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Whether running a university or an ultramarathon, Gallaudet University's first deaf president leaves impressive footprints.
Superlatives are often used to describe Irving King Jordan. President of America's most unique university. The university's most unique president. The beneficiary of America's most successful campus revolt. The most publicized rise to power of any university president. The winner of the earth's most grueling athletic competition. The world's most prominent deaf person.
One can always dispute superlatives, but with Jordan it takes some work.
Jordan is president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world's only university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. His rise to power as the university's first deaf president made world headlines in 1988. Hearing presidents had run the university during its previous 124 years.
During the selection process, Jordan was one of two deaf finalists. At first, the trustees chose a hearing person who did not have a background in deaf education. What followed was the "Gallaudet Revolution" that shut down the university for eight days. Jordan mediated between trustees and students, finally urging the new president to resign. She did. And days later Jordan was named president.
But the path to the presidency may have started with a simple decision by Jordan to take a high school typing class. "I was the only boy in the class and had a ball," recalls Jordan.
Such skills later proved critical to Jordan's career. While in the U.S. Navy, typing skills landed Jordan a job working directly for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Then, at age 21, he was deafened by injuries he received during a motorcycle accident. Ironically, Jordan says of the typing class, "I made the decision simply because I didn't want to be stuck in the silent library for 50 minutes a day."
Silence came anyway. But it enhanced Jordan's communication abilities, says Gallaudet psychology professor Robert Williams, a fellow graduate student during the early 1970s. Williams remembers Jordan stepping in to teach one of his classes during an absence.
"I didn't know how much teaching experience he had, being a deaf man at a hearing university, but I knew he'd manage and he did. Using a combination of lipreading and whatever else he needed, he did a great job...