It could have been one of the best years of his life.
It was 1993, and, having just been nominated to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities, and preparing to wrap up a successful 12-year term at one of the nation's most prestigious universities, then-Penn President Sheldon Hackney was riding high.
But within weeks -- largely due to already rampant racial tensions, the now legendary Water Buffalo affair and the theft of the Daily Pennsylvanian's entire press run and its aftermath -- Hackney's world came crashing down around him.
In January of that year, controversy erupted when then-College freshman Eden Jacobowitz yelled the words "water buffalo" at a group of black sorority women who were making noise outside his High Rise East Window, leading the University to prosecute him for hate speech.
Hackney's failure to intervene in that process, coupled with his failure to punish a group of black students who stole the DP's press run in protest of the views of a conservative columnist, put him at the center of a debate over free speech and brought national media attention to his doorstep.
That was when his seemingly perfect year became, as he puts it, the worst spring of his life.
Still, Hackney left for Washington several months later -- after having been president of Penn from 1981 to 1993 -- to serve a four-year term as chairman of the NEH.
Now, Hackney is back at Penn as a professor of American History, but this time around, things are a little bit different.
"I'm like [Charlie Brown] in the Peanuts comic," Hackney says. "Every year, he goes to kick the football and Lucy moves it out of the way, and he vows he won't do it again the next year.
"But he always does."
It is this witty, comical personality -- coupled with his deep, soothing Southern accent -- that makes Hackney such an amiable professor.
Indeed, while Hackney is satisfied with his accomplishments both as president and professor, he has received more widespread support as a full-time teacher -- not to mention a lot less controversy.
Now, Hackney teaches two history courses during the spring 2003 semester -- American Identity and the Sixties, a general honors seminar.
College sophomore Rachel Liebov describes American Identity as one of the best courses she's ever taken at Penn.
"Professor Hackney listens to our ideas and doesn't really interject his own," Liebov says. "It's a really interesting course because it provides a second layer to history, looking at it more thematically."
Hackney says his formula for teaching stems from his ability to raise challenging questions and focus on listening to his students.
"I just ask questions that I think are interesting and I wait for someone to try to answer," Hackney says. "As a professor, I learned early on that you shouldn't break the silence if no one answers immediately."
"It takes students time to think, so you have to let the silence just sit there."
According to his students, Hackney is known to foster in his classroom an open and comfortable forum in which students feel free to say what they're thinking.
"He praises and encourages students when they present their opinions and he truly respects us," says College sophomore Rebecca Maescher, who is enrolled in her second class taught by Hackney.
"Professor Hackney makes people enthusiastic about the themes and topics of the course, and the department overall," she adds. "He certainly has a large following of students, but he makes time for all of them.... He makes the school feel a little more personal."
Hackney's current commitments stem beyond his classroom, though, and his peers both in the academic world and the community echo his students' admiration.
In an April 7 luncheon celebrating the Center for Community Partnership's tenth anniversary -- which Hackney helped establish in 1992 during his tenure as University president -- he was one of eight honored for being one of the "visionaries, architects, and stewards of service learning," University President Judith Rodin says.
Hackney himself is pleased with the contributions he has been able to make to the community -- both pre- and post-water buffalo affair.
"Penn was viewed as a great bulldozer by the West Philadelphia community," Hackney says of the decision to create the organization, and of his role in developing the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps in 1985. "We wanted to improve relations with the community."
And despite the wave of criticism he received for his response following the Water Buffalo affair, his colleagues still remember many of his successes while at Penn's helm.
"He had an 'Open Door Policy,'" recalls Isabel Mapp, an associate director of the CCP. "He and his wife would entertain any student who came by.... Even when students were protesting on his lawn, he would feed them."
Today, Hackney seems to be at home back in the classroom, spending more time talking to and advising his students and less time answering to critics and journalists.
"Happiness is to be found in friends and family, not two million dollars," he tells his students during an afternoon lecture. "Although we would all take the two million dollars.... Remember -- Americans were promised the pursuit of happiness, not happiness."
"I think we've done all the damage we can do today."
