College News Roundup

Cornell Ex-President Highest Paid in Ivies

Former Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman '77 earned $1,079,034 during his last year of service, according to 990 financial filings obtained by the Cornell Daily Sun, making him the highest-compensated president, ex or otherwise, in the Ivy League.

Lehman's 2004-2005 paycheck exceeded not only the salary of current Cornell President David J. Skorton, but also Lehman's own paycheck from the previous year.

Anonymous sources told the Cornell Daily Sun that Lehman received such a high compensation partly to ensure that he wouldn't speak about the reasons for his departure.

According to these sources, Lehman signed a nondisclosure agreement with the executive board in which he affirmed that he would not break with board policy by speaking about why he left Cornell. If he would have done so, sources close to the situation said, he would have risked losing part of his compensation.

But the Daily Pennsylvanian suggests that it's not unheard of for a former president to make more money than an acting one.

According to an Oct. 6 article, former University of Pennsylvania President Judith Rodin made more in the 2005 fiscal year than current President Amy Gutmann, even though Rodin's term ended the day before that fiscal year began.

Harvard Paintings Lost, Found

Two paintings that went missing from Harvard's collection more than 30 years ago were found at an auction of the estate of William M.V. Kingsland, a member of the Landmarks Committee of Manhattan's Community Board 8.

The auction was held Oct. 14 in Hudson, N.Y., by Stair Galleries, which bought the items from the city of New York.

An art professional told the Harvard Crimson that one of the paintings is a 1790 portrait by John Singleton Copley, a famous Colonial American painter. The other is a portrait of former Harvard President John Thornton Kirkland.

According to Margaretta M. Lovell, a professor of American art and architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Kingsland's heirs did not know the paintings were stolen, and Kingsland himself may have been unaware.

Regardless of the past, the university is now working to recover the paintings.

"We are currently working with law enforcement authorities and the other parties involved to coordinate the paintings' safe return, and we are pleased and relieved that they have been located," Harvard University Art Museums spokesman Daron J. Manoogian said in a statement quoted in the Crimson.