The Baylor University Board of Regents will introduce Ken Starr to Faculty/Staff on Tuesday at 
3pm.
*Update* The Waco Tribune is also reporting that Ken Starr has been named the next President of Baylor University.
*Update* Politico is also reporting the selection of Starr.
*Update* Marv Knox of the Baptist Standard has a report on the selection as well.
Still no word from Baylor yet.
This is from KWTX, the CBS-affiliate of Waco, Texas:
WACO (February 14, 2010) – Sources close to the presidential search tell News 10 that Kenneth Starr will be named Baylor’s 14th President, with an announcement coming as early as Monday.
The Texas native is currently the dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. A woman who answered the phone at Starr’s home in Malibu said Mr. Starr was unavailable on Sunday evening.
The University has been searching for a president since the Board of Regents forced former President John Lilley out in mid-2008. David Garland was appointed interim president on August 20, 2008. He is also dean of Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary.
Starr, an accomplished lawyer, is probably best known for serving as Independent Counsel during President Bill Clinton’s term. Starr authored “The Starr Report” which is widely believed to have been a key factor in the House of Representatives voting to impeach Clinton in 1998. Calls to Baylor’s Director of Media Relations were not returned Sunday night.
Watch the video of this KWTX report here.
Here is the Wikipedia entry for Ken Starr.
Pepperdine University is affiliated with the Churches of Christ and Starr is the son of a Church of Christ minister (see Wikipedia). Starr is a former long-time member of McLean Bible Church, a non-denominational evangelical megachurch located in the D.C. suburbs.
According to the Waco Tribune, Starr will join a Baptist church upon moving to Waco.
Baylor Law professor Mark Osler has praised the decision on his blog here.
The Southern Baptist blog SBC Today is upset that Starr is not a Baptist.
Comments on the hire of Starr over at the blog of the journal First Things and Christianity Today.
Hundreds of responses from Twitter. On the Baptist front, see Al Mohler and his sidekick Russ Moore.
A Pepperdine Law Professor, Colleen Graffy, is here.
This is tragic. Didn’t Baylor trustees learn from the Sloan presidency? From attempts to woo the GW Bush library?
Baylor is the largest Baptist university still related to Baptists (we’ve lost so many: University of Chicago, Bucknell, Brown, Rochester, Colgate) and the trustees went independent to PREVENT fundie takeover of Baylor. So, then they keep doing bizarre stunts like this. Wasn’t the embarrassment of a president that tried to impose a think-tank for Intelligent Design in the face of a science faculty threatening to quit en masse enough? Now Ken STARR?
I can’t believe the “Regents” (not trustees, sorry) would prefer a schlep like Starr, who isn’t even Baptist, to John Lilly. I predict this will be as disastrous as when Harvard hired Larry Summers as President and he drove away Cornel West and had half the female professors threatening lawsuits!
BDW,
Shoot, when Michael Westmoreland-Whit and I are debating from the same point of view, shouldn’t that tell someone something?
As to SBC Today being “upset”, I am not sure you can point to any ill will on our part. We are just calling it like it is. I personally could care less if they would have hired a Methodist. I am merely trying to point out the inconsistency–the largest “Baptist” university in the nation places someone at the helm that isn’t even a Baptist.
Blessing,
Tim
Sorry, that should be Michael Westmoreland-White. Sorry Michael for dropping the “e”.
Tim
That’s all right, Tim, credit card companies do it all the time!
I’m not only upset that Starr isn’t Baptist. He’s also not an educator. He’s a lawyer who loves headlines. Baylor was doing well with Lilly–recovering from the Sloan years. He is also bound to involve Baylor in political controversies that it doesn’t need and which will detract from its mission as a Christian and Baptist university. And Starr has written numerous times in op-eds and other places opinions that show he does NOT believe in academic freedom, church-state separation or any of the ideals that Baylor Regents should hold dear.
Baylor needs to find a new way to select Regents–maybe an IQ test or something. This is brainless.
Within 2 years, the Regents will be forced to fire Starr–and maybe woo back professors, students, and donors. So much for Baylor 2012.
