Mayor Daley got a standing ovation when he appeared at the national conference of the Theatre Communications Group, the trade association for nonprofit theaters, at the Palmer House Hilton on June 19. And the admiration was mutual. Daley was full of praise for theaters and what they can do for cities—Detroit could use more of them, he said—and for artists of all stripes.
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“I think the Board of Education should hire more artists from the community to participate with our students,” Daley added. “I’m not downgrading teachers, but there’s a relationship that artists have with the younger generation—they get it.”
So the Daley-controlled Chicago Public Schools put only one half-time art teacher in each school with 750 or fewer students, and only one full-time art teacher in each bigger school, failing to provide even one art class a week for most students—and educators are the villains?
Apparently, the only thing he’s never been is a practicing artist.
Some of the fired professors took Bennington to court, and the school eventually settled, paying out nearly $2 million and issuing a formal apology. But Coleman’s administration’s been on the American Association of University Professor’s censure list for the last 15 years, and its reputation for oppressive, top-down management remains intact. In April 2000, Coleman fired philosophy professor Carlin Romano, who—in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education published that March—had called her “a serial violator of academic freedom with no respect for her faculty, no respect for difference of opinion, and a pathologically vindictive personality.”
