The Claremont Conservative

I AM CMC Is Lame

2012-04-12T23:18:00.000-07:00

President Pam Gann Admits To Goals, Targets for Minorities on Campus

2012-02-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

Please see bold. I will post more when I can.

Interview with Pamela Gann by C. Apollo Morgan 2/11/03

Transcript by Tom Meyer 2/12/03

013

CAM: Um…So, to begin with, we understand that there has been an ad hoc diversity committee that was established in the fall of 2001 and we’re curious if you could share with us the timeline of the creation of this committee and if indeed that committee is where the Irvine grant began with and who serves on the committee and what its purposes are.

PBG: Ok, I may not be totally factually accurate so if you want to—I’d ask you to do the following: if you in fact want to use this question then, I think I’ll need to do a fact check. But I don’t want to do a fact check if you’re not going really use it. So I’ll answer it to the best of my recollection but still—I think one of the fundamentals of journalism is factualness, being very accurate. But my side is really your side

Um…We had, ummm…several different kind of campus issues that came up in my second year as president. It raised issues—I would say really it must be about campus climate. Quite a lot of it was much more student-orientated than anything else. Umm.. there was the cmcstudents.com, for example, and managing the message board issues. Both from the standpoints of balancing free speech, but also having a community in which everyone feels welcome. So that was an issue that was pretty regularly coming up. There had been the issue with the—what do you call the newspaper, there’s like an issue in the Collage or something [garbled] there was articles that were meant to be clearly satire. And there was a satire piece that really backfired. And in--by a CMC student. And I got questions from campus, I got questions from off campus about that. And there was also a Saturday program that involved gay-lesbian issues, this is all over like the same semester(100) and there was some student conduct issues, not from participates, but non-participants in that. So there had been just a number of things like that. So as a consequence I did two things. One was, every—beginning of every fall semester I sent a memo to the whole community, which you’ve been getting, about free speech, harassment and climate. And that’s posted on my website. About what we expect here. And so I am very care to be totally respectful of free speech, but ask people to basically use common sense, ‘cause you might do something that’s quote “protected”, but it may not be in best interest the overall climate of the community to do that. So—if you read that memo—that was a consequence of a whole series of things that happened and I did that last fall of 2001 and sent it out again this fall. The second thing I did was just a president’s ad hoc advisory committee I put together. It was faculty and a few student administrators—in fact we haven’t met this year. But that—following that whole semester’s incidents, I invited a group of faculty and some administrators to come together in an ad hoc advisory committee where we could talk through some issues. And come up with some suggestions. So, for example, on the student online newspaper we asked Cynthia Humes, whose the associated dean for academic computing, to work on that issue a little bit. And the question was trying to figure out what the new cmcstudents.com, cuase by that time we made the transition, what their own guidelines were going to be—public, their own public guidelines were going to be about how they handle the message board. So that we could have a dialogue with them, not to tell them what to do, but to talk to them about concerns and what would be appropriate times when they probably, I mean they got to be aware—they got to monitor the board or they could be subject to issues like slander, libel, harassment and other things as well. So, that’s a student run, not college run operation. So that’s a topic we took up, for example. Now, we used that group to talk about campus climate issues generally, and there was some—I believe as I recall there were some independent studies or theses that were being done by students on campus climate and we looked at some of those, and so on it went. Then we did receive an invitation from the Irvine Foundation to apply for a grant with them. And I did talk to that committee about what areas they thought would be useful to put in a grant. And, as I recall, we also— (200) I think the drafts of the Irvine proposal—this is

where I need to check factually those—again, I ask you again, if you want to use this part of the conversation, let me go back to check our files on this—that we used that committee as one sounding-board, not only for idea generation but also to look at some of the drafts. I believe that some of them looked at some of the drafts. It’s not—it wasn’t a policy-making committee or anything, it was an advisory committee for the president, and, as I say, I don’t think we’ve met at all this whole academic year. I just thought there was some issues going on at the time—it had more to do with student affairs and student climate issues than anything else on campus at the time.

CAM: Do you think that those problems that were happening then—do you think that those are reoccurring problems, or just once-in-a-while things that are more or less beyond the administration’s [control]?

PBG: I think they are—they can become, on any campus—predicting them and so on, who knows? On the other hand, we did—Tory Sun did a formal student climate survey last year, and we looked at all the results from that. You—I would recommend you talk to him about it, cause he would—I mean, he was the one who did it. There was preparation—I believe this ad hoc committee also looked at the draft of that survey and made suggestions as well. But if you look at the results from that survey there are some climate issues on campus as well, that were noted by students. And so we looked at some of the—as I say, [garbled] independent study or thesis climate work, and we looked at that work. Just--I think we have some on-going work to do here on student climate. It’s not a major, major issue with students, or with most students but it is an issue with some students. And, as a community, we should be attentive to whatever student issues and concerns are—whatever nature they are. Whether its satisfaction with the athletic program, or the debate program, or community service, or career service, or climate, or curriculum, whatever. I mean, if you’ve chosen to study here, and be a member of our community, I think we have an obligation to any student to listen, and see whether we have agreement with or not with it.

So on climate issues, yes. I think—continuing to work on climate issues is, I think, something the college has to pay attention to. We have issues—there are some evidence that some minority students—this was a study done by [Name] two years ago off of the regular student surveys—there is evidence that some groups of minority students have statistically significant different—social science methodology being applied—have statically significant difference in their viewpoint towards their educational experience here at CMC. Well, that shouldn’t be ignored. We should—we should study that and see. So it’s not to be ignored. So there’s a variety of different kinds of studies that have been done (300) that I would say would evidence we have issues – I wouldn’t say major problems – but we should be as attentive to those as we are, as I say, to the quality of the coaching instruction that we get, or faculty teaching, or anything else. It’s all part of a resident college.

(310) LM: You mentioned an invitation from the Irvine Grant to—from the Irvine Foundation reply to this grant, did CMC solicit that invitation or was it—did it sort of come out of the blue?

