In Hackney's words, the tale of a controversial period

Orange and red leaves flutter over Locust Walk. They flutter over students advertising a cappella groups aplenty, over dapper graduates rushing out of Huntsman Hall and over a campus that is currently free from national controversy.

But that wasn't always the case.

On Penn's very own 1993 campus, when then College freshman Eden Jacobowitz called down to a group of sisters from Delta Sigma Theta -- a black sorority that was performing a noisy ritual outside his Harnwell College House window as he tried to write an English paper -- he inadvertently landed Penn at the center of a media frenzy.

On the night of Jan. 13, 1993, after more polite efforts to silence the group had reportedly failed, Jacobowitz uttered his now-legendary words -- "Shut up, you water buffalo! If you want a party, there's a zoo a mile from here."

Racial harassment charges ensued, and Jacobowitz, along with the rest of Penn, soon found himself thrust into the national limelight.

Enter then-University President and current History Professor Sheldon Hackney.

Having just received President Bill Clinton's nomination to become chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Hackney says he was particularly vulnerable to attack.

And attacks he did receive.

When, in response to a controversial columnist, students calling themselves members of the "black community" stole The Daily Pennsylvanian's entire April 15, 1993 press run -- 14,000 copies -- many, including History Professor Alan Kors, say they believed that Hackney was less than outspoken in his condemnation.

The press promptly descended upon Penn, dubbing Hackney a failure to free speech and propelling both the DP theft and the "water buffalo" incident to the forefront of the national agenda.

Though Hackney eventually did receive the NEH position, he says the whole experience was a miserable one.

Now, Hackney's newly released book -- The Politics of Presidential Appointment -- aims to explain just that -- the highly political and difficult process of presidential appointment. But, says Hackney, that was not always his intent.

"Originally, it was therapeutic because that was such an intensely bad experience for me, and I had a residue of anger about it, so I began writing in order to understand it better for myself," he says. "At some point, it seemed like it might be the sort of stories that other people might be interested in and I wanted them to read it, so I published it."

After having been a media punching bag, Hackney says he understands all too well the media's power to shape, or at least influence, public opinion. It is not surprising, then, that in his attempt to reframe public opinion, he too opted for a time-tested form of media -- a book.

"This is a story about how narratives get started in the media and how difficult it is to change those narratives once they get started," he says. "It is about the way the media environment works these days, and I feel very strongly that we need to bring civility back into public life."

And if his book isn't quite enough to revolutionize the entire media industry, then it still brought a sense of control back to Hackney's life, he says.

"I escaped that story, if you will, and became a character in my own story," Hackney says. "That was liberating."

In Hackney's version of the story, he is the media's unfair caricature of political correctness. In actuality, Hackney maintains, he was a champion of free speech, condemning the DP theft, as well as the University's judicial action against Jacobowitz.

Yet, Hackney's version of the story is not the only one. In addition to the media story that played itself out in the early 1990s, in 1998 Kors, along with Harvey Silvergate, published The Shadow University -- a critique of America's campus and civil liberties violations, which places special emphasis on Hackney's term as University president.

An outright condemnation -- much like the one Kors says Hackney failed to give to the DP theft and "water buffalo" debacle -- Kors' book makes no pretenses about his view of Hackney.

Lines like, "Sheldon Hackney's career is perhaps the embodiment of the 'not on my watch' concept and its resulting double standards" and "At Penn, [Hackney] imposed speech codes, double standards, and thought reform," appear in the book of which Kors says, "I toned it down 99 percent. The book was not overly personal."

Neither, then, is Hackney's book, which focuses on the intricacies of presidential appointment and bringing civility back to public life, rather than his personal feud with Kors.

While neither book has many kind words for the other, both Hackney and Kors seem to emerge victorious. They are both tenured faculty at Penn, both in the History Department and both, somehow, coexisting.

As for Kors, he successfully defended Jacobowitz until the case against him was dropped, and now, with Silvergate, heads the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education.

While Hackney's tale had a somewhat sinister beginning, he says it still ended with the standard closing: happily ever after.

"It has a happy ending from my point of view -- I got confirmed," Hackney says. "The story turned out happy for me because in the Senate I appeared as an individual, as a real person in a way that is not possible when the story is being carried out through television, radio, newspaper and magazines."

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