Obama Apologizes to an Art Historian for His Jab About the Discipline

By Nick DeSantis. President Obama has sent a handwritten apology to an art historian at the University of Texas at Austin who wrote to him to defend her discipline after he joked last month about the value of art-history degrees, according to the art blog Hyperallergic.
Mr. Obama made the remark during a speech about job training, saying, “folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art-history degree.”
Ann Collins Johns, a senior lecturer in the university’s department of art and art history, wrote a letter to Mr. Obama through the White House’s website shortly after he made the joke, which upset many in higher education. More...