PGB: Again, I probably need to check that factually, it—I don’t remember soliciting it. The fact is, this program has been on-going at Irvine for several years. Jerry Garris can give you all the background and details factually better than I can on this. If you—the Irvine Foundation has a history of supporting private higher education in California, not public, but private higher education. So with respect to this particular program they have already issued millions of dollars in grants under this diversity initiative. I mean everything from—if you go on their website or any other documents, we have a whole list of all the grants they’ve made under this program, and to whom. We were actually in the last cycle of grants.

LM: I see.

PBG: We were they very—we are—we were—we have received a grant, we were in the very last cycle. I believe Pomona and CMC were in the last cycle, all the other Claremont College were earlier, including the Graduate University. Stanford has had more than one grant. USC has had more than one grant. They’ve had millions of dollars to Stanford and USC, for example. So, their intent was to reach all of the institutions that they have supported in the private sector in California, I think, through that grant program. And so they were cycling so many through their—their budget. That would be what I would’ve thought was going—and so we were contacted in the last cycle and said “if you want to apply now because this program is ending in several years.”

LM: Right. Couple other things about this: can you tell us what The Consortium For A Strong Minority Presence at Liberal Arts Colleges is?

PBG: Yes, but you would be better to talk to Dean Ascher.

LM: Ok.

PBG: About that. But, it is an organization—again, I will do my best on the facts, but I—everything I’m saying—because your asking me very important questions and—but they’re also very factually specific.

LM: Sure, we’ll check this with…

PBG: But Dean Asher’s more directly involved. Jerry Garris can tell you more than I can about the Irvine Foundation. Dean Ascher could tell you even more than I can about this. But it is—I don’t know who started it, I don’t know who founded it. All I know is that a consortium exists, and it is housed administratively at Grinnel College. And it has members if you will, liberal arts colleges, top liberal arts colleges throughout the country are there. And what it is trying to do is match—since we don’t have graduate schools or graduate programs in our liberal arts colleges, so we’re not like a university where you have graduate student automatically in your whole university. So you have all these liberal arts colleges without graduate students, and the idea then is to have available to you resumes of PHD graduates from the research universities, because that’s where people go to get their PHD available in a network so that you can look at them as possible hiring candidates in whatever way you need to hire (400). So, they’re usually have just—are about to finish or have just finished their PHD in normal research universities and its to connect the liberal arts colleges with the research university doctoral candidates who are coming out. It also would help the institutions themselves, we hire a number of vistors and teachers every year and, on the other hand, it helps those candidates have some research or teaching experience as well. And in a number of our fields, not all of our fields, but in a number of our fields we only hire permanent faculty who have had post-doctoral experience, anyway. So the candidates themselves benefit from having post-doctoral experience for their own job purposes, and then we get the, if you will, pre-packaged access, if you will to that information, which makes it convenient. And most of our hiring—a lot of our hiring is done through quote “packaged” access, if its—I mean the Modern Language Association is where you go if you’re an English major, to process through all of that to get a job. Or the American Economics Association runs all these hiring conventions everywhere. So there’s all these models of how you pool information out there to help you with hiring and this is another model of what I would call pooling information.

LM: Right. Ok. So CMC is a member of this of this consortium.

PBG: [hums in approval] And we are a member a member of it.

LM: Ok. What are going to be the duties of the new Assistant Dean of Students of Minority—for Mentoring of Programming.

PBG: Again, I would recommend that you talk to Tory Sun…

LM: Ok.

PBG: He was written a job description for that, and there will be a search committee established this semester. So, he would be the best to person to talk to about that.

LM: Alright. Is it true that while the Irvine Foundation grant affects hiring practices for certain future factually, including visiting and post-doctoral positions that grant application wasn’t formally discussed in advance by the Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure committee? (451)

PBG: It was not formerly discussed with the ATP committee. It was discussed with, I believe, the ad hoc diversity committee. It was formerly discussed with elected administration committee and the faculty, and it was on numerous occasions formerly discussed with the Academic Affairs Committee on the board of trustees, as well having been fully sub-circulated before submitted to the entire board of trustees. And it was not, correctly, formerly processed through the APTC.

LM: Now, CMC is taking an action that’s going to affect the practices of faculty hiring, is that, would you say, typical for it not to be a matter that’s discussed by ATP first?

PGB: I would say that it would be typical, yes, to discuss things through the ATP process when they are certainly written policy decisions, and you will interview and hear some faculty take the position that nothing should ever be done, with respect to anything doing with hiring faculty that does not formerly go through to committee. I’ve been told that by faculty and you’re going to hear that by faculty. With respect to—this is not a written rule or regulation, a written policy of that kind. Secondly, we have in our written policies that we will affirmatively pursue candidates broadly, that means including affirmatively pursuing women, affirmatively pursuing minority candidates, that is in our written policy. You will hear some faculty members take a very narrow interpretation of that, as opposed to a broad interpretation of that…and the other thing that you may or may not hear from other faculty is that I do not agree with the faculty opinion, and have so stated publicly, that takes a narrow viewpoint that only the full professors of the APT have an interest in the diversity of our faculty.

LM: Ok, just to nail you down on this, can sort of elaborate your opinion for us on why this it wasn’t necessary to go through APT?

PGB: I have been giving you all my reasons: that it did not change a written policy, on the other hand we have a written policy that incorporates that the departments have to prepare affirmative action hiring plans and so on…that is in the policy. You can see this program or the Irvine Grant as a way that we are promoting affirmative behavior, not changing policy… Also, our strategic planning documents specifically state that, unanimously approved by our board of trustees, that it expects us to develop, over time, a more diverse faculty. That has been in this plan and the past two plans; it is in writing. It is the affirmed policy of our board that this college is to develop a more diverse faculty, that is a board policy. Because of all of that, I disagree with any faculty member who says that this whole issue is only a hiring questions before the APTC. To the contrary, it is a board policy. It is also of interest to alumni…all faculty, all students, all of those who have an interest in this college. So I don’t see this issue as just in the domain of a certain sub-set of this faculty. Now, some of the faculty will disagree with me…this is an issue about the whole future of the college: who teachers here, what kind of community we’re going to have, and that is not just an APT decision.

