Entries associated with the tag "Northwestern University":

I’m not that shocked by the news that Roger Clemens and Barbara Walters had a secret affair. The way they never showed up together at nightclubs was the tipoff. Neither is it any big surprise that Hannah Montana is the love child of a former black U.S. senator – whose name I forget but I'm guessing Carol Moseley Braun. The news comes so hot and heavy you can’t catch it all, but I know there’s someone Northwestern U. disinvited to graduation, and nobody messed up that badly lately but Paula Abdul.

But what gets me is that everyone is so totally unrepentant. Nobody repents. Nobody even pents in the first place. Why are Americans so unpentable? Why build penthouses if nobody uses them? Is it because they’re so hard to get to? Is the trouble with this country that before you can pent you have to take an elevator? Sometimes the doorman won’t even let you on it.  Back in the 50s so much was written about pent-up Americans that everyone figured the problem was high priority and by now we’d all be penting our hearts away down at street level. Wasn’t there a huge government building just outside Washington dedicated to the problem? What a waste of tax dollars!

I want a president who says that if we’re going to have all this grab-ass at least people need to say they’re sorry. No more excuses unless they’re sorry excuses. My wife says that if I want a sorry excuse for a president it’s no wonder I bounce out of bed each morning whistling a happy tune. But that’s not it. I can’t wait to read the papers. Sure, the news is all online, but nobody confesses like a good old fashioned newspaper. Newspapers pent and repent and then they pent some more. Especially on Sundays.

The New York Times sets the standard for coming clean. This Sunday they had so much to admit to that at the end of the their usual list of corrections on page four the Times went on: "Corrections in other sections: Arts & Leisure, Page 4; Week in Review, Page 2; Travel, Page 3; Book Review, Page 5; Sunday Styles, Page 23." By the time I’d tracked down all the corrections I’d read the entire paper! 

The Medill faculty spun its wheels Wednesday, defeating an innocuous resolution written in response to "Quotegate," the controversy over much more than a quote. Here's the resolution: "We the faculty of Medill accept Dean John Lavine's apology for poor judgment in not properly attributing a source in a letter he wrote to the alumni in the spring of 2007 issue of Medill magazine. We look forward to working with Dean Lavine as full partners in the future."

This resolution went down 22 to 14. One faculty faction opposed it because it's so wimpy -- it says nothing about the running-sore question of whether there was a source in the first place. A larger faction, composed of marketing professors, opposed it on grounds that the dispute was silly and Lavine owed no one an apology. A third faction believed the resolution ignored the most important issue -- Northwestern provost Daniel Linzer's unsatisfactory report that claimed a blue-ribbon committee had vindicated Lavine.

The resolution's champions believed it would let Medill move beyond an issue about which the truth will probably never be known.

Dean Lavine, present for the faculty meeting, abstained.

Some faculty felt a second resolution voted on Wednesday also addressed the matter: "We the faculty and the dean vigorously uphold the fundamentals of truth, accuracy, ethics and fairness in journalism and in all communications." Despite the careless omission of apple pie, this passed 29 to 7, Dean Lavine voting aye.

A third resolution proposed that the faculty and dean commit themselves to deliberating and voting on the new Medill curriculum that Lavine has introduced before it is fully implemented next year. Here we get to Quotegate's yeasty back story, the sense among the journalism (as opposed to marketing) faculty that Lavine is ramming change down their throats. This resolution was defeated on a tie vote, 17 to 17.

On another front, there's been an exchange of e-mails between Professor David Protess and Provost Linzer's office. Protess is hoping to find out how that blue-ribbon committee went about its work and whether it actually submitted a report.

A couple of inaccurate headlines in Saturday's papers stand as tributes to the power of weasel wording. The stories reported on the findings of an ad hoc committee created to look into allegations that Dean John Lavine of Medill fabricated a quote that appeared a year ago in his "Letter from the Dean" in the alumni magazine.

The Tribune story was headlined in print "NU panel exonerates Medill dean" and on-line, "Northwestern panel says there was 'no evidence' that Medill dean fabricated column." The Sun-Times story was headlined "Panel clears Medill dean / Finds no evidence he made up quotes." The story by Eric Herman, quoting Northwestern Provost Daniel Linzer, reported that "a committee of three prominent Medill graduates found 'no evidence to point to any likelihood that the quotes were fabricated.'"

