Chancellor Khayat's Special Portrait

Brandon Skaggs and Jeffrey Wright
University, Miss. – Hanging throughout the front entrance of the J.D. Williams Library as well as the stairwell leading to the Archives and Special Collections, are portraits of the past chancellors of the University of Mississippi.  Each former chancellor is memorialized with an oil portrait. 

Since a majority of the chancellors have passed on, the library rarely has to take criticism about one of the former chancellor’s portraits, but that is not the case with Robert Khayat, the 15^th Chancellor at UM. 

Alex Watson, librarian for the Journalism Department, said, “Dr. Khayat was unhappy with the lighting of his portrait and requested that something be done to fix the issue.”  The portrait was then moved to an entering patron's immediate left.  But, the lighting was not ideal for the portrait, and Khayat asked for that issue to also be addressed. While the request was a minor inconvenience Watson noted, “It was actually a good thing.  The lighting where [the portrait] hangs needed to be rewired anyway.” However, when it was pointed out to Watson that the lighting for the portrait was currently not working, he simply smirked and said, “We usually only fix it when we know he’s coming.”