CAM: Why do you think we have to affirmatively seek out minority and female candidates? I wanted to get your thoughts on the matter.

PGB: That’s a complicated question, in a way, and it is not easy to verify it some kind of empirical way, so I’m really drawing much more on sort of, my 28 years in higher education, as a faculty member, and as trying to run something now for 15 years…First of all, let me say that you have to recruit all faculty members. This is a very competitive market place. Now, the econ department is a really good recruiting department, and it you talk to them, its all about recruiting; it’s not about women and minorities, it’s about recruiting. [gives anecdotes]

[603] So the first point I want to make is that if you’re a really good place and you want to be out there recruiting the best, most superb faculty you can, every position with everyone is a recruitment…Number two, with respect to women, I think this college is in reasonably good shape with respect to its attractiveness to women, but one has to remember that it was a men’s college at one point in time. I think we’re very co-ed now. [stats on women, women “firsts”] So if you’re recruiting a woman to think about coming here, she may sort of look at the history, the context, the overall demographics, what’s going on in her particular department that’s recruiting her. Some women, might not look at it at all, some do…[It’s] a recruitment issue…Now with minority candidates, for some of them, it won’t matter, but for some of them, they would look at the demographics of our campus and say “why aren’t there more minorities here? Is there an issue in my department?” [there’s also some anecdotes here]

[Leo asks whether she agrees or disagrees with the letter of dissent sent by the faculty]

PBG: [700]. I do agree that hiring someone on account of her gender—I mean literarily a hiring decision, is not correct…I agree with that. Where I disagree, and I have interviewed a number of faculty that have signed that statement…but the reasons that people signed that statement fall into four categories, so you cannot put all the people who signed that statement into “they signed it because they’re in uniform opinion about why they signed it, because that’s not the evidence I have from individually interviewing them.

“A board mandate to obtain a more diverse faculty.” As we narrow the pool down, at the end of the day you shouldn’t hire the candidate because of her gender. But getting women to apply here, yes. So my position has been with the faculty quite clear. A agree that you don’t believe you should hire some one on account of her gender, but this is about recruiting

[740] preferential treatment?

PBG: If the department believes that a woman is the best candidate—or since the Irvine grant is limited only in its way only to minority candidates—if, in recruiting, the department felt that the best candidate was a minority candidate, and that’s who they want to hire, then we can use the funds to pay for that appointment. But it’s in that order.

[771] PBG: …I do believe that for a CMC student to be well-educated today, and we’re educating leaders for business, the professions, politics and public affairs that we need to have in our curriculum, ways in which diversity issues get incorporated in mainstream…curriculum…if you were studying labor economics – wage rates, men and women, blacks vs white, completion of education [and] what does that mean with respect to wage returns, political psychology…politics and ethnithity, [for instance] the census issues are huge with respect to race, as we just know from the last census…[Professor] Peter Scary wrote a whole import book on that. It’s important that our students study politics, think about the census and race, and it’s a very complicated issue as to what to take into account, what not to take into account. [800]…CMC has historically not bought into the system of segregating diversity topics into ethnicity study centers…and I think that was exactly the right system. Because theses kinds of issues, from an educational standpoint, if you segregate them out you’re likely only to reach a small subset of our students who would even chose to take those courses…If you make sure that these kinds of issues get mainstreamed into curriculum through modual development, which is what that grant is about, then all CMC students have opportunities to look at issues such as gender and public policy…or race and public policy issues…[The grant is] an incentive, because it’s money, for faculty members to do…research in areas that relate to diversity, such as labor economics…and it would help faculty members take the time to think thoughtfully about how to develop modules in their courses to take up diversity issues…

[Gann compares to Freeman grant]

[863] CAM: Do you think that CMC is insufficiently diverse [racially]?

PBG: I don’t think there’s some golden number out there, I think what we do is contextualize and then think about our future and our mission. We are geographically located in a state with no majority…in a county where there is no majority, and the largest number are Hispanics. We are located in a state that will become majority Hispanic…about 55% of our applications are out of state, but 45% are in state. So in order to be pragmatically a successful institution we are going to need to be attractive to the most talented students available to us and…they are and will increasingly be over time…a more diverse applicant pool. So, the Irvine Grant does not see the diversity of the student body as a super-big issue for us because, in fact, CMC one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges by students in the country, but it is something to pay constant attention to, so we do have something in there to address that.

[900] you need to continue to be attractive to the best possible students to enroll here from CA and the country. Now, on faculty diversity, that’s quite different. I do not think our faculty is diverse enough, our board does not think it is diverse enough, and our strategic plan does not think that its diverse enough. So on the faculty side I do feel that…for educational outcome reasons of our students and for pragmatic reasons of security of the institution and its future and continuing to be an attractive place…we will be better off to have a more diverse faculty, both educationally and pragmatically.

[920] Question about national diversity.

What’s really important and where the big buck are is permanent hring. Now you’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. The strategic plan defines diversity very broadly, and I’m defining diversity very broadly. [959]

…

[987] LM: With respect to minority student enrollments, we hope to reach an enrollment goal of 37% by the end of the three-year period of the grant. We believe setting a numeric goal for underrepresented students will focus greater attention on increasing the enrollment of students of color. The goal is based on our intention to increase the enrollment of under-represented students by 2% during the three years of the grant. In other words, CMC intends to apply racial quotas to the student admissions process under this grant. Is that correct?

PBG: That’s totally incorrect.

LM: Can you explain to us why it would be incorrect?

PBG: Did it say quotas? You read that into it.

LM: I read that CMC intends a specific numerical increase in underrepresented students .

