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July 24, 2012
No Sparkle In Barclays’ Bob Diamond: Societal Mores Unmoored, What And Who We Honor Today- That Which We Used To Shun
Noticing New York
Michael D.D. White recalls a college campus visit with his daughter as a way of making a point about naming rights — and wrongs.
In September of 2009 I found myself visiting the admissions office of Colby College up in Maine. The college representative handling the orientation was expounding to our small group about the unique attributes of a Colby College education. His adjectives and concepts were all rather vague. I wanted to lock it down with some tangible specifics. “Can you give me examples,” I asked, “of individuals graduating from Colby College in whom you can see represented the kind of traits that this kind of special Colby College education imbued them with?”
“Well, there is Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian,” (indeed, I had already noted the Doris Kearns Goodwin books, including her 2005 “Team of Rivals,” sitting on the bookshelves at the back of the room dedicated to Colby College authors- I was also quite familiar with her as a dependably tapped talking head on subjects presidential for American Experience documentaries and Charlie Rose shows), . . . “And then there’s”- the Colby College representative straightened his spine as if the individual he was about to announce outranked Ms. Goodwin in stature- “Bob Diamond the head of Barclays Bank.” . . .
. . . He smiled. I scowled.
“You know,” I said, “we come from Brooklyn and a lot of people in Brooklyn have a lot of problems with Barclays Bank and its involvement in putting its name on and money into the basketball arena boondoggle project being forced through with eminent domain abuse. We would consider Mr. Diamond’s role in all of that unethical and harmful to the community.” All of this wound up with me having more discussions afterward with the college admission’s representative and with other parents from our small discussion group about the bad things that Barclays was doing . . . The bad things Barclays was doing that were known at the time.
Posted by eric at July 24, 2012 10:34 PM