Buzz

Apropos of recent events, here is where the informal truce between politics and the university originated:

Smallwood’s next move was to find a new president. His methods this time were even less conventional. He first offered the post to [John Kenneth] Galbraith and to Lady Barbara Ward Jackson (who for a time considered it seriously). Then, mortal offence to the faculty, he advertised in Canadian, U.S. and British newspapers... At last, on June 8, 1966, he announced he had found his man. The new president would be Lord Stephen Taylor of Harlow... Taylor had never heard of Memorial until Smallwood called him out of a House of Lords debate, included a $30,000 salary, a new house, a pledge of freedom from political interference and the promise of support to develop a major university.

— Richard Gwyn, Smallwood, the Unlikely Revolutionary (1972 ed.), pp. 309-10