With Bob Kerrey back in the news (New York Times, 12/11/08) as the faculty of the New School University that he heads gives him a vote of no confidence, it’s worth recalling the kid-glove treatment given to him by most of the media when his involvement in Vietnam-era war crimes was revealed (Extra!, 7–8/01).
Oddly, New York Times reporters Marc Santora and Lisa Foderaro, who wrote about the New School vote, don’t seem to recall that Kerrey participated in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians—an atrocity that caused considerable controversy when it was exposed by the New York Times Magazine (4/25/01)—when they recount the major events of his career, though they do remember that Kerrey “briefly considered a run for mayor of New York in 2005.” Presumably a war criminal heading up a school largely founded by refugees from Nazi Germany is a problem for at least some faculty members, but the New York Times‘ summation of the politics of the situation is that Kerrey’s own politics “were too moderate for the unabashedly liberal campus.”
