Dr. Sheldon Hackney, Hon’93, the University’s former president, has spent the last four years defending the National Endowment for the Humanities from the federal budget-cutting axe. Come this fall, he won’t have to explain repeatedly why the humanities deserve support, since he’ll be returning to Penn as a history professor. “I’m really looking forward to being back at Penn,” he said in a phone conversation from his Washington, D.C., office last month. “It’s a pretty exciting environment, and [it will be good to] be a historian again.”
Hackney
served as Penn’s president for 12 years before stepping down in 1993 to
accept President Clinton’s appointment to the chairmanship of the NEH,
which funds projects in history, literature, philosophy, and other
humanities disciplines. Soon afterward, however, the agency was marked
for elimination by a new Republican majority in Congress, and its
federal funding was sliced by 36 percent.
“I’ve
come away [from the NEH] with a renewed sense of the importance of the
humanities,” he said, “because I’ve had to think about them so carefully
and explain them so others will realize why they’re so important.”
He
takes pride in “mak[ing] sure the NEH survived and came through the
downsizing in as good shape as possible,” unifying the humanities
community, and helping to supplement the agency’s leaner budget by
“doing business in a very different way, finding partners in the private
sector for projects.”
But
the 63-year-old Hackney said he feels the time is right to return to
the classroom: “I thought if I was ever going to be a historian again
and teach and write, I would need to do it now before I get too
decrepit,” he said wryly.
In
his first semester back at Penn, Hackney, an expert on the American
South, will teach with Dr. Drew Faust, Annenberg Professor of History,
in a graduate seminar on gender in the South.
Hackney also will resume a freshman seminar on the 1960s that he regularly taught while president.
During
Hackney’s tenure at Penn, the University more than quadrupled its
endowment, renewed its emphasis on undergraduate education, and took
steps to improve relations with the West Philadelphia community. In his
final months, the “Water Buffalo” case exploded in the national media,
and Hackney was accused of fostering a climate of political correctness
at Penn. In his view, the media unfairly latched on to that issueby now, “old news”as if it “stands for my entire career.”
Having spent his time in the spotlight, Hackney has no regrets about returning to Penn’s faculty instead of its president’s office. “It’s going to be wonderful,” he said.
