Awarding Mayor Catherine Pugh an Honorable Mention for Marylander of the Year (Dec. 25) for removing Confederate-era statues is like complimenting Neville Chamberlain for keeping government expenditures down at the beginning of World War II. Honoring Mayor Pugh ignores her dereliction of duty in doing next to nothing to change the criminality-infested nature of Baltimore, including most notably, but not exclusively, her refusing to even address, much less disincentivize, the problem of fatherlessness in the city.
A better choice would have been to honor University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke for courageously supporting academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education.
His choice of Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to be the University of Baltimore's Fall 2017 commencement speaker, despite major opposition and threats of unrest, shows his commitment to diversity of thought in the academy from which such diversity has largely disappeared.
Richard E. Vatz, Towson