PBG: What that is about is if you have an objective of trying to increase anything—if you have some objective out there, it tends to motivate people and make people work harder…The grant is about a fly in program to help us attract and recruit minority students. It’s all about recruiting. Everything is a funnel, whether it is students, or whether it is faculty. It’s like this. So, we send out brochures to sophomores—we 100,000 new brochures that are going to go out in the mail. Now, we have all kinds of mailing lists: PSATs, SATs, I mean, I don’t know all of the filtering devices that admissions office uses and so on. So it’s like this: fly-ins McKenna weekend, minority weekend that’s all about this and moving down the funnel to get them to want to be here. So the point there is if we recruit harder, and these are recruitment moneys—What does the grant ask for? It’s recruitment money for admissions. What we’re saying is, if you recruit harder, you should have an outcome change, and this is a reasonable outcome measurement. Now, some of the faculty, in that statement, objected to counting anything, because if you counted it would suggest that you really are going to be doing things on account of race, for example, you can read that into it. But counting has multiple functions. Counting is important because…it motivates and helps focus people on goals and objectives, and secondly, in the employment or faculty recruiting area if you had a case filed against you where a disappointed minority candidate, who did not get a job offer, and said you discriminated against him or her—I’m not saying that one does discriminate, but if you become a defendant in a law suit of that kind the fact that you were self-conscious about what you were doing in that area by keeping a numeric record doesn’t mean that you’re hiring on account of race, it shows that you are behaving affrimitively toward your recruitment…there is a major distinction between that [and quotas] [end of side one].

[side two]

LM: Ok, let me clarify [this] with you: you’re unwilling to say that there is a quota system involved, but—

PBG: I’m not only unwilling to say, I can assure you that there is no quota system. We have no quotas…in admission at CMC.

LM: Just to clarify that, you’re saying that while, you have no quotas, without even seeing an applicant pool for the next three years, you’ve set a designated amount to increase minority admitted students—without even seeing those applicant pools. It’s not a quota, but you’ve set a designated amount. Is that correct?

PBG: It’s a motivator target. It’s not a quota system; not in anyway whatsoever.

LM: But this is, in fact, something that you have, in effect, pledged to the Irvine Foundation, that their money will be used to help accomplish. Is that right?

PBG: In the grant application we have set a goal…to work to increase the diversity of our student body. Yes. And we applied for recruitment money, on the basis that recruiting is the way you get people to apply—

LM: But this isn’t about recruiting, this is about admissions, and it’s about percentage designations—

PBG: It is recruiting minorities into the pool. I said it’s a funnel. What is the Irvine money for in the admissions area?...And if recruit…all students are going to improve the quality of our applicant pool if not numbers. So part of what we’re about—generally, in admissions we’re continuingly trying to recruit the right kind of student for CMC, given our mission. It’s all about recruiting.

LM: I under stand

[135] “bachy case”? “race and gender are noted”

[168] “There are many characteristics that we take into account, athletics, alumni children, race, gender, APs…”

[200] why Hispanics and Blacks accepted at a higher rate

[260] divisive effect on the faculty?

[320] then catching her with the narrative.

[380] does not agree that is it illegal

[410] does want to know race and gender, but only for recruiting faculty applicants, not eventual hiring.

[475] students complaining about faculty advisors not of their own race.

[505] critical mass…do we want to consider a student who considers race above quality?

[560] faculty’s charge of “overt and covert discrimination”

[593] Gann’s answer

Dean Vos Interview with Claremont Independent on February 26, 2003 (They Discuss Irvine Grant, Racial Preferences)

2012-02-07T07:07:00.000-08:00

Dean Vos

What role?

“Relatively minor role. I would say that the major role was played by Jerry Garris and a lesser extent Matt Bibbens.”

“If you are currently on one of our other Irvine grants, for some other initiative, we will not give you a new grant while you’re still receiving the money from the earlier grant.”

Minority brochures…wanting for a while?

“Not necessarily, in fact, I admit to being conflicted myself on the very subject of minority specific brochure, we’ve never had one. And I have talked with Jerry since this grant was given to us and we’re not sure if we’re going to have one. We might end up instead deciding to use that money to hire a photographer someone to take more good pictures of our student body.”

Show minority students interacting with white students in class.

Why the minority specific brochure bad?

“Well there in lies the problem. A school like Carlton for example, that has a minority specific brochure, will talk about its academic support services for minority students. And in the very fact that you talk about that in the minority brochure but you don’t talk about that in what I’ll call the main recruiting brochure that is sent to everybody, you’re implying that minority students are more likely to need this academic support than anybody else, and that’s a form of racism. That sends a signal to minority students that they’re not as strong academically in that we know you’ll need this help, but we’re telling you that we have it, so come over here to our college. I think that’s a huge mistake.”

“I think fortunately that CMC is too small and has always resisted that form of balkanization is what it boiled down to and we want to have everybody be part of CMC and part of the overall community. And you walk into the dining hall and you see lots of different people with different facial features and colors of skin sitting together. You don’t see a black table here, a Mexican American table here, like you see at big universities oftentimes in the dining hall.”

Specific questions from minority students?

(Nothing too interesting.)

“I don’t think so”

“In general, that it’s perhaps true that minority are more concerned with [campus diversity and tolerance] cause they’ve been in the minority so they’re more sensitive to that. But that’s why I think it would be better to have that message received by better photography in the main piece, not in some piece that’s only targeted to minority populations.”

Why minorities in fly in program?

“Because we want more.”

“Because we’re living in a very diverse culture. We don’t have very many minorities here and we think it would be beneficial for all of our students to learn from being around all different types of people.”

The money, will it augment or replace?

“I’d say both. We’ve already been doing this, but on a limited scale loaded by budget realities. This funding will not start a new program but this funding will allow us to continue a program that’s been successful so far in its first two years of operation and allow us to expand it to invite more students to campus.”

Importance of race?

“Hmmm, not very important. It’s a factor, as is geography and testing and transcripts and essays and fit and leadership and athletic activity, and so we look at a lot of things…and one thing we look at is race. But it’s not a very big deal, it’s not the most important factor, but it’s one of 15-20 factors that we look at.”

“We don’t have a point system.”

How long has race been a factor?

For a while…at least since 1957.

Racial quota system?

“No there’s not and I think there should not be. I don’t think there ever has been. I can speak with certainty for my 16 years here, having come here in 1987, that there’s not been.”