Herman wrote the sharper story, quoting Linzer more fully. "No evidence to point to any likelihood" sounds like a cute way of saying there's evidence, but not enough of it to drag this matter on. Of the quotes in question, the money quote had Lavine claiming that an unnamed junior had said about a marketing class, "I sure felt good about this class. It is one of the best I've taken." David Spett, a suspicious Daily Northwestern columnist, said he talked to every student in the class, including all five juniors, and all denied making that statement. Northwestern professor David Protess and Tribune columnist Eric Zorn later said that they'd reinterviewed the five juniors, with the same results. That's evidence. 

The Tribune story didn't even identify the members of the panel. Herman's did. They were Jack Fuller, former editor and publisher of the Tribune, and Northwestern trustees Teresa Norton and Paul Sagan, who is also cochair of the Medill Board of Advisors. A  Boston businessman, Sagan is the son of Chicago publisher Bruce Sagan,  a close friend of Lavine's.

Here's the key graph from Linzer's letter "to the Medill Community" Friday trying to put the Lavine matter to rest: "The committee unanimously concluded that although a record of the student statements that were quoted cannot be found, sufficient material does exist about the relevant storefront reporting experience and marketing course to demonstrate that sentiments similar to the quotes had been expressed by students. Thus, the committee found that there is ample evidence that the quotes were consistent with sentiment students expressed about the course in course evaluations and no evidence to point to any likelihood that the quotes were fabricated. The committee further stated that the author of a piece like the 'Letter from the Dean' could not reasonably be expected to have retained for a year the notes or e-mails documenting the sources of quotations used in the letter; nonetheless, the committee advised that in the future such meticulous archiving might be desirable given the heightened awareness of the problems that can result."

This passage is a travesty. Lavine's sin was to publish a quote that he did not attribute and later could not support. Linzer's sin is the opposite. His letter is all unsupported attribution and no quotation. He does not produce the report whose conclusions he's announcing. He tells us the committee concluded that the quotes in question were true to the spirit of student sentiment -- but that's never been the issue. He writes "no evidence" when there is. He speaks of "heightened awareness" as if to reduce an angry confrontation to a golden teaching moment. Until they speak for themselves and say differently, I will not believe that Fuller, Norton, and Sagan fully approve of the way Linzer construed their work. And until Linzer produces it, I will not believe they even submitted a formal report. Linzer's letter has the ring of something spun out of -- well, not whole cloth, but conceivably a telephone call from Sagan saying Lavine has egg on his face but let's get past this.

Northwestern isn't past this. Despite what headlines said, Lavine wasn't "cleared" or "exonerated," not even in Linzer's account. Lavine's aggression in changing Medill has made him a lot of enemies among the faculty, alumni, and student body They won't let this drop.

UPDATE: Paul Sagan responded Sunday morning to my e-mail asking him to comment on Linzer's letter.  "I respect that you have a job to do, but I'm afraid I can't help you," he wrote back. "I am a trustee of the university and my obligation is to serve the shared interests of the students, faculty and administration.  I believe I've done that in this case by offering my views to the provost, and I don't think I would be helping any more by giving an interview.  I can refer you to the provost's office for additional comment."

Sixteen Medill present and former faculty members have signed and released a letter calling on Dean John Lavine to show his hand. They want a "more complete accounting than the dean has thus far provided" of the unattributed quotes Lavine used in a letter to alumni published in the Medill alumni magazine last year--quotes that it's been suggested the dean concocted. "This matter has become a crisis for the school. The principles of truthfulness and transparency in reporting are at the core of Medill’s professional and academic mission," says the faculty statement. It was delivered to Lavine with a cover letter signed by professors Craig LaMay, Donna Leff, and David Protess, all of whom teach ethics classes and who told Lavine "it would be unconscionable to maintain faculty silence on such a widely covered public issue."

Medill students and alumni have weighed in by the dozens online and overwhelmingly they gig the dean both for using anonymous quotes and for asking the school to take his word for it that they were legit. (He says they came from e-mail he's since deleted.) Lavine sent his faculty a memo that insisted, "They are real quotes, a fact that was demonstrated by my including in my letter to the alumni a link to a student video that showed students making the same kind of points. There was no shortage of material from students for these quotes."

This video showed sophomores being interviewed about their experiences working in storefront newsrooms. They were apparently enthusiastic in roughly the same sort of language used by Lavine's anonymous junior, who said about a marketing class, "I sure felt good about this class. It is one of the best I've taken." But while one excited student might sound like another, video about one class is hardly proof that the anonymous quotes about another are bona fide. Tuesday's letter from the faculty bluntly points that out.

If Lavine feels he doesn't have a friend at Medill, the fact is he had precious few before this scandal erupted. The journalism faculty feel disrespected since he became dean two years ago and ripped up the curriculum. Now they've got a chance to publicly disrespect him back.

