Word: keezerism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last thing Dexter Merriam Keezer did before he became president of Reed College (Portland, Ore.) was to promise a friend he would not turn into a "stuffed shirt." After one year in the job President Keezer felt compelled last fortnight to warn all ambitious young educators how close he had come to breaking his promise. Wrote he in his annual report: "The conception [of the college president held by much of the community] is perhaps best reflected by the subjects on which I have been asked to address groups: The Future of the Western Hemisphere, Shakespeare's Message...
...persons would take Dexter Keezer for a college president. Periodically since his graduation from Amherst in 1920, he has found academic life dull. For a year he was a reporter on the Denver Times. He took a Ph.D. in economics at the Brookings Institution but quit teaching after six years. From 1929 to 1933 he was associate editor of the Baltimore Sun. In 1933 General Johnson made him executive director of the NRA Consumers' Advisory Board...
...Economist Keezer's associates on the board was William Trufant Foster, first president of Reed College. When Reed was founded in 1911 by the widow of a steamboat tycoon as a cultural centre for the Northwest, William T. Foster had been called to get it going. He built a surprisingly intellectual college with no intercollegiate athletics, no fraternities, complete student self-government. In 1920 President Foster resigned* and thereafter Reed coasted along under competent but not always vigorous leadership. After Messrs. Foster & Keezer had been working on the Consumers' Board for six months, Mr. Foster...
...Dexter Keezer arrived at Portland last autumn with his wife and small daughter, solemnly sworn to become no stuffed shirt. Students made his acquaintance during the freshman-sophomore tug of war when the victorious sophomores discovered that one of the "freshmen" they had been dragging through the mud was new President Keezer (TIME, Oct. 29, 1934). Subsequently "Prex Dex" attracted even more attention by appearing in bright red duck pants. In the winter he could be seen carrying an armful of wood to heat a cold conference room. In the spring he played tennis and fished with his students, shocked...
When it came time for a formal inauguration last spring, President Keezer invited the usual academic guests, informed them that they, not he, would do the talking. One suggestion he acted on was for a system of faculty advisers charged with the duty of seeing that new students get a "custom-made" rather than a "ready-to-wear" curriculum...