke almost poetically about the special obligation and opportunity of a public university to make college education accessible to all qualified students. He also suggested that a public university should play a special role in serving the community through research and debate of public issues.

"I think his vision for William and Mary is the vision that the board shares," said Susan Magill, rector of W&M's governing board of visitors and chairwoman of the presidential-search committee. "That's really why we chose him."

Magill, a Republican who works as chief of staff for U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., said Nichol's background as a Democratic activist concerned the search committee to the point that they "scrutinized him even more diligently than they might have others."

They decided, nonetheless, that he was the right person for the job.

"He agreed to check his politics at the fence of the Wren Building," said Magill, referring to a campus landmark. "He's not in this for the partisan politics. He's in this for William and Mary."

* * *

Nichol is a Texas native who played quarterback at Oklahoma State University, and he looks the part. His 6-foot-5 frame is well padded, and his longish hair cascades over his collar in the back. The effect is to make his head look every bit as large as the rest of him.

"He's big," Monica Goldblatt, a freshman from Northern Virginia, said when asked for a physical description of the new president. "I don't know -- he's huge."

Goldblatt is one of 15 freshman who have gotten to know Nichol in a seminar he teaches titled "The Supreme Court and the Constitution." But what impresses her more than Nichol's size, she said, is his personality and teaching style.

"He encourages both sides of the argument, which is fun," she said after a recent class.

The class's topic was free speech and the First Amendment, and no one seemed sleepy, even though it began at 8 a.m.

Nichol, perspiring slightly from climbing two flights of stairs to the classroom, was in motion from the beginning. Moderating a discussion of how the Constitution and the Supreme Court have treated those who speak out against the federal government, he never remained still for long.

As a student suggested that an al-Qaida sympathizer who advocated holy war against the U.S. government should be arrested, Nichol leaned back in his chair to a near-reclining position.

When another student suggested the arrest would not be sanctioned by the Constitution, Nichol at first leaned forward on the class's conference table and then shifted back again as he summarized the discussion so far and asked additional questions.

The discussion rolled back and forth, and Nichol was as animated as any of the students. He punctuated his remarks with gestures, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, drummed on the table in rhythm with his words and once rolled his chair back from the table with a flourish.

"He reminds me of a teacher I had at home," said Allison Poehler, a freshman from Henrico County. "He likes to play devil's advocate, and makes us discuss things, and questions what we say. .*.*. He's a very good teacher."

* * *

Nichol insists on teaching a class at W&M even though it adds to a full agenda of presidential chores such as meetings, fundraising and representing the school in its dealings with the state government.

"I come here drawn to this intellectual community," he said. "I want to be part of it, not just as the salesman for the institution, not just as the manager of the institution, but as an intellectual participant."

"It actually is central," Nichol continued. "I'm teaching. I'll keep teaching. .*.*. I don't want to be the only one who comes here and doesn't get to teach these marvelous students."

* * *

Nichol appears to be someone who has never done only one thing at a time.

While playing quarterback for Oklahoma State in the early 1970s, he earned a degree in philosophy and graduated with high honors. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1976 and later practiced law in Alaska before starting an academic career.

A law professor at W&M from 1985 to 1988, he served in the same years as director of the school's Institute of Bill of Rights Law. He also met and courted his wife, Glenn George, who was also on the law school faculty, during the same period. They now have three daughters, ages 11, 16 and 17.

The pace picked up from there. At the University of Colorado, where he was dean of the law school from 1988 to 1995, Nichol gave up his administrative post, became a law professor and took unpaid leaves for campaigns to represent Colorado in the U.S. House and the Senate.

He didn't win office, but he added his voice to discussions of public, social and legal issues during those years not only as a politician and professor but as host of a public-affairs television show and regular columnist in the Rocky Mountain News and the Colorado Daily.

As dean at the UNC law school over the past half-dozen years, Nichol kept teaching, wrote scholarly articles on constitutional and civil-rights issues and continued to speak out as a columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer.

One sympathetic newspaper writer in Raleigh dubbed him "the campus conscience." A less sympathetic reader complained in a letter to the editor that Nichol is a left-wing commentator with "a wholly skewed version of reality."

Corinna Hann, a sophomore from Yorktown and chairwoman of W&M's College Republicans, said she hasn't paid the new president much attention because, from what she has read, "I know he's no friend of mine."

She'll strive to keep an open mind about his suitability as president, she said, "as long as he does right by the college and doesn't bring his own political ideology into it."

* * *

Nichol said he'll work in a less partisan way as president of W&M by helping the school maintain its high academic quality, attract more students from low-income families and focus its research on public issues such as improving the state's public schools.

"I won't any longer be involved in partisan or electoral politics," he said. "My party is the college. My ideology is the green and gold, I guess."

GENE R. NICHOL

* Position: president, College of William and Mary.

* Academic positions: dean and professor, University of North Carolina Law School, 1999-2005; dean and professor, University of Colorado Law School, 1988-1999; professor and director, Institute of Bill of Rights Laws, College of William and Mary, 1985-1988; professor of law, University of Florida, 1984-1985; assistant/ associate professor of law, West Virginia University, 1978-1984.

* Education: J.D., University of Texas, 1976; B.A., philosophy, Oklahoma State University, 1973; University of Florida, 1969-1970.

* Other employment and activities: associate at Ely, Guess & Rudd, Anchorage, Alaska, 1976-1978; host of Culture Wars, a public- television series in Denver, Colo., 1995-1996; columnist, Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1998-1999; columnist, Colorado Daily, 1998- 1999; op-ed columnist, Raleigh News & Observer, 1999-2005.

* Family: Wife, Glenn George, a law professor at the University of North Carolina; three daughters, ages 11, 16 and 17.

VOICE OF DISSENT

Excerpts from Gene Nichol's essay titled "Ignoring Inequality" from the book "Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent," published in 2004 by NewSouth Books:

"We [Southerners] frequently elect public officials who pander to the wealthy and cripple the social structures available to the poor. Southern leaders often seem to specialize in undermining democracy while giving the back of their hands to meaningful equality. We produce more poverty and politicians who are untroubled by it than the rest of the nation."

"We countenance rich and poor public schools. Not just private schools, mind you: rich and poor public schools. As if it were thought acceptable to treat some of our children as second- or third- class citizens."

"America accepts more dramatic gaps between the haves and the have-nots than the rest of the industrial world. We shrug our shoulders, and we go on."

"We carve 'equal justice under law' on our courthouse walls. The sentiment stops there."

"The private financing of campaigns systematically skews the outcome of our political processes toward the interests of the economically powerful . . . A system of government in which those who seek certain policies are allowed to give essentially unlimited amounts of money to those who make the policies may be called many things. But it can't be called democratic. And it can't be called fair."

TAKING W&M (MORE) PUBLIC

President Gene R. Nichol wants the College of William and Mary to become "both great and public." While greatness is measured by student and faculty achievement, the quality of being "public," Nichol says, can come in at least three ways:

* Assuring public access, so "those who have the wit and the will are not foreclosed from the opportunities and the possibilities of leadership which come from higher education because of their economic circumstance."

* Providing a forum for discussion of public policies, and enlisting the intellectual power and expertise of faculty in that discussion.

* Focusing, when possible, the academic work of the faculty and student body on "the problems of the commonwealth of Virginia and the South and the country."

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

More News in this Category