President Bush Taps Alumnus Tony Snow ' 77 as Press Secretary
Snow spoke at Davidson in 2002 when he came for his 25th class reunion, and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award.
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4/26/2006
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Robert A. “Tony” Snow ' 77, named on Wednesday, April 26, as White House Press Secretary by President George W. Bush, was an outstanding Davidson student who has remained engaged with the college throughout his professional career.
“He really was a remarkable student,” recalled Professor Lance Stell, who taught Snow in a seminar on political philosophy. “As a matter of fact, he's the only student who has ever challenged me to a debate. And it wasn't just a fly-by-night idea. He followed up on it, secured a venue, and we had it. He assigned me to argue against the viability of libertarianism, and he argued for it. He was passionately interested in political philosophy, and believed deeply that people's political beliefs had real meaning in the world.”
Snow, a Cincinnati native, majored in philosophy at Davidson, and was a great admirer of the substance and style of the late Professor Emeritus of Philosophy George Abernethy. In 1997 Snow wrote a syndicated Media General national column about his time as a pupil in Abernethy's class, “Once you got in George's thrall, you stayed,” Snow wrote. “He enticed students with lectures of rare pith and energy. I did something for him I've never done before or since. I raced back to my room and reworked my notes to preserve as much as possible.”
Snow kept in touch with both Abernethy and Stell after college, and considered Abernethy an occasional mentor/tutor. Snow wrote in his column, “He (Abernethy) read editorials and columns as meticulously as my old term papers. He suggested books and articles. He asked questions and displayed curiosity that was both flattering and daunting.”
The announcement was made in the White House's Brady Press Briefing Room by President Bush, who is flanked by Tony Snow (l) and outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan (r). (Photo by Commander Jane Campbell ''87)
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Snow was very active outside the Davidson classroom as well, and was named to both the Omicron Delta Kappa campus leadership honor society and to “Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities.” His peers elected him president of his senior class. He also won the college's Vereen Bell Creative Writing Award, won a filmmaking award, and was elected to the Delta Sigma Rho honor society for debate. He was a member of the Eumenean Literary Society, played in the Pep Band, and served as a hall counselor for first year students.
Snow has been equally active on behalf of Davidson since his graduation, and received the college's Distinguished Alumnus Award at Alumni Weekend 2002 while attending the twenty-fifth reunion of his class.
His service as an alumnus has included hosting an admission reception at his home shortly after graduation, representing Davidson at a Washington-area College Fair in 1985, and presenting numerous talks on campus, including a keynote address during Homecoming 1999. He also judged an English department writing competition in 1999.
Snow taught at a bush school in Kenya for two months after graduation, then joined the North Carolina state government as an advocate for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. He studied philosophy and economics at the University of Chicago during the 1978-79 academic year, and served an internship at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem before taking his first newspaper job as an editorial writer for the Greensboro Record.
He served on editorial staffs at papers in Norfolk and Newport News, Va., Detroit, and then the Washington Times. He was a nationally syndicated columnist between 1993 and 2000, appearing in more than 200 papers.
Snow receives congratulations from other alumni award recipients at the ceremony in April 2002.
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In 1991 he took a sabbatical from journalism to work in the White House for the first President George Bush in speechwriting, communications, and media affairs. He broke into television as a regular panelist on Fox TV's political discussion show “Off the Record,” and in 1996 became host of Fox's Sunday Morning Show. For the past two yeas he has published a syndicated radio show, but he continues to be a frequent pundit on Fox News, and a regular fill-in for Bill O'Reilly and radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Snow has built a following of fans who appreciate his thoughtful style and courteous manner. Stell notes that he has been consistent in that attribute since Davidson. “He's always refused to take cheap shots in discussions,” Stell said. “The ideas are what's important to him, rather than making other people look bad. He behaves like a gentleman. He's someone the college can well be proud of. He has always represented our influences well, and if we can claim some impact on him, that's to our credit!”
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its founding by Presbyterians in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently recognized as one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the nation.
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