Patricia Nelson Limerick, the renowned University of Colorado at Boulder history professor who also serves as the official self-appointed "University Fool," will put on white face paint and make her almost annual tour of campus on April 1.
Limerick's goal this year is to seek out the most "valuable" people on campus. If she is successful at locating those people early in the day, she will then look for the "happiest" people in the university.
If she finds people who feel neither valuable nor happy, she will inquire into remedies for these shortfalls in cheer, she said. In early April last year, Limerick was delivering a series of historical lectures at Cornell University and was unable to perform her Fool's duties at ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä.
She will begin her search at 10 a.m. from her office in room 367 of the Hellems Arts and Sciences Building.
Limerick was named ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder's official "University Fool" in 1988 by former ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä President Gordon Gee, and held similar positions at Harvard and Yale, where she previously taught. She takes a tour of campus each April 1, most years, to remind people to lighten up and not take themselves too seriously.
"This is the Fool's job description: to point out folly wherever she sees it and to speak frankly when no one else in the kingdom dares to speak at all," she said.
Limerick is a leading scholar of Western American history. She is a 1995 MacArthur Fellow and author of the landmark book, "The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West."