July 9, 2007

Quick Takes: Tuition Fight in Florida, History Arrives at Nixon Library, Antioch U. Rebuffs Petition, No More Lottery Ads, The Price of 2 Presidents, Credit Card Abuse, Court Rejects Discrimination Case

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Bob Graham, a former governor of Florida, and a group of professors have filed a suit in state court, challenging the right of the Legislature to set tuition rates, The Miami Herald reported. Graham argues that the state’s Board of Governors has that right and that legislative directives on tuition — generally limiting increases — are holding back the universities. Ken Pruitt, president of the State Senate, told the Herald that the suit was an attempt to get “unbridled tuition increases.”
The Richard Nixon Library, long derided by historians for whitewashing Watergate with an exhibit that reflected the views of Nixon but that was inconsistent with scholarship, has destroyed the exhibit and plans to replace it with one portraying the full history, the Los Angeles Times reported. The library was created outside the system of presidential libraries managed by the National Archives and Records Administration, but under a 2004 law, the Nixon facility joined the system. The article describes how Timothy Naftali, a former University of Virginia professor who is the first federally appointed director of the Nixon Library, is pushing for changes, starting with Watergate.
Hundreds of alumni of Antioch College are signing a petition calling for an autonomous board to govern the college, which Antioch University’s board has decided to shut down until 2012 because of financial problems and falling enrollment. The alumni of the college are critical of the university board, arguing that it has ignored and betrayed the college in favor the institution’s campuses for non-residential students. A spokeswoman for Antioch University said Friday that the university and its board had “no intention at all” of agreeing to place the college under a separate entity. “The university owns all of the assets and the university does not want to do that,” she said.
Erskine Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina system, has asked system campuses to stop accepting state lottery advertising for athletic events, The Raleigh News & Observer reported. During the last nine months, the lottery spent $385,000 at seven of the system’s universities, the newspaper reported.
The University of New Hampshire boasted this year of having two former presidents — George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — as joint commencement speakers. The Union Leader reported that such fame comes with a price. Graduation expenses were $440,427 this year, more than three times last year’s cost, with most of the additional expenses related to having the ex-presidents appear. University officials said that private funds were used, not state or tuition dollars.
Since Arizona’s three public universities expanded their use of credit cards to pay for various products and services, the institutions say they have saved million of dollars in processing costs. But the universities have also faced numerous incidents of employees using the cards for inappropriate purchases for personal use, The Arizona Republic reported. Among the purchases: an espresso machine, gun holsters, video games and airfare.
A former research associate professor at the University of Utah cannot sue the institution for employment discrimination because, in the position she held, she did not meet the legal definition of an employee, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit sided with Utah in a lawsuit filed by Diane Xie, after concluding that Xie could not challenge the university’s decision not to renew her contract because the university had little control over her daily activities, did not pay her a salary, and did not require her to teach, among other factors.

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Time will tell

On the surface, a story such as that in the L. A. Times seems to provide a basis for a note of optimism. But keep in mind that nearly a thousand hours of Nixon’s tapes remain to be released. And only part of the 40 million pages of textual records have been opened for research.

The true test is how the future handling of unreleased records is handled, in an environment within NARA’s system of Presidential Libraries where, as former Truman Libary director Larry Hackman once wrote of Presidents’ foundations in the Public Historian, “In reality, most library directors are supplicants for support from these nonprofit partners for programs for which the National Archives will not request federal appropriations or is unable to secure it. They are expected to get along and, except in egregious cases, to go along with the leadership of the nonprofit partner. Though relations between the partners are positive and productive in most instances; in some others they are not.”

Only time will tell how this wil play out — and with all due respect to historians — given the lack of study of how the National Archives operates as a subordinate agency of the executive branch — few will have the means to assess knowledgeably all the press releases and news stories they read. After all, a reporter for a well known newspaper once talked to NARA’s public affairs officer, then reported on the basis of what he learned in 1991 that NARA’s archivists were busy transcribing Nixon’s tapes and that years would pass before they were opened for resedarch. A court case the next year revealed no such thing was happening, that transcription had been rejected as an option in the early 1980s and other means had been used to describe all the tapes already. Stanley Kutler’s lawyers discovered that little work had been done with the tapes since 1987. In fact, documents provided to the litigants revealed that NARA had finished screening the tapes in 1987 and at one time planned to open all the disclosable portions between 1989 and 1995, if negotiations with Nixon worked out as hoped. No such phased releases occurred while Nixon still was alive.

Knowledgeable observers such as Prof. Benjamin Hufbauer know that exhibits often change in tone at the Presidential Libraries as more time passes since the death of a President. As for the records — what historians used to focus on in doing research and perhaps still do — it’s too early to tell how well the “marriage” of the Nixon Foundation and the National Archives will work out.

As Herbert Feis once noted of the donor-restricted Presidential Libraries, “the officials and trustees who are guardians of these collections may regard themselves also as guardians of the reputation of the memorialized individual. They may be loath to expose that reputation to sting or stain as long as living persons care deeply.” A very understandable and human reaction (wouldn’t many of us react that way if it were our careers or those of our parents that were under scrutiny by historians clamoring for maximum access to records?) But one which can make archivists’ job difficult, depending on who is involved.

Maarja Krusten, Historian and former National Archives’ Nixon tapes archivist, at 6:55 am EDT on July 10, 2007

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Quick Takes: Tuition Fight in Florida, History Arrives at Nixon Library, Antioch U. Rebuffs Petition, No More Lottery Ads, The Price of 2 Presidents, Credit Card Abuse, Court Rejects Discrimination Case

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Time will tell

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