Here’s my opinion:
1. Baylor ceased to be Baptist before this. John Lilley was a Presbyterian elder, for heaven’s sake! This merely continues and verifies the trend. I concur with my brethren at SBC Today (the website) in this analysis. It does not really bother me, since I came to grips with this reality some time ago.
2. I see no reason why academia may have no place for conservatism, which seems to me to be the gist behind Michael Westmoreland-White’s objections (correct me if I’ve mischaracterized your objections, Michael). Ken Starr is a very accomplished man and is no dunce.
3. I regret that the Clinton presidency became the imbroglio that it became, and while sexual predation upon interns and perjury are serious crimes that deserve punishment, we must admit that Starr’s prosecution meandered significantly from its starting-point to arrive at the doorstep of Monica Lewinsky. All of this being conceded, I don’t know why tenacity ought to be a disqualifying characteristic for a university president.
4. Baylor being a difficult community to lead will not wind up being Ken Starr’s fault.
5. I agree entirely with Michael that Baylor ought to find a new way to select TRUSTEES (stubborn as I am in persisting with my antiquated terminology). They might start by taking a fresh look at the system that was in place before Herb Reynolds stole the university from the BGCT. Surely, now that we SBTC folks have departed the fold, Baylor doesn’t need protection from the BGCT?!
Which just goes to show what I’ve said all along—a closed, oligarchical governance system looks beautiful…so long as you’re on the inside.
Brother Bart,
Being the alum of Baylor that you are, I concede to your points. I agree that Baylor left the “Baptist” fold many years ago. However, Brother BDW has posted something over at SBC Today concerning Starr and his wife that is very impressive for me, and does not really place Starr in the Church of Christ camp the news articles make him out to be. Which brings me to a question for Michael.
In your comment you acknowledge and I will agree, that Dr. Sloan was relieved of his duties, mainly because he could not bring the Baylor family together. I submit the reason for that was he opened the door for more conservative scholars to be part of the faculty. Here is my question. If Sloan was released because he could not bring the Baylor family together, then how long do you think Starr will remain? It does seem that Starr will be more conservative in his faculty than Sloan ever was.
Blessings,
Tim
Conservatives definitely have a place in academia. Starr isn’t an academic. He’s a publicity seeker with no concept of the needs of a university.
Sloan didn’t try to bring in conservative faculty–they were already there and still are. He ran roughshod over the faculty and the established procedures for selecting faculty. And an Intelligent Design “think tank” isn’t an example of conservative academics, but an example of stupidity pretending to be science–which is why the science faculty threateened to resign.
With Starr as president, Baylor will lose funds, students, and teachers–in droves. Again, the regents will be forced to fire him within two years.
Baylor may well lose teachers in droves under Starr.
Starr will be a godsend when it comes to raising money in Republican Texas.
Eighteen-year-olds contemplating a choice of university were six years old at the time of Zippergate. Most of them have no idea who Ken Starr is. It won’t affect student enrollment at all.
I doubt that Starr will be much of a unifier. He has not been around universities much, and probably does not have the experience with the herding of cats that is necessary in college administration at the upper levels.
More, his religious backgrounds (note the s) includes both a denomination and a non-denominational church that are very authoritarian in approach — what the head cheese says goes. That won’t work well with the alumni, the faculty, the donors, nor the regents, all of whom think they are the top dog(s) at Baylor.
Does anyone know where (if?) Starr does church while at Pepperdine?
Waco Ethicist,
It appears, according to this article, he has gone back to the Church of Christ denomination.
I thought all the talk of Baptist Notre Dame was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. But now that Baylor has a C of C president, I have to admit that’s even stupider.
Mr. Barber you say that Starr will be helpful in raising money in “Republican Texas.” But raising money for political campaigns is very different than raising money for an academic institution. Even the kinds of people who donate are different. When rich businessfolk give to political campaigns, they give to people whom they hope will be “business friendly,” and those are often Republicans. But when they give to colleges and universities, they are usually seeking to produce graduates who will be the best in their fields–and whom they can hire as such. They want stability, not controversy.
