hwc, the w. ford schumann professorship is a unique one in that it’s goal was not to just necessarily get “big names” but people with unique experiences/viewpoints. I was there when the fund was first established (but not for a visiting professor specifically) and it was and has always been more interested in getting interesting people more than just a “big name”.

I’m not comparing it to visiting prof’s seat to get “big names”, but to one specifically endowed to bring experts in a variety of social justice fields to a campus. The endowed seat attempts to fill a role as it moves around from department to department with (typically) one year appointments, bringing specific experitise to the students, often in non-academic fields. It appears to be a similar type of program, in that it focuses heavily on minority issues and so forth.

Here’s a partial list. I can’t find anyone on this list with “Bernie Moore’s” lack of qualifications or his lack of teaching credentials.

Some of these people are extraordinary teachers. For example, George Lakey is way too left-wing for me, off of my political charts. I heard him speak and he had several hundred people in tears. I would practically kill to take a course from him.

Forget the convicted felon part. Williams College can and should do so much better than a guy whose only accomplishment is serving as a staffer or a relatively obscure Congressman. I would really like to know who decided to hire this guy, again putting aside the convicted felon part.

If he was the best prof ever, do you really think it would help him at all?

Even after reading the student feedback on him in the other thread and on WSO, I’d be surprised if he made the top 3 of all time worst visiting profs.

as a teacher, it sounds like now. as a CV, quite possibly.

I believe the only two truly visiting professors have been rickey hill and bernard fraud moore.

in other words, it isn’t a traditional endowed visiting professorship.

Hiring a former congressional staffer who is also well advanced in his ph.d process is not unsurprising.

It is suprising to me, but I’m familiar with the people who have held a similar endowed visiting professor seat over the last 25 years at another liberal arts college.

For example, Dennis Haliday only had a Masters from Trinity University in Dublin, but had made international headlines when he resigned his 30 UN career.

I’m still trying to pin down some more of the Schuman Visiting Professors at Williams.

did anything in my last comment look racially specific? for f*cks sake.

The W. Ford Schumann Visiting Professorship in Democratic Studies was endowed in 2000 by The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (formerly The Florence and John Schumann Foundation), with a gift of $2.5 million.

The professorship is designed to bring distinguished visitors to campus from fields such as economics, environmental studies, political science, psychology, and sociology to examine the challenges that face modern democratic systems. Hill comes from the academic world, but the position is designed to bring visitors from political and non-governmental organizations to campus as well.

it’s also not unusual to give a visiting professorship to a unique ph.d candidate who is ABD. Having him teach a section or two of 101 on top of otherwise unique offerings is not why he was hired, but using him like a department almost always uses a visiting assistant professor.

This guy appears to have been hired to teach routine courses in the political science department. Williams is one of the top colleges in the United States. I know that they attract a top-shelf applicant pool and can do better than this.

http://1956ephs.blogspot.com/2009/11/bozos-love-company.html

[imaged added by Ronit]

*the type of visiting professorship reserved often for people who have not fulfilled the original academic qualifications but provide a unique and intimate knowledge of a subject. in this case, fraud and (more importantly) the legislative process of the US.

“It must be said, he made some pretty incredible contributions to the campus in the last year or so.”

and he did get the Second Chance Act passed. The ends justify the means. I just want to know are they going to adjust everybody else’s gpa up that missed the gravy train.