Former Nebraska governor, senator Bob Kerrey receives no-confidence vote from faculty

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald

Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and senator, earned an overwhelming vote of no-confidence Wednesday from the senior faculty at the New School, the Greenwich Village university he has run since 2001.

While the vote has no practical impact, its organizers said their goal is to pressure the New School’s board of trustees — which was meeting Wednesday afternoon — to fire Kerrey for what they contend is a failure to safeguard and defend the academic values of the institution.

Kerrey has clashed with some faculty leaders since the day of his appointment as the New School’s president, with complaints that he lacked academic credentials and that his politics — particularly his early support for the Iraq war — were too moderate for the unabashedly liberal campus.


Former senator and governor Bob Kerrey.

But the underlying controversies became an open uprising after Kerrey announced Monday that he would serve temporarily as provost as well president after cycling through five provosts in seven years. A provost generally is seen as a university’s chief academic officer.



Read more: Former Nebraska governor, senator Bob Kerrey receives no-confidence vote from faculty

[babylonsister]

1. What a slap in the kisser! Sounds well-deserved, too. nt

[fascisthunter]

2. Good... I Can't Stand Him

he may as well have been a Republican.

[ShortnFiery]

3. FINALLY, justice for the good students and faculty of "New School"

Bob Kerrey is a pompous, warmongering ass. :nuke:

[madfloridian]

4. Kerrey was such a hawk...he declared Iraq was part of the war on terror...

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1704

Here are the words of the man who led The New School...did he teach this to the students?

"Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had
been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq."

[karynnj]

6. did he teach this to the students?

He would be booed out the door if he tried. A student there in 2004, explained that the decision was whether to vote for Senator Kerry or for one of the left wing third party candidates. There was likely few or even possibly no Bush voters. (Here's a story you will enjoy - and I hope Dean didn't help him. I still can't believe that he said Kerry was wrong about Tora Bora a month before the election - when he was suppose to be a surrogate:

"At times during the Iraq war, Kerrey was virtually under siege at his West 12th Street office. Through an ironic twist of timing, Howard Dean—the most outspoken war critic among the serious Democratic presidential candidates—had an appointment to see him on a February afternoon just as protesters were attempting another sit-in. Kerrey’s office was in full lockdown. With the elevators programmed not to stop on Kerrey’s floor, Dean and two aides were brought up via a back service elevator. As we stood around in a waiting area, students began pounding on the locked stairwell door, screaming for Kerrey’s resignation and yelling, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your racist war.” When Kerrey opened a locked glass door and came out to usher us into his office, Dean half-jokingly offered to intercede. “Maybe I should go talk to your students,” he said. Kerrey’s succinct reply: “Maybe you should go tell them I’m not an asshole.”

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/n_8653/

[madfloridian]

11. Love that story.

I agree, I hope Dean did not help.

Kerrey does not sound like a principled person, more like one who goes where the wind blows.

[karynnj]

12. Not sure if how the wind blows fits, more like unpredictable and

then unable to switch. (I had remembered the story in NY magazine so it was easy to google for) From a student there he is also unwilling to listen to others and has implemented policies and plans that many dislike. From what she says - it is worse than when she started - and that story is from before she started. (It is funny that the author occasionally goofs and says Kerry, when Kerrey is meant.)

[LiberalFighter]

13. Just don't stand behind him when the wind blows.

[biscotti]

5. I have always thought of him as

half loony :crazy:

[BrklynLiberal]

7. His spot on the 9/11 "investigation" panel did not endear him to me.

[jaysunb]

8. Good !

n/t

[IndianaGreen]

9. Adios! Warmongering scumbag!

Thanks a lot for joining Lieberman and giving us Homeland Security.

[mmm413]

10. Never had any use for him.

He absolutely HATED Clinton and treated him with absolute, thorough contempt because Clinton got what Kerrey wanted and thought he "deserved." Kerrey always been for Kerrey. He was a joke on the 9/11 Commission. Of course that commission was a joke in its entirety.

I love the fact that Kerrey has finally been seen for the opportunist he is. May he fade away to -- somewhere.

[Robbien]

14. Kerrey is just one small part of the GOP push to have GOPers installed at all universities

This exact same situation is happening all over the US.

[karynnj]

15. He was/is a Democrat

[No Elephants]

16. Let's look back to

December, 2007.


"Let’s step back for a minute. Former Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat from Nebraska and president of the New School in New York who has just endorsed Senator Clinton, said this in a dispatch (it’s the second item in the linked post) this morning from Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post:

“The fact that he’s African-American is a big deal. I do expect and hope that Hillary is the nominee of the party. But I hope he’s used in some way. If he happens to be the nominee of the party and ends up being president, I think his capacity to influence in a positive way . . . the behavior of a lot of underperforming black youth today is very important, and he’s the only one who can reach them.”

Kerrey continued: “It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

It’s probably not something that appeals to him? We don’t think we’ve seen anywhere that Mr. Obama has disowned his name, and in fact, he recently took heat from the Clinton campaign and Senator Clinton herself for talking about his breadth of experience — uh, foreign experience — by citing the fact that he spent part of his childhood growing up in Indonesia."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/kerrey-tries-to-explain-obama-muslim-remarks/

[agincourt]

17. For the record,

he did oppose Poppy's first gulf war. And for Nebraska he wasn't really that bad of a Senator. Just another left of center politician who was changed in a bad way by the 9/11 fiasco/atrocity. Too bad really, I remember him being a pretty decent fellow when he was governor and senator from Nebraska.

[yellowcanine]

18. Then he has to resign according to the academic norm of "shared governence."

Sorry Bob but you have to go.