Opinion: Is Penn State’s President Barron ‘running out the clock’ on anti-racism agenda?
One of the first lessons you learn about America’s greatest pastime is that you do not have to advance the ball or make progress to win the game, especially if you have the clock on your side. Scoring a touchdown or even advancing to another set of downs does not have to be part of your game plan. All you really have to do is play the odds that time is on your side so you can declare “victory” and ride into the sunset.
This, I surmise, is Eric Barron’s game plan during his remaining days as president of Penn State. The unhealthy absence of a COVID-19 vaccination mandate notwithstanding, the foremost result of this strategy is the lack of any substantive progress on an anti-racism agenda. Let me give you a few examples of this masterful tactician and his front office enablers, known as the board of trustees.
Over a year ago when Barron’s much heralded Special Presidential Commission on Racism, Bias, and Community Safety was created, I voiced, in this very newspaper, some serious misgivings, raised a few questions, and speculated about the likely outcomes. I even offered President Barron a practical strategy of a “down payment” precisely because I suspected that he was feigning his desire to “purchase the product“ and was only “seizing the time” to buy more time.
Well, I was only partially correct because President Barron is a much more adroit timekeeper than I or others have realized. In fact, he could compete unreservedly with such legendary sages of the gridiron as Rockne, Lombardi, Robinson or even his contemporary, Belichick, in “running out the clock.”
Some of us recall his most recent Black History Month recitation of February 2021 in which he reiterated almost line by line the very same platitudes he gave in establishing the commission in July 2020. Despite the sweet talk, neither he nor the the board of trustees can boast of establishing a $40 million program to hire more than 100 diverse faculty of color as did our Big Ten sister, the University of Maryland in April of this year. In reality, his team is not even trying to compete, but merely to run out the clock and hope that no one asks, “Who won the game?” or “Whatever became of Barron’s Special Presidential Commission?”
This brings me to the next question: Were the members of Barron’s commission victims of dupery? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But tell me this, have you ever heard of a Special Presidential Commission report that remains dormant, incomplete, unimplemented, and in draft final form for more than a year?
I remind you that the commission was not borne out of some random eureka moment but rather christened by the horrid brutality of George Floyd’s murder and the “great racial reckoning” of 2020. As Barron’s retirement date draws nigh, commission members are obligated to appeal to him, respectfully, in private or public: President Barron, please do not sacrifice our dedicated work and reputations and the legacy of George Floyd on the altar of false idolatry.
On the other hand, perhaps Barron actually wishes to advance an anti-racism agenda before he departs but is stymied, like many other headmasters, by the front office’s plans to hand off the task to the next university president. Such a scenario would play into the hands of the most conservative members of the board of trustees who have no interest in promoting an anti-racism agenda. It would also ensure the selection of a successor to Barron who would dismiss the findings of the “More Rivers to Cross” reports, run out the clock on his erstwhile commission, and declare a forfeited “victory.”
Despite any major concerns that I may have about the commission’s recommendations, Penn State, as a great university, can and must do better than run out the clock on an anti-racism and racial justice agenda.