"The First Book I've Ever Read"...No Comment

Ashley Thorne

Today's No Comment item, via Jason Fertig, is an excerpt from a Sports Illustrated article on Kemba Walker, a basketball player at the University of Connecticut, who, in ESPN's wording, "appears to have gone through college having only recently completed reading an entire book for the first time."

And in his travel pack is a copy of New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, a book that Crump encouraged Walker to read as part of an independent study class on racism in sports. Before the Final Four, [academic counselor Felicia] Crump suggested that Rhoden's book would be the first that Walker had ever made it through cover-to-cover. After the win over Kentucky, Walker confirmed this. "That's true," he said. "You can write that. It is the first book I've ever read."

See also: "Betrayed by Higher Ed" by David Clemens, NAS blog.

  • Share

Most Commented

March 24, 2025

1.

A Reckoning for Higher Education?

Are American colleges and universities finally getting their comeuppance?...

March 31, 2025

2.

Keeping Watch

Columbia's descent into chaos is by its own hand. Actions to right the university must be swift and tough....

January 27, 2025

3.

Exclusive Documents: UC-Boulder Breaks Civil Rights Law to Advance Racial Preferences

New FOIA documents grant a window into how the University of Colorado-Boulder, in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, discriminates on the basis of protected class and upholds a co......

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

April 15, 2025

2.

Fighting Harvard and the Other Cultural Warlords

The academic bureaucracies and professoriate are so deeply committed to their radical program of replacing American society with their own vision of a new order that we have no real choice b......

October 12, 2010

3.

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

What does it mean to be Latino? Are only Latin American people Latino, or does the term apply to anyone whose language derived from Latin?...