Emory President Jim Wagner (Emory)
Faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University begin voting today on whether they still trust in the ability of embattled President James Wagner to lead the university. The online voting will continue through Friday.
I have been getting a lot of emails both for and against Wagner, who sparked a firestorm with a recent essay in which he cited the infamous 1787 “three-fifths compromise” as an example on how leaders reach agreements.
Established in the give-and-take of shaping the U.S. Constitution, the compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of distributing funds back to states and determining representation in Congress.
Writing in Emory Magazine, Wagner used the compromise as an example of how people with conflicting views can find common ground.
He wrote:
One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state