Purdue Trustees Approve Bonus For Daniels

Purdue University trustees are giving school president Mitch Daniels a performance bonus for his first six months in office.

Trustees approved the $58,000 bonus following a five-minute discussion Friday. 

The trustees did not mention Associated Press reports on emails showing that while Daniels was governor he tried to eliminate liberal "propaganda'' from teacher education courses at Indiana's public universities.

A former Indiana House Education Committee chairman said Thursday that Daniels should resign over emails showing the ex-governor tried to keep liberal historian Howard Zinn's work out of classrooms.

Democratic Representative Charlie Brown of Gary said the board needs to "seriously look at asking him to step aside'' following publication of the emails obtained by The Associated Press.

Daniels has a base salary of $420,000 and was eligible for up to $126,000 in bonuses. The performance goals for Daniels haven't been set.   

Trustees chairman Keith Krach praised the job Daniels has done since he became president of Purdue in January.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the board said Friday he would have picked Daniels as the school's new president even if he had known that Daniels tried to eliminate what he called liberal "propaganda'' from teacher education courses as governor.

Keith Krach tells The Associated Press that he hadn't seen emails revealing Daniels' effort, and they wouldn't have changed his mind anyway.