I’ve been tied up with end of year meetings, graduation, and conference travel lately. This has kept me from posting as regularly as I might like. But I did get to see Hillary Clinton speak at NYU’s commencement last week (see Clinton Gives NYU Commencement Speech).

I quite liked Hillary’s speech, but then again, I’m a sucker for idealistic, inspirational graduation messages. Between you and me, I also enjoy the pomp and circumstance, and the pageantry of the day. And as much as we academics like to complain that graduation ceremonies are long, boring, and suck up otherwise productive hours from a day, a good speaker or two can go a long way toward making the experience worthwhile.

A good set of commencement speeches never fail to remind me why I got into the education business in the first place – to learn, to discover, to share, to teach, and to inspire. Needless to say, I came away from the NYU commencement ceremony feeling reinvigorated and reassured about our academic mission (despite the economic challenges).

So now that I’ve had all the inspiration I can take for one week, let’s switch gears to something not quite as uplifting – the impending bankruptcy of GM (see GM Doesn’t See Deal Before Deadline). According to the NY Times:

With a week remaining before the expiration of a tender offer to its bondholders, General Motors said Tuesday that it did not expect to reach an agreement with the United Automobile Workers and others before bondholders decide.

G.M. is trying to persuade the holders of $27 billion in unsecured notes to exchange them for about 41 cents on the dollar. It must receive tenders for 90 percent of its bonds in order for the offer to be successful and avoid a bankruptcy filing.

Many analysts believe that the offer, which expires May 26, will fail and that G.M. will seek Chapter 11 protection.

But we knew that already.

And we wait…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Corporate Strategy, Philisophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.