TRI In The News
Former UVA President, First Amendment Advocate Bob O'Neil Retires
10/14/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: FORMER UVA PRESIDENT, FIRST AMENDMENT ADVOCATE BOB O'NEIL RETIRES
From WAMU
Original article available here.
Bob O'Neil, founder of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, was a graduate of Harvard Law School, a Rhodes Scholar, and President of the University of Virginia before he spent the past two decades working in defense of the First Amendment. Now that he's decided to retire, O'Neil's friends and colleagues are pausing to remember his work -- and place bets on whether he'll actually be able to slow down.
Higher education in his blood
O'Neil grew up in Cambridge, Mass., the son of a faculty member at Harvard. He got undergraduate and law degrees there, before taking academic jobs in California, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and the University of Virginia. O'Neil's longtime assistant, Sandy Gillem, remembers the day he was officially selected to be president of the university.
The university has some odd traditions, one of them being that the newly selected president is offered the position by a benevolent group called the Society of the Purple Shadows, who appear dressed in purples robes, masks and all.
"Bob was in the middle of his remarks when the Shadows appeared, and what they were doing was bringing him a letter welcoming him to the university," he says. "But I can remember the expression on their faces for the rest of my life. They had never lived in the south before, and they thought, 'My Lord! The Klan has arrived!'"
The O'Neils soon discovered that Charlottesville was a civilized place. Bob made friends quickly, and he wanted everyone at the party.
"He took diversity very seriously, and tremendous strides had been made, but Bob O'Neil pushed it," Gillem says.
A passion for the First Amendment
After five years in office, O'Neil stepped down to start the Thomas Jefferson Center, a group that would offer assistance to people fighting legal battles on First Amendment grounds. His second in command was Josh Wheeler, a UVA Law School graduate who had studied under O'Neil, who said his knowledge of the subject was unmatched.
"I created a little game for myself that I called 'Stump the Bob,' and the purpose of the game was to find a First Amendment case that he did not know about," he says. "I gave up after about six months, because not only did he always know the case, he went on to tell me additional facts about the case that were not reported that he somehow knew about."
O'Neil was also generous. Wheeler says he rarely turned down a request to speak, and John Whitehead, who founded another nonprofit to protect civil liberties, says his counterpart was happy to share expertise.
'He clerked for William Brennan on the Supreme Court, so he understands how the Supreme Court thinks, and what was good about Bob, when I'd call and say, 'Can you help me with this?'" says Whitehead. "I'd get an e-mail back. I knew Bob was going to do his best to help."
Time to move on
But after 20 years at the center, O'Neil said he was ready to retire. Gillem and Whitehead were skeptical.
"Bob is not retired," says Whitehead. "I just wrote an article for the Jurist, and lo and behold, the fellow who wrote the column before me was Bob O'Neil."
Even so, colleagues at the Jefferson Center, the University of Virginia Law School, and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government thought this a very good time to pay tribute to O'Neil, with a reception and dinner this month.
