The latest episode of Mark Tavener’s comedy, High Table Lower Orders, includes a character who has held both the Donald Rumsfeld Chair in Peace Studies and the Bill Clinton Chair in Personal Ethics. (My University has a set of Chairs which are named by the recipients: my fantasy is to hold the Tony Hancock Chair in something, though if push ever came to shove I guess I’d go for C.L.R. James if his executors would let me). Anyway, you can do better than Mark Tavener, surely. Nominations please.
{ 39 comments }
Daniel 03.14.05 at 3:38 pm
I’ve always wanted to be rich enough to mock the greed of university administrators in this way. I really really want to set up the Kenneth Williams Professor of Proctology somewhere, just for the pleasure of saying “and we certainly hope that this will be a well-endowed professorship”.
Audley 03.14.05 at 3:52 pm
The Pamela Anderson Chair of Biometrics;
Audley 03.14.05 at 4:15 pm
The Spike Milligan Chair of Tactical Combat;
The Le Penn School of Comparative Ethnic Culture
Steve LaBonne 03.14.05 at 4:21 pm
The Claude Vorhilon Chair of Exobiology.
Uncle Kvetch 03.14.05 at 4:22 pm
The Jeff/Jim Guckert/Gannon Chair in Political/Journalistic Hackery/Excellence
Steve LaBonne 03.14.05 at 4:23 pm
The James Warren Jones Chair of Toxicology.
Doug 03.14.05 at 4:34 pm
Why stop at chairs?
Aeron Chair of New Economics
Ottoman of Istanbul (engaged in a long intradepartmental feud with the Ottoman of Armenian Genocide Studies)
Throne of Good Reading
Beach Chair of Light Reading (part of the Physics Faculty)
Hank Williams Barstool of Philosophy
Casting Couch of Gender Studies
Backseat of Adolescent Psychology (alternatively, any donor without sufficient manna to back a well-endowed chair could take a backseat instead)
John Ford Saddle of Cinematography (sometimes confused by newcomers with the John M. Ford Lab Bench of Metaphysical Word Games)
Movable Feast of French Culinary History
Movable Beast of Comparative Evolution
Bleachers of Sabermetrics
Nosebleed Seats of Sports Economics (whose holder confounded everyone by marrying the new holder of Club-Level Seats of Corporate Strength)
Broken Down, Scraped Up, Paint Chipped, Rained On, Taken Out Back But Looked So Bad Even the Garbage Men Turned It Down Chair of Blues Poetics
Guest scholars who have overstayed their welcome could be banished to the Divan of Longueur.
Patrick O\'Neill 03.14.05 at 4:44 pm
Cheap shot, but: The G.W. Bush Chair in English
Chris 03.14.05 at 4:52 pm
The Rupert Murdoch Chair of Language and Communication at Oxford University? … oh, that exists….
audley 03.14.05 at 4:53 pm
ahh I wanted the G.W.Bush chair of rhetoric…but as you say….
audley 03.14.05 at 4:56 pm
The David Horowitz Chair of McCarthy Studies
audley 03.14.05 at 5:01 pm
The Martha Stewart Chair of Ethical Design
Dan Simon 03.14.05 at 6:13 pm
The Comfy Chair in Spanish Religious History
dodo 03.14.05 at 7:17 pm
The Osama bin Laden Chair of Speleology
Michael R 03.14.05 at 7:50 pm
The Arnold Schwarzenegger chair of Women’s Studies.
The Strom Thurmond and David Duke chairs of African studies.
The Henry Kissenger chair of Latin American Studies.
The Harry S Truman chair of Utilitarianism (okay, I even cringed while writing that)
The Vladimir Putin chair of Democratic Studies.
The Jonah Goldberg Chair of Knowing Your Subject.
The Dick Cheney Chair of Hermeneutics.
Bill Gardner 03.14.05 at 8:35 pm
The Philip Morris chair in epidemiology.
It will happen.
lornix 03.14.05 at 8:55 pm
The Kenneth Lay chair of Corporate Accounting
Randy Paul 03.14.05 at 9:58 pm
The Hannibal Lecter Chair in Vegan Cooking.
Chip 03.14.05 at 10:04 pm
About that Ken Lay chair:
http://munews.missouri.edu/Showinterest.cfm?interest_id=546
P.M.Lawrence 03.14.05 at 10:59 pm
There’s already a Hraold Holt swimming centre.
John Quiggin 03.14.05 at 11:30 pm
A friend of mine was actually in line for a Ken Lay chair, just before the meltdown. He got the job, but they changed the name.
Josh 03.14.05 at 11:51 pm
The Kripke chair of Social Graces
Dell Adams 03.15.05 at 1:47 am
This reminds me that H. L. Mencken used to mock the politicians of his day by using their honorary doctorates, as in Dr. Harding, Dr. Coolidge, etc.
Could we have a Mencken Chair of “Letters”?
monkyboy 03.15.05 at 2:06 am
The Charlton Hestin Chair of Trauma Medicine
mrjauk 03.15.05 at 3:28 am
The Abraham Lincoln Chair of Southern Culture
The Paris Hilton Chair of Modern Communications Security
jan 03.15.05 at 6:47 am
tony blair chair of canine studies
jlw 03.15.05 at 10:52 am
Morbidly:
The Thomas A. Edison Chair for Criminal Deterence
–or, more obscurely:
The Christopher Pike Chair for Binary Communication.
Paul Gowder 03.15.05 at 11:44 am
The Clarence Thomas Chair in Constitutional Theory
The Bernard Kerik Chair in Public Administration
The Richard Nixon Chair in Democratic Values
MisterBS 03.15.05 at 3:02 pm
The Robert Novak Chair in Mimetic Herpetology
The Darl McBride Chair in Patent Law
The Armstrong Williams Chair in Public Accountability
Sonny Jim 03.15.05 at 3:30 pm
The John Payne Collier Chair in Book History and Literary Detection.
Or how about the Mark Hofmann Chair in Manuscript Studies and Ordinance Engineering?
Uncle Kvetch 03.15.05 at 5:23 pm
“The Robert Novak Chair in Mimetic Herpetology”
I think we have a winner.
Matt Singer 03.15.05 at 8:04 pm
The Michael Jackson Chair in Identity Theory
The Hugh Hewitt Chair in Blogger Triumphalism
The Glenn Reynolds Chair in Library Science
snuh 03.15.05 at 10:40 pm
the samuel walton chair of (inter alia) industrial relations, community relations, workplace relations, gender studies, multicultural studies, antitrust studies and first amendment law.
Chris 03.16.05 at 1:24 am
The George W. Bush Chair in Climate Change
The Dan Rather Chair in Document Forensics
The William Gates Chair in Anti-Trust Law
The Kim-Jong Il Chair in International Relations
Jonathan Dresner 03.16.05 at 5:26 am
Truth may be at least as strange as satire: I just learned that Harvard has a “Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature”….
glenn olsen 03.16.05 at 1:46 pm
The Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi Chair of Democratization Studies
ogmb 03.16.05 at 1:57 pm
Until he moved to UCSD this year Keith Poole held the Kenneth L. Lay chair in political science at the University of Houston. Afaik the chair (endowed by Enron) still exists.
kevin 03.16.05 at 1:57 pm
I vote the prize for the “Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature.” I don’t know if it’s so funny because its real or just the idea of someone being officially declared a weary professor.
Phoenician in a time of Romans 03.16.05 at 7:39 pm
The Saddam Hussein Chair in Political Analysis.
The Karl Rove Chair in Communication Ethics.
The Albert Gore Chair of Electoral Security Systems.
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