Wendell Berry withdraws donation of his papers to university over Big Coal ties

Poet Wendell Berry is ungifting his writings to his alma mater, the University of Kentucky, over its plans to name a basketball players' dormitory after the coal industry. Said Berry, who taught at the university:

“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team. That — added to the ‘Top 20’ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”

Read Berry's "How to be a poet"