The thing about endowed chairs in academic departments is that all one really needs to do to create them is to be, well, very rich. Thus, the University of Missouri has the Ken Lay Chair in Economics. Yale has the BearingPoint Chair in Management.
The latest news in awkward academic chairs comes from Harvard University, in which major intellectual David Armitage apparently holds an endowed chair in the history department named for Lloyd C. Blankfein, the incredibly well compensated CEO of Goldman Sachs. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is now suing Goldman Sachs for the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage crisis. In November Forbes named Blankfein as one chief executive responsible for the Biggest CEO Outrages Of 2009.[Image via]
