They hope it won’t be needed often, but Penn State trustees voted last week in favor of a policy that would give the president the power and discretion to rescind university honors, awards or namings whenever he or she feels an ongoing association with an honoree could bring the university disrepute.
The policy requires the president to consult with the chair and vice chair of the board, plus the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award selection committee. But formal board consideration or approval of a reversal of an honor would no longer be required, though the president would still be required to notify the board of any such action.
The policy passed 22-9 after a brief debate in which several board members objected to ceding the authority to strip a building name or an honorary degree to the president, especially since board approval is required for all such official honors to be granted in the first place.
Alice Pope, one of the board’s nine alumni-elected trustees, summed up the opponents’ arguments the best.
“I’m reluctant to give this away on behalf of all future trustees who follow us,” Ms. Pope said. “And I think that there are dangers to conveying this authority to a single individual... We live in a time right now, unfortunately, when there is a lot of revisionist history, there is a lot of political pressure placed on all kinds of institutions to undo things that had been previously been done.
“I’m thinking that if I were a university president I might appreciate having the cover of a board saying: ‘This is a collective decision by a deliberative body; it’s not up to me.’ I think that an individual president might be more under sway to succumb to those kinds of pressures.”
Trustee David Kleppinger said the policy had the potential public relations benefit of allowing the board to reverse a decision “without the public embarrassment to whatever individual it may apply to at board meeting... The only element in the process of this that doesn’t occur is in fact the full board trustees vote.”
This is not just an academic exercise at Penn State.
In 2017, the board voted to formally rename an on-campus child care center that initially had been named for longtime Senior Vice President for Business and Finance Gary Schultz. Schultz had pleaded guilty earlier that year to one count of child endangerment for failing to report a 2001 allegation of child sexual abuse against former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky to police or child welfare officials.
Meanwhile, numerous colleges, universities and other institutions across the country are evaluating naming decisions, honorary degrees and other honorifics because of past connections to slavery, leadership in the Confederacy or sexual or other misconduct that’s come to light decades after the fact.
Asked whether the policy revision was prompted by current concerns about any particular Penn State honoree, university President Eric Barron declined to comment on that.
Earlier this year, however, two doctors challenged both the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State to rescind all honorifics to Dr. Albert Kligman, a famed dermatologist who -- late in his career -- faced criticism and lawsuits over medical experiments performed in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s while a member of the Penn faculty on inmates at a Philadelphia prison.
A former Penn State Mont Alto student, Kligman endowed several scholarships at the Franklin County campus, at least one of which still appears to carry his name. Kligman died in 2010.
First Published: July 19, 2021, 1:32 a.m.