You say that 18 years olds will not care about Starr because they won’t remember Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, Starr’s abuse of power as special prosecutor (if I can’t find any evidence that the Prez. is guilty of anything in Whitewater, I’ll find something else!), etc. But parents ARE influences on their children’s decisions, especially if they are footing some or all of the bill–and many of them will care.
Alumni (many of whom are donors) will care.
Further, you don’t understand about the loss of faculty. Faculty with great reps aren’t always easy to replace and if they go after feuds with the administration, they make others wary of coming to fill their shoes. If accreditation agencies of the American Association of University Professors gets involved, there is negative publicity, donors get nervous, etc.
I think this will prove to be a disastrous decision–and endorsements by the ACLU or a Baylor Law prof. don’t convince me otherwise. The experience with Larry Summers at Harvard is what guides me: Summers was and is a brilliant economist–though of a type with which I strongly disagree (and values count in economics). That didn’t make him suitable as president of Harvard. I think Starr will be a similar case.
Rather than engage in a bit of “Is not! . . . Is too!” I’ll assuage my more peurile instincts with the somewhat less satisfying “Time will tell!”
“sexual predation upon interns and perjury are serious crimes that deserve punishment”
I happened to see the Barbara Walters interview of Monica Lewinsky. Sexual predation? Well, in which direction — I mean if flashing the president of the United States to expose your bottom in a hallway is any indication of how experienced the girl was. (I’ll admit, Bill Clinton was an easy target).
If we threw politicians out of office for lying there would be few left in office. Ken Starr won, but on charges that should never have been brought. Fortunately the Senate was wise enough to acquit, or we may have spiraled down to the election stealing of third world countries by now.
The whole episode was simply an example of the disgusting level to which politics was carried by Republicans for political advantage.
Dr Grannemann,
On this topic, I agree with what Diana Garlanf has opined concerning pastors: In some cases there cannot be consent because of age or power differences. An intern cannot be a peer to the President of the United States. In Texas it would be a crime for me to have consentual sex with a member of my congregation (other than my wife!), if I understand Garlland correctly. In Washington it should be a crime (and is indeed predation) for the President to be doing his interns.
Monica Lewinsky was 22 years old at the time of her first sexual encounter with Bill Clinton. It has the smell test of consensual sex without power being much of a factor, except that Clinton’s position made him a bigger prize for Lewinsky.
I’m not excusing Clinton’s behavior, simply that U.S presidental elections are of too great an importance to be stolen on such grounds.
Look, I like Bill Clinton. You do him no favors by minimizing his worst fault. He’s a serial sexual predator. I’m hopeful that he has gotten the help that he needed and has faced up to this problem.
I hope I didn’t minimize Bill Clinton’s problem, just commenting on what ought to be an impeachable offense.
A sexual predator? Lewinsky and Flowers were quite willing. Paula Jones was not, but then he didn’t get anywhere with her.
The Clinton thing is past, but Starr is still involved in the culture wars. As Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Starr decided to volunteer to defend CA’s Prop. 8. What happens to Baylor if he decides as president to involve it in another culture war incident.
I’ve realized that I have no chance of understanding what led the Baylor Regents to (UNANIMOUSLY) call Ken Starr as President–since I still can’t make heads or tails out of why they fired John Lilley.
Baylor is a conflicted “community.” Any “Christian” university which teaches evolution solely to the exclusion of intelligent design–much less creationism–has a real identity problem.
Baylor must solve this identity crisis before it will ever be anything other than divided.
Dr. Grannemann,
I’d rather that we amicably agree to disagree than to opine further. I am in danger of breaking my personal pledge not to be disrespectful toward President Clinton.
Bart,
On further reflection, I decided Clinton was a sexual predator in the case of Paul Jones (certainly he humiliated her, and I always thought she did the right thing in suing him). I also suppose any extramarital philandering has “an element” of predation to it even if both parties voluntarily participate. But I’m getting beyond my verbal competence now.
I respect your personal pledge.