Until George Washington University appointed him its 15th president, Steven Joel Trachtenberg in 51 years of life had had only one nickname.

During a Brighton Beach boyhood, during undergraduate semesters at Columbia and law school years at Yale, during striving days and nights around Capitol Hill and Cambridge, Trachtenberg's buddies called him “Track”—as in sidetrack, backtrack, track record, fast track, tracking like it was on rails.

But at GW, which recruited Trachtenberg in 1988 on the basis of his preceding and stellar record at the helm of the University of Hartford—where he made a name for himself by making a name for that theretofore lackluster institution—some Foggy Bottom wag dubbed the new chief executive “Tractor Butt.”

And ever since, “Tractor Butt” it has been; the tag would resonate more harshly except that it is difficult to call someone “Tractor Butt” without conveying a sort of affection.

Still, another man might be stung. Another man might sting back. But Trachtenberg—who, after all, keeps farmer's hours—is geared more to the long haul than to the sprint and, being built wide and close to the ground and therefore equipped with a center of gravity that would inspire envy in a sidecar racer, can hardly protest the sobriquet's accuracy. He has taken the slagging in the same brisk good humor with which he has moved through 25 years of academic administration.... Continued