From the data, “It’s pretty clear that there’s never been a quota or even a numerical goal.”

What difference is quota vs. goal?

“The meaning. They have different meanings. Quota means that you stop at that number, you reach your q-u-o-t-a. Quota is often associated with the verb “to reach.” Goal is something you are shooting for and there are times when you reach it and times you don’t reach it but you always have it out there.”

“Extend the net more widely.”

“Funnel”

Asian Hispanic etc disparities?

“A lot of things explain that. Fit is a big thing. A very big thing for us especially because of CMC’s market niche. And again, this is a very, very, very dangerous generalization, but I would suggest it just might be true that Asian and Asian American students are sometimes more involved in solitary activities than Latino students or white students.”

“Violin or student government? Go to San Marino high school, there’s nothing wrong with violin it’s just not as valued by CMC as student government. So at San Marino high school look at the orchestra and a large portion of students in that orchestra are Asian students and they practice the violin by themselves and they do solitary things and they tend not sometimes, that’s why I said it was very, very, very dangerous, I’m not trying to sound racist here, but it’s more likely than an African American student did not play the violin but maybe got involved in a athletic team, got involved in debate, got involved in student government, did things that we in our value system at CMC perceive to be more CMCish fit kind of leadership, group oriented extracurricular activities that we feel are perhaps more inline with our mission. ”

Academic standards reduced for minority students?

“No, not at all.”

Hispanic anomaly?

“There’s no formula”

Mentors and role models?

“I don’t have a great deal of empirical evidence. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence.”

“It is sporadic, it doesn’t come up many many time a day…or week”

I hear about it “Maybe 25 times a year.”

Anything else in Admissions role in grant in general?

“I think that the overall student program, the part in student affairs, the part with the faculty, the whole package, will make CMC a better college, so I think it’s a good thing.”

“Admissions can only show people what we have, admissions cannot change what we have.”

“My job is improved if we are a better college.”….Mr. Vos does not want to mislead…

Narrative issues?

“Those were my ideas?”

See them changed?

No.

I don’t want to change [intentional political balance.] I think it makes us A. a better college that we have a very, very even balance of political points of view and I think it gives students a better academic experience that we have this balance in point of view. I also think it helps us differentiate ourselves from most other national liberal arts colleges because we have this balanced point of view. I used to work at Cornell. Cornell is Pitzer’s politics and Pomona’s academic rigor combined. I was really, really mad one time when I was there when we had some freshmen come from New Jersey. He started a young republicans club on campus and he was harassed so badly by the intolerant liberals that he transferred to Rutgers his sophomore year. I happen to have a more liberal than conservative personal political philosophy, but I try not to let that get in the way of my profession. And my profession is to have a better college, a better student body more diversity and that includes political diversity as well. And I’m really happy that we’re one of the few national liberal arts colleges that has this as part of its reputation that attracts the Apollo Morgan’s and the Jason Lippenberger’s and also the whoever your equivalent is in the liberal side of the house.

…I like to think I don’t have an equivalent…Apollo’s insight

“Generally, not always true, but generally African Americans more so than Latinos, African Americans tend to come from a more liberal perspective and so they are sometimes worried that this place is only ‘a place where conservative students are happy.’”

Need to sharpen thinking skills since you will need to defend your views.

Critical mass?

Hard to pick up a quote…but there should be enough for dating opportunities.

“More than two.”

President Gann Excludes Racial Minority Policy in Conversation With CMC Forum, Claremont Port Side

2012-02-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

On February 2nd, 2012, The CMC Forum had this revealing paragraph in an article it wrote about President Gann's handling of the SAT fraud.

In 2002, the Board of Trustees adopted a general policy statement to guide the admissions office on shaping incoming classes. Some considerations include leadership, diversity, and support for co-curricular programs. According to Gann, one change in this policy since the beginning of her presidency was to increase the number of international students.

Was President Gann lying in her closed door meeting with The Claremont Port Side and The CMC Forum when she suggested that the only change that had occurred to admissions was the inclusion of international students in the statistics?

It appears so. In this article from the February/March 2003 issue of The Claremont Independent, Claremont McKenna's racial preferences regime is laid bare, adding another instance of Claremont's target of a more racially diverse campus as evidence of what I detailed in a Big Government piece. We still don't know definitively if Claremont McKenna was excluding racial minorities from its SAT scores, as other schools have done in the past, but it is seeming more and more likely.

CMC Admissions Office Uses Affirmative Action
Program Will Increase Under Irvine Foundation Grant

By Jason Lippenberger
Publisher, CMC ‘04
C. Apollo Morgan
Editor-in-Chief, CMC ‘04, and
Leo Moniz
Contributing Editor, CMC ‘03

The CMC Admissions Office currently considers race as “one of many factors” in admitting students. The Administration vigorously denies that the College uses quotas, which could be illegal. But an investigation of admissions statistics from recent years reveals that black and Latino applicants are admitted at significantly higher rates than white and Asian candidates.

The Admissions Office is due to expand its affirmative action policies under the terms of a new “Campus Diversity Initiative” grant, which calls for a 2% increase in non-white enrollment per year during the next three years. CMC has also declared its intention to attain a student body that is 37% non-white.
These changes are part of a larger campus diversity effort that is funded in part by the James Irvine foundation. The new initiative includes a plan to pay the travel costs of some non-white applicants who visit the CMC campus. The College is also considering creating a new admissions brochure for prospective non-white students, although Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Vos now suggests those plans may be discarded.

A review of Admissions Office statistics shows that CMC admits applicants of different races at widely varying levels. Between 1997 and 2001, 42% of Hispanic applicants and 36% of black applicants were accepted. During the same period, 29% of white applicants and 23% of Asian applicants were granted admission.

The consistency of the numbers from year to year is striking. The admission rate for Hispanic applicants has by far the lowest standard deviation of .009. White students followed with a standard deviation of .023, Asian Students with .025 and black students with .04.

Standard deviation measures the differences of the numbers from year to year. A low standard deviation means that the numbers for each year are closer together.

