In a sterling bit of understatement, the much-criticized College of William and Mary president Gene Nichol, the fellow who couldn't abide a cross in the school's chapel but could approve a "sex worker" art show on campus, writes, "Mine, to be sure, has not been a perfect presidency."Informed this past weekend that his contract would not be renewed, Nichol has resigned. Formerly holding jobs as dean of the law schools of the University of Colorado and the University of North Carolina, Nichol will be going back to teaching at the William and Mary law school and writing.
Nichol's ambitions once drew him to politics -- he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and Congress in Colorado as a Democrat -- but his inept and controversial tenure at William and Mary will probably end any aspirations of that sort.
Well, unless he moves to California or New York.
Nichol didn't exactly go quietly; writing a stinging letter that claimed the university's Board had offered him bribes to keep quiet about the "real" reasons he was fired. Those reasons, Nichol insists, relate to his idealistic commitments to free speech and diversity. The Board denies Nichol's story.
Does anyone doubt that the "selectively tolerant" Professor Nichol's self-lionizing book will soon be on the shelves?
