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OYSTER NEWS

March 2003



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I CAN’T SIGN THE CONTRACT UNTIL YOU LET GO OF MY HAND

 

I had hoped, as some of you know, that New York University would be able to entice David Levering Lewis from the Martin Luther King, Jr. chair at Rutgers to accept a Silver chair, funded by my uncle’s will.  The news, if possible, is even better.  David has agreed to accept an NYU University Professorship in the history department. It’s important to emphasize the department because Harvard and other places wanted him for African-American Studies, a pigeonhole he firmly refuses to enter.

Although there are no sharper knives than those sometimes drawn in academia, NYU’s historians voted unanimously to invite him in.  Next semester, to begin his new job, he will teach 20 freshmen in a special seminar designed to capture the minds and imaginations of the brightest students at the beginning of their higher education. What a good idea.  What a necessary idea. And Ruth Ann Stewart, who like her husband has been at Rutgers, will also switch to NYU, accepting a professorship at the Wagner School of Public Service.

I can’t say I'm entirely surprised.  Last April, at the NYU convocation celebrating the big bucks left to the University by Uncle Julius, the incoming president, John Sexton, schmoozed the table where David and I were sitting. When I introduced them, Sexton dropped to his knees, took David’s hand and kissed it.  I am not making this up. I thought, “Wow!  This guy’s recruiting tactics put Bobby Knight to shame.” 

David has been writing, when the phone isn’t ringing, a book on the origins of Islam. (See following item.)  If he wins a Pulitzer for this one, it will be his third in a row.  Don’t bet against it.