A Fair Chance in the Race of Life: The Role of Gallaudet University in Deaf History

12. DPN and the Evolution of the Gallaudet Presidency

12 DPN and the Evolution of the Gallaudet Presidency I. King Jordan Editors’ Introduction I. King Jordan was Gallaudet University’s first deaf president and the first person whose presidency resulted from political actions by Gallaudet’s constituencies. In the spring of 1988, campuswide protests and days of public demonstrations involving students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others caused the newly named president to resign one week after her appointment was announced. The Board of Trustees then elected Jordan, a previous finalist for the position, to succeed her. The article below is Jordan’s personal account of his presidency of Gallaudet from 1988 through 2006. He discusses the usual concerns of college presidents, such as academic quality, fund raising, and construction, but he also emphasizes how the protest, called Deaf President Now, changed the Gallaudet presidency. In particular, he argues that after 1988 the Gallaudet president came to be seen as a representative of both the university itself and the wider deaf community in the United States and throughout the world. Jordan concludes by discussing his vision of what Gallaudet should be and the steps he took to bring his vision to fruition, and he comments briefly on the 2006 protests surrounding the selection of Jane K. Fernandes as president-elect. IAM NOT A HISTORIAN. I think of history as “stories” of what happened in the past. What we know today about the past depends a lot on who told the stories. Johnnetta Cole, when she was president at Spelman College , reminded us that his-story is probably very different from what it 170 DPN and the Evolution of the Gallaudet Presidency 171 Edward Miner Gallaudet, 1883 would be if it were her-story. Much of what I will say here is obviously my-story. During the first 120 years of its existence, Gallaudet University was led by only four presidents. In the next four years, there were four more. The eighth president was named by the Gallaudet Board of Trustees after an historic protest known as Deaf President Now or DPN. Reading about Gallaudet’s presidents while preparing this chapter was a fascinating journey into the university’s history. I cannot possibly do justice to Gallaudet’s presidents in this brief chapter, but I can introduce them and share some stories. Edward Miner Gallaudet: 1864–1910 Edward Miner Gallaudet, the first president, was the son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of the American School for the Deaf. In 1857 Amos Kendall hired Edward Miner Gallaudet to head his small school in Washington, D.C., the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind. He was just twenty years old, with fewer 172 I. King Jordan than two years teaching experience at the American School. Some people were skeptical because of his youth, so Kendall told him to bring his mother with him. Thus, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, who was deaf and fluent in ASL, came to Washington with her son, to serve as matron of the school. Gallaudet shared his father’s dream of opening a college for deaf students and proposed a bill to the U.S. Congress that would authorize the Columbia Institution to grant college degrees. Some members of Congress did not think deaf people were capable of a college education; Amos Kendall had doubts too. But President Abraham Lincoln supported the bill, and when Congress passed it in 1964, he signed the bill into law. Kendall then appointed Gallaudet, then just twenty-seven years old, as the college’s first president. In 1864 Gallaudet overcame doubts about whether deaf people could or should receive a college education; 124 years later, in 1988, DPN overcame doubts about whether a deaf person could or should lead the university. As president, Gallaudet faced the same challenges that all the college presidents have dealt with since: academic standards and communication . Throughout his presidency, he insisted that all classes meet appropriate college-level standards. Despite the decision at the Milan Congress in 1880 that the best way to teach deaf children was through exclusive use of speech and lipreading, Gallaudet believed that deaf people should also be able to use sign language. Consequently, the college community continued to use both sign language and spoken language. It was during Gallaudet’s tenure that the Board of Trustees voted to name the college in honor of his father. Percival Hall: 1910–1945 Percival Hall, the second president of...