UPDATE:  By early Wednesday afternoon, a statement posted online by the "Concerned Students in the Medill School of Journalism" had been signed by 175 persons, according to one of the four authors, Medill senior Emmet Sullivan. The students endorsed the faculty statement and added that they felt students "have been ignored" by Lavine in the matter. The statement concluded: "We believe the dean, the faculty, the alumni, the students and ALL members of the Medill community should come together, come to terms with the issue and use this unfortunate situation as a teachable moment in our journalism education. In our eyes, this has yet to happen." For more, go here.

UPDATE: On Thursday Dean Lavine issued an apology for his "poor judgment" in quoting a student's letter "without naming the student. I should have asked permission to use the student's name with their comment about the IMC 303 class." Is that what happened? David Spett, the Medill senior who broke this story in the Daily Northwestern, says he interviewed all 29 students in that class and they all denied having said the above quote. The school might want to poll those 29 students again, ask them if they said or wrote anything to Lavine about the class, and if they did ask them what. And while the school's at it, it could find out how many, if any, of those students thought it was one of the best classes they'd taken. Perhaps the dean's being dodgy because it was actually a quote he heard secondhand. 

The faculty senate at Northwestern University has formally accused NU’s administration of abolishing democracy at the Medill School of Journalism. A resolution passed unanimously June 6 by the General Faculty Committee says it found NU’s “suspension of faculty governance at [Medill] to be unacceptable and in violation of the University’s Statutes.” The resolution predicts “curricular changes that are ill considered . . . the demoralization and enmity of the faculty . . . damage to the national reputation of the School . . . the loss of and the inability to hire faculty who believe that the faculty’s role in governance is important for students, faculty and the public.”

The backdrop to this blunt resolution is a series of internal and external audits in recent years that judged Medill--which enjoys seeing itself as a journalism school without equal--as an academic basket case. President Henry Bienen and provost Lawrence Dumas stepped in. Skipping the usual faculty search committee they named John Lavine (pictured) the next dean in late 2005, and in early 2006 they booted aside the incumbent, who had months to go on his contract. Lavine was already on site: he was the founding director of NU's Media Management Center, a fee-charging profit center housed in the journalism school.

An article on Lavine in the fall 2006 issue of the university alumni magazine said he’d been given “free rein to transform the school.” It explained that Bienen and Dumas “suspended formal faculty oversight at Medill for the 3 1/2-year transition period in which Lavine will shepherd the integration and revamping of the [Integrated Marketing Communications] and journalism programs and faculty.” IMC and journalism are Medill’s two basic divisions.

The resolution continues, “If the Administration in the future concludes that an unacceptable academic situation warrants the temporary suspension of the normal role of the faculty ‘to prescribe and define the course of study’ [a quote from NU’s statutes], such suspension should be only for a set, limited period and only after formal approval by the Board of Trustees made after the consideration of the views of all concerned faculty.”

Medill professors I’ve spoken with say a three-and-a-half-year suspension is hardly “temporary.” And it’s news to them if the Board of Trustees had any say in the matter, let alone heard from “concerned faculty.” The GFC resolution was signed by the committee chair, law professor John Elson, and submitted to Bienen and Dumas. They apparently haven't responded. Elson wouldn’t comment, but Lavine did. He said the GFC didn’t talk to him before it acted, and its members obviously don’t know what he knows.

And what’s that? “We’ve had more faculty involvement in the last 18 months than in the decade before that. We have 12 major committees reaching across the entire faculty.” True enough about the dozen committees. But unhappy professors say Lavine just pays lip service to them. A new curriculum is going to be introduced over the next four years, and although professors have been consulted individually, one told me, “We don’t vote on anything. We have no vote. Anybody who dissents is labeled ‘antichange.’” Another outsider heads up the new curriculum project--Mary Nesbitt, who'd been (and remains) managing director of the Media Management Center's readership institute before director of the women-in-newspaper-management project at the Media Management Center until Lavine brought her over. 

Lavine wasn’t blindsided by the resolution. Clarke Caywood, who teaches PR and marketing for the IMC side of Medill, was on the GFC when the resolution was proposed, though not when it was voted on (he says he'd have voted "aye"). He says, “I told Lavine a few months ago--truth to power--‘You should know it’s coming.’ His reaction was, ‘I think I’m doing the right thing.’ I don’t disagree with him, but I think his way of doing it leaves something to be desired.” That said, Caywood believes that the Medill faculty has long had a "passive-aggressive" relationship with the administration, with unwillingness to get involved running a close race with willingness to take offense.