Administrators deny that the disparities are the result of a quotas or manipulation.

“I can assure you that there is no quota system,” declared President Pamela Gann.

Vos explained that race is “a factor, as is geography and testing and transcripts and essays and fit and leadership and athletic activity.” He added, “it’s not the most important factor, but it’s one of 15-20 factors that we look at.”

Gann asserts that CMC “follows the concept of the Bakke case,” referring to the landmark Supreme Court decision that has governed the use of affirmative action for the past 25 years. She describes the plan to increase minority enrollment by 6% over three years as “a motivator target.”

According to Jerome Garris, an Assistant Vice President who handles foundation grants for the College and co-authored the Irvine proposal, “There isn’t any effort to arrive at some specific number. For Irvine, we felt we had to put some numbers in here because they, frankly, asked us to do that.”

He added, “it is not a quota, it’s not something that we are inexorably committed to.”

Asked why Asians have such a low admittance rate, Vos commented, “A lot of things explain [the numbers]. Fit is a big thing—a very big thing for us especially because of CMC’s market niche. And again, this is a very, very, very dangerous generalization, but I would suggest it just might be true that Asian and Asian-American students are sometimes more involved in solitary activities than Latino students or white students.”

Based on the thousands of applications he has reviewed, Vos says “it’s more likely that an African-American student did not play the violin but maybe got involved in an athletic team, got involved in debate, got involved in student government, did things that we, in our value system at CMC, perceive to be a more CMCish fit. Leadership, group-oriented extracurricular activities that we feel are perhaps more in-line with our mission.”

Administration officials defend CMC’s affirmative action practices as educational and beneficial.

Dean of Faculty William Ascher told an interviewer, “you have been shortchanged by CMC not being able to have access to diverse perspectives that are rooted in different ethnicities and different experiences in people by virtue of their race.”

According to President Gann, the Administration believes “that the best educational experience for every student that comes here is to have a racially diverse student body from the standpoint of residential life and the educational outcomes of our students.”

During the Irvine grant application process, CMC prepared a “Narrative” that summarized CMC’s racial diversity, “barriers” to increasing racial diversity, and actions necessary to racially diversify the campus.
The “Narrative” noted that while non-white enrollment has decreased in past years, the Admissions Office “increased [its] efforts during 2001-2002 with some success.” During that year, the percentage of admitted black applicants increased by exactly 10 percentage points to equal the admittance rate for Hispanic students. Dean Vos said that the jump was not produced intentionally.

“Compared to previous years, in 2001-02 we targeted the stronger, more academically-qualified minority students, especially in the African-American category,” he said. “As we expected, the applicant pool decreased in size but increased in quality. Yes, it was intentional to admit the best-qualified candidates. No, it was not intentional to increase the percentage admitted by exactly ten points—it simply turned out that way.” In fact, the number of black applicants shrank to 89, the lowest number in the past 6 years.

According to the “Narrative,” there many barriers to non-white student recruitment. Besides the idea that a lack of non-white role-models in the faculty is a barrier [see cover story], the “Narrative” also cites CMC’s “suburban location, liberal arts mission, and small size,” the small number of black students (meaning that “a critical mass number is rarely achieved”), CMC’s “intentional political balance,” and the fact that CMC is increasingly recruiting from outside California.

The Irvine grant was intended to fund the creation of a “minority student recruitment and admissions brochure.” But when asked about these brochures, Vos said that he has reservations about producing them.
“I admit to being conflicted myself on the very subject of a minority-specific brochure,” he said. “We’ve never had one. And I have talked with [Garris] since this grant was given to us and we’re not sure if we’re going to have one. We might end up instead deciding to use that money to hire a photographer to take more good pictures of our student body.”

This “better photography” would consist of racially-diverse groups of students, but Vos emphasized that the pictures would not misrepresent the composition of the student body.
When asked about what is included in a brochure aimed at non-white students, Vos said that there were no specific plans but he did offer an example from another college.

“A school like Carlton, for example, that has a minority-specific brochure, will talk about its academic support services for minority students. And in the very fact that you talk about that in the minority brochure but you don’t talk about that in . . . the main recruiting brochure that is sent to everybody, you’re implying that minority students are more likely to need this academic support than anybody else, and that’s a form of racism. That sends a signal to minority students that they’re not as strong academically in that ‘We know you’ll need this help, but we’re telling you that we have it, so come over here to our college.’ I think that’s a huge mistake.”

Another Irvine-funded initiative to racially diversify the student body is a “minority fly-in program.” The plan will continue and expand a program CMC started in the fall of 2002, which pays the expenses of some non-white applicants who fly to southern California to see the College. (CMC pays only driving expenses for prospective students who live in the region.)

When asked why the College would fly in non-white students but not white students, Vos replied, “Because we want more minorities. Because we’re living in a very diverse culture. We don’t have very many minorities here and we think it would be beneficial for all of our students to learn from being around all different types of people.”

The “Narrative” points out that according to U.S. News and World Report, CMC is the eighth most “diverse” liberal arts college in the nation. On the west coast, only Whittier and Occidental are more “diverse,” according to the magazine.

Aside from the low number of non-white role models and non-white students, the only other changeable “barrier” to increasing non-white enrollment is the College’s “intentional political diversity.” No one, though, seemed willing to change that.

“Generally—not always true—but generally, African Americans—more so than Latinos—tend to come from a more liberal perspective, and so they are sometimes worried that this place is only a place where conservative students are happy,” Vos said.

“I don’t want to change [the political balance],” he continued. “I think it makes us a better college that we have a very, very even balance of political points of view.” Vos added, “I also think it helps us differentiate ourselves from most other national liberal arts colleges.”

Assistant Vice President Garris also commented on the idea of political balance as a “barrier” to diversity. “I guess the reason is they tend to see us as conservative, which, relatively speaking with other institutions, we are,” he said. “And I think what [the Admissions Office is] hearing from a lot of minority applicants is that that isn’t always their political orientation, let’s say.”

“I would argue that you’ve got to confront that head on,” he continued.

