ABSTRACT
Governing boards and college or university presidents are not truly independent of one another. Hubert Park Beck strongly urged that institutions of higher learning amend their charters "to eliminate selection of trustees by co-option", the practice of "the filling of a vacancy by vote of the remaining board members". In February 1997, the full fifteen-member Board, with only one dissenting vote, recommended the dismissal of eighteen of the nineteen members of the Board of Trustees of Adelphi University. With the governing board and faculty pretty much isolated from one another, President Diamandopoulos was free to interpret the needs of Adelphi and to run the campus as he saw fit. Traditional view and approach to education was inaugurated at Adelphi by what was called the Core Curriculum, a program that was justified by the argument that "one cannot claim to be educated without the command of a broad range of general ideas and an appropriate understanding of their implications".
