President Niara Sudarkasa is embroiled in a controversy that is affecting state appropriations for Lincoln University

Lincoln University, Pa.
Summer break is normally a time of respite, a pause in the scholastic action to allow administrators, faculty, and students a little timeout and a chance to get the batteries charged. But it seems the only things being charged at Lincoln University in rural southeastern Pennsylvania this summer are highly publicized allegations of fiscal mismanagement and misconduct.

Tensions have reached such a high level on the leafy campus, about fifty miles west of Philadelphia, that during a hastily called meeting of the board of trustees in July, a handful of board members broached the topic of calling on the university's president, Dr. Niara Sudarkasa, to resign.

For now, Sudarkasa, who has been at the helm at Lincoln since 1987, is staying put. She says she will see the school through its current crisis, which she says has been orchestrated by a handful of adversaries.

"There is no truth whatsoever to any of the allegations you may have heard or read," she told those at the meeting.

The turmoil has been especially troubling for Lincoln, a historically Black institution founded in 1854 that currently has approximately 1,500 students and lays claim to a long list of distinguished graduates, such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; poet Langston Hughes; Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria; and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana.

To understand the genesis of the current problems facing Lincoln requires a quick course in art history -- specifically, a priceless collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings known as the Barnes Foundation, which Lincoln controls.

Albert C. Barnes made a fortune developing a surgical antiseptic after the turn of the century. He built a mansion and complex on Philadelphia's Main Line, where he bought and stored artwork.