Nichol's tribe[R]: Gene Nichol came to the Presidency of the College of William and Mary with all the populist flair of Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren's classic novel, All the Kings Men. He left the way George Sherman left Georgia, apparently sharing the general's belief that the best way to fix something is to destroy it.

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Nichol's tribe[R]: Gene Nichol came to the Presidency of the College of William and Mary with all the populist flair of Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren's classic novel, All the Kings Men. He left the way George Sherman left Georgia, apparently sharing the general's belief that the best way to fix something is to destroy it.

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Since Nichol abruptly resigned on February 12, 2008, after the College Board of Visitors decided not to renew his contract, the battle between American political polarities, the right versus the left, has descended on Williamsburg with the same destructive force as everywhere else.

Recent excesses of social conservatism make it easy for humanists to rush to judgment: a progressive president of a prestigious school driven from office by a powerful rightwing political machine in a conservative state.

This martyr thesis certainly has its support: personal assaults on the president and his family for his removing a Christian cross from the Wren Chapel; a campaign against him for allowing a sex show on campus; criticisms of his implementation of a program for ...

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