“What you ought to do with that is say ‘Look, here is why that is a positive point. If you go to an institution where everybody has the same opinion, and it’s the same as yours, what kind of . . . value is going to be added to your educational experience’?”

Michael Wilner Pleads No Contest to Misdemeanor Battery and Obstruction of a Police Officer

2012-02-06T03:24:00.000-08:00

Michael Wilner was finally sentenced last month for the assault he committed last year and which I wrote about here.

According to a source close to the case, Wilner pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor in battery and misdemeanor obstruction of a police officer. He did not get jail time but is required to do community service and anger management.

Wilner was last spotted writing for The Brooklyn Ink, but his name has been taken down from its writers page. It appears, from Googling, that Wilner has also contracted an online reputation management firm to conceal this blot on his record.

"Gaming the System"; Claremont Independent Warns of CMC's Approach to U.S. News & World Report Rankings in '09

2012-02-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

From The Claremont Independent's November 2009 issue. The Claremont Independent has always warned about the dangers of following the U.S. News & World Report rankings that were Gann's gospel. We were right; she was wrong--and now she's got to go.

Section: Campus News
Headline: Gaming the System
Subheadline: Why we need frank dialogue about CMC's approach to the U.S. News and World Report rankings
Author: Helen Highberger

Each year, the grinding wheel of U.S. News and World Report once again squeezes out a shiny sausage of college rankings. This article aims to show that, as the old saying goes, you wouldn't like to see this sausage being made - but most people gobble it up without question. Prospective students, parents, college administrators, and to some extent the general public meets these rankings with the utmost seriousness, even frenzy. Websites like CollegeConfidential.com overflow with panicked high school students, measuring their worth through the Procrustean lens of SAT scores, and judging the colleges to which they apply no less numerically. Colleges put a great deal of maneuvering into the process, adjusting class sizes, admissions procedures, and allocation of financial resources in hopes of boosting their rank for the next year. Have you ever assumed something based on U.S. News's rankings? What are they even based on? Let's read the ingredients on this package of sausages and see what they're really made of.

I asked Dean of Faculty Gregory Hess what factors contribute most to maintaining Claremont McKenna's good ranking (up to 11 this year). The first thing he mentioned was our low faculty-to-student ratio, 8.5 students to 1 faculty member. He explained that this gives Claremont McKenna an average class size of 16. In U.S. News terms, these numbers are part of a college's "faculty resource rank." Three other factors that help us in the rankings, he said, are CMC's graduation rate, its place in the Claremont consortium and the added resources from that connection, and CMC's selectivity rate.

This all sounds very reasonable, but there are many other factors that go into the sausage-making of U.S. News's rankings. For example, the weightiest of U.S. News's six factors is a "peer assessment" sent to academic officials, asking them to rate the programs at other colleges. It is revealing that U.S. News values the opinions of academics at rival colleges over the opinions of, say, people who have actually attended the college, given that their rankings are intended for prospective students, not prospective academics.

How about the faculty resource rank mentioned above? Not what it seems. The faculty-to-student ratio, a common and relevant benchmark, makes up only 5% of the faculty resource score. The largest single contributor to the faculty resource rank is faculty pay. Another interesting choice, since becoming a liberal arts faculty member at all is not a salary-maximizing move in the first place. I've always heard faculty members classify pay as a minus, rather than a plus, of their career of choice, suggesting that faculty do not choose their positions primarily by this factor.

While most schools would like to have other academics think well of them, and strive to compensate their faculty well, the student selectivity rank, as it affects college policy, has the potential to change a college's very motivation. 90% of this score is determined by entering students' SAT I or ACT scores and whether they graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. This is dangerous, especially for a specialized, elite school like CMC, tempting admissions officers to overlook leadership experience and other intangibles in favor of admitting students with good standardized test scores.

The problem, as I see it, is that U.S. News's rankings seem more calculated to the prestige of the college than the quality of education a student can receive there. I have attended three colleges - Princeton, Harvey Mudd, and Claremont McKenna - and if I were to rank their quality of education in my chosen major, my ranks would be the opposite of U.S. News's. If I were hiring a graduate of one of these colleges, my assessment of the value of their degree would be so different than U.S. News's that I cannot help considering their rankings as positively worse than no rankings at all.

The craven respect paid to the colleges ranked highly by U.S. News is worse than useless. Every level of education, from prospective college students to employers, is polluted by the gross misconceptions inherent in these rankings. To turn down a highly-ranked college for a lower-ranked one is regarded as some mixture of stupidity and insanity. Yet the real-world experience at the various colleges is enough to cause serious cognitive dissonance in a world so dominated by these rankings. Princeton students are no more interested in the life of the mind than Claremont McKenna students. Harvey Mudd students generally blow those of both other colleges out of the water in terms of intelligence and work ethic. Yet Princeton is ranked #1 in its class and Harvey Mudd is ranked #14 in its.

What is the sensible thing to do in the face of such a nonsensical attempt at a value judgment? U.S. News's rankings are not going away anytime soon, and they're not going to stop affecting how some people think about college. Still, we can choose not to give credence to these rankings.

The Claremont McKenna administration does not admit to being affected by U.S. News's rankings, and school officials including Registrar Elizabeth Morgan refused to speak to the CI about the issue. Yet the facts speak for themselves. Few students can help but notice the strangely artificial 19-person cap imposed on Fall semester class sizes, the term during which rankings are calculated. Unless the College has developed a fetish for prime numbers or a superstitious case of vigintiphobia, the only plausible explanation is that it is gaming the U.S. News rankings, which specifically take into account the percentage of class sections with 19 students or fewer. As a college, we must have open dialogue between students, faculty and administration about the effects of the rankings and how they shape academic policy and CMC's educational experience. We may not be able to shut down the sausage factory, but we can stop eating the sausage - at least it starts to include some real meat.

