Stony Brook University getting a new president soon

Daily Point

Decision expected in next two weeks

At a meeting of the Stony Brook University Council Monday, Kevin Law, who chairs the governing body, said that the presidential search committee had finished its work and had submitted three names to the SUNY board of trustees, The Point has learned.

The SUNY trustees are now going through an interviewing-and-due-diligence process and ultimately will make the final pick.

Their decision is expected over the next couple of weeks, before the end of the month.

Former Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis announced last May that she would be stepping down after a four-year stint to become president of Yale University, a move that became effective in July. Stony Brook has been led since Aug. 1 by interim President Richard McCormick, who formerly presided over Rutgers University and the University of Washington.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Trump unbound

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/250203nationalcartoons

Reference Point

Abe’s day

There are days one remembers. For many Americans, one of those days is today, Feb. 12, the day Abraham Lincoln was born.

It always has been a special day for Newsday’s editorial board, given Lincoln’s singular leadership and accomplishments, but particularly so for the board in the earlier days of the newspaper’s existence. On almost every Feb. 12 from 1945 to 1968, the board published a piece of writing by Lincoln or about him, a cartoon featuring him, or both — except for such years as 1950 when Feb. 12 fell on a Sunday, when Newsday did not publish. Even then, the board ran a piece of poetry about Lincoln on Feb. 11, accompanied by a cartoon which featured a young, sweating Lincoln splitting rails watched by a pipe-smoking man relaxing on the ground under the caption, "Nobody Never Got Nowhere Workin’ That Hard, Abe."

Newsday’s first entry in that run was a popular poem written by Vachel Lindsay in 1914 called "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (In Springfield, Illinois)" superimposed over a charcoal-type sketch of the man deep in thought and in apparent mid-stride. The poem refers to Lincoln as "the quaint great figure that men love/The prairie-lawyer, master of us all." And it depicts Lincoln as being roused from his grave by the bloodshed of World War I, unable to rest until "a spirit-dawn/Shall come; — the shining hope of Europe free ..."

In 1946, the board wrote about a statue of Lincoln in London "in a conspicuous place of honor across the road from Westminster Abbey," accompanied by a cartoon of a solemn Lincoln writing the Gettysburg Address.

In 1947, in a piece called "Lincoln Was a Liberal," the board wrote of a speech Lincoln gave on his 52nd birthday to "a torchlight parade of a local German club" in Cincinnati when he said, "I am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number." A cartoon depicting an apparent Uncle Sam figure writing "malice toward none" while looking up at a portrait of Lincoln was titled "A Lesson to Be Relearned."

Later Feb. 12 offerings featured citations from his autobiography, a fanciful account of the supposed last Long Islander alive who allegedly shook hands with Lincoln, remarks he made on Nov. 10, 1864 explaining the necessity of the election held two days before in the midst of the Civil War, excerpts from Carl Sandburg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Lincoln, and a cartoon that depicted a woman placing a wreath on Lincoln’s grave under the heading "Greater With Time."

The final entry in the Lincoln run came in 1968, a time of great upheaval in America. The board ran an editorial cartoon of a sculpted bust of Lincoln over something he wrote in 1861 about the importance of preserving liberty: "The struggle of today is not altogether for today -- it is for a vast future also."

Words that were true in 1861, 1968, and 2025.

Happy birthday, Abe.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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