4/25/2010: From Steve Duin’s column in the Oregonian, well worth reading it all:
“I’m looking at the Knight Library,” Lariviere said. “I have my back to the Knight Law School. And I can name several of the professors sitting in the 22 Knight-endowed chairs. We are incredibly lucky Penny and Phil Knight love this place so passionately.”
I came to UO in the middle of the building boom paid for by Phil Knight’s philanthropy. Library, law school, and then the Knight chairs. This all came to an end when Dave Frohnmayer signed UO up for the well-intentioned but naive anti-Nike Worker’s Rights Consortium. (But remember, many of the faculty supported this too.) Knight immediately lost all trust in Frohnmayer’s judgment and said so very publicly. He then shifted all his academic giving to Stanford. Lariviere is rapidly earning back the faculty’s trust, I hope he earns Knight’s too.
In the end I think Richard Read of the Oregonian had the best take on the misguided idealism of the WRC supporters. What are those “exploited” Nike sweatshop workers actually doing? Saving their paychecks, sending the money home to build houses and finance new businesses for their families, sending their kids to college. That’s the life we choose – why do we think we should deny it to them? Who is doing more for these people – the WRC, or Phil Knight? Not that I’m an economist.
Anyway, from Duin’s version, the most interesting person in all this is Howard Slusher.
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