Sheldon Hackney's credentials are impeccably liberal. He is the husband of a Friend of Hillary, departing president of an Ivy League university, a white Southerner accredited in the civil rights movement, a defender of Robert Mapplethorpe against Jesse Helms. In April, Hackney seemed the natural choice to be President Clinton's nominee to head the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the agency that dispenses federal grants to academia (about $160 million in 2,200 grants last year). But in this post-Lani Guinier period, the past makes Hackney ideologically suspect. Once he may have been in the catbird seat; now Hackney may be...
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