It sounds like the setup for a bad joke: What did the Wall
Street type say to the college president on the golf course?
Well, we don't know exactly—but it has launched a saga with
weighty implications for American intellectual and civic life.
Here's what we do know: One day in the summer of 2010, Barry
Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, a respected liberal-
arts school in Brunswick, Maine, met investor and philanthropist
Thomas Klingenstein for a round of golf about an hour north of
campus. College presidents spend many of their waking hours
talking to potential donors. In this case, the two men spoke
about college life—especially "diversity"—and the conversation
made such an impression on President Mills that he cited it
weeks later in his convocation address to Bowdoin's freshman
class. That's where the dispute begins.  In his address,
President Mills described the golf outing and said he had been
interrupted in the middle of a swing by a fellow golfer's
announcement: "I would never support Bowdoin—yo