Friday, November 4, 2011

When a history lecture is a political event

AN OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY alum sends along a notice of a lecture sponsored by OSU's Harvey Goldberg Center in the Department of History. The Nov. 10 event will be in the school's Faculty Club and the guest speaker this year is ....Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder, who will be introduced by OSU President E. Gordon Gee.

The alum included the following note:
"This is bizarre. Harvey Goldberg was my history teacher. He was brilliant, the best teacher I ever had. When I took the course on the French Revolution from him, I felt I was fighting alongside the French. Why would they pick Batchelder? Gordon Gee is the most political president of OSU that can ever remember."
Why, indeed! One could believe that the Goldberg lecture deserved a distinguished historian at the lectern, not a political retread. But there might be some state (taxpayer) dollars to be had.

From this distance, I wonder whether the only other option was Jim Tressel.

But to be fair, the official notice does promise an "engaging lecture".



1 comment:

David Hess said...

From the odor of this, I smell a plot by the President to cozzen the Speaker in hopes of avoiding a budget cut for OSU by the slashers now in charge of the General Assembly.