From a 2006 Issue of The Claremont Independent, Richard Vos Explains CMC Admissions

2012-02-05T00:56:00.000-08:00

Section: News
Headline: Admissions Suspicions Confirmed
Subheadline: Left Over Right, Black Over White
Author: Elise Viebeck

Claremont McKenna College is often labeled "a conservative institution." During the school's formative years, much of the student population and faculty identified themselves as right of center, and as a whole, CMC students have never been overwhelmingly liberal like the majority of their fellow college students. Not, at least, until now.

According to the CMC view book that is sent to prospective students, students are divided into an almost-perfect bell curve based on their political attitudes: 4 percent say far left, 3 percent far right, 29 percent liberal, 26 percent conservative, and 38 percent middle of the road.

Every year, CMC administers a national survey from the Higher Education Research Institute at the UCLA Graduate School of Education during freshman orientation. The data goes back to 2001. Even the class of the class of 2005 is disturbingly inconsistent with the data in the view book: 6.6 percent reported far left political leanings, 1.8 percent far right, 43.0 liberal, 17.1 percent conservative, and 31.6 percent middle of the road.

Not only is the data wrong, but it shows that CMC's student body is growing increasingly liberal. For the class of 2009, 4.6 percent reported far left political leanings, 1.5 percent far right, 45.8 liberal, 12.7 percent conservative, and 35.4 percent middle of the road.

The real data makes the supposed bell curve significantly lopsided on the right. Vice President of Student Affairs Jeff Huang concedes, "It is unusual on college campuses to have a right over left tilt as has been the case during certain portions of CMC history. But that's not currently the caseÖit is now heavily left over right."

This trend is not new. In the last five years, the share of conservatives peaked in the class of 2006 at 20.7 percent. That number has declined ever since, hitting 12.7 percent for the class of 2009, though this shift has not prompted a change in admissions rhetoric. According to Dean of Admissions Richard Vos, our political distribution sets us apart from other colleges in appealing to prospective students who value open-mindedness and rigorous discussion. This aspect particularly reinforces CMC's purpose of creating successful leaders; in promoting the debate from various points of view, CMC better equips its students for futures in the realm of public affairs.

CMC has a unique and valuable niche in the market for higher education and must protect it. Besides being a highly selective liberal arts college, our breadth and balance of political affiliation is rare and precious. Such relative political equality, regardless of whether it is slightly left- or right- leaning, must be considered in view of other top schools in the nation. Elite colleges like Haverford and Amherst lack a thriving conservative presence both on campus and within the faculty, a deficiency that, according to Huang, limits their students' growth, intellectual development, and understanding of diversity.

While CMC does not discriminate based on political leaning, it does discriminate on race. Statistics provided by the admissions office show that it admitted roughly 45 percent of both black and Hispanic applicants, versus 22 percent of the white applicants and 17 percent of the Asian applicants. The gap suggests an agenda on the part of CMC admissions, though, according to Vos, no such agenda exists.

The policies that govern admissions decisions are created by the CMC Board of Trustees and the CMC Admission and Financial Aid Committee, a standing committee of the faculty. Current policy states that the student body should be diverse in many ways: racially, geographically, politically, and socio-economically. Vos commented that CMC designed its "affirmative action admission policy" in view of the Supreme Court ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, which allows colleges to use a holistic approach to the admissions process. The college can consider race, but only as one of many deciding factors. "The goal is more philosophical and less prescriptive," says Huang in reference to admissions' desire for a diverse student population.

Did a Claremont Independent 2006 Parody Predict The Future?

2012-02-05T00:07:00.001-08:00

In October 28, 2006, The Claremont Independent published this parody of President Gann's obsession with the rankings. Did we predict the future? You decide.

Section: News
Headline: We're Number One!
Subheadline: CMC at the Top of the U.S. News Rankings
Author: [no author name found]

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of the Claremont Dependent

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Claremont McKenna College first in the nation among liberal arts colleges in its 2016 rankings. This is CMC's first time in the top spot, and is the culmination of the great effort and vision of CMC President Pamela Gann.

"We're absolutely thrilled," said Gann. "We put 15 years into this effort... it is so wonderful to see it finally pay off." CMC's board of trustees lauded the president for her leadership.

"We want to give Pamela all the credit for this," said Ann Quinley, chairman of the Board of Trustees. "It wasn't until the last Stark appointee resigned the board that we finally got behind her. She believed in the 'New CMC' before anyone else."

U.S. News announced that CMC is the first school to receive a perfect 5.0 ranking in the "peer assessment" category. College presidents, provosts, and deans of admission were impressed by CMC's 15-year turn from its dark conservative past. Nearly everyone agrees that CMC is now a bright progressive star in the liberal arts community.

According to Pomona President David Oxtoby, "Pomona College will need to quickly follow CMC's lead if it wants to remain competitive in the market for top students. There are still pockets of hate at Pomona, I'm embarrassed to say." Oxtoby later confided his fear that some Pomona students will transfer to take advantage of CMC's tolerance major.

CMC Dean of Admissions Richard Vos marked the beginning of CMC's transformation as 2006, when he says he admitted a giant incoming class. "That really prepared the students and faculty for our long-term plans," he said. "Once we grew by 30 students a year, no one was bothered in 2010 when our first class of 500 entered CMC."

Of course, housing was a big problem from 2006 until 2012, when CMC completed Kerri Dunn Hall, the largest building on the 4Cs. It stands on the old property of Pitzer College, purchased by CMC in 2009. Although the building is a tasteful eight stories covering four acres of land, it was not always to be. The first architect planned to erect a 40-story skyscraper on the property, but the city of Claremont rejected the design.

"Can you imagine what the reaction would have been if CMC, a former all male college, built a giant phallus to house our first-year students?" said ASCMC President Nancy Smith CMC '17.

Another housing change was the roommate policy. According to the presidents of Amherst and Swarthmore, CMC now has the most progressive housing policy in the nation. In order to keep students with a homosexual orientation from having to live in an environment of fear, CMC instituted mandatory mixed-gender rooms. Now, a male can only room with another male if one of the two people primarily identifies as a female.

In addition to the new beautiful buildings, including the 5-year-old, 40,000 square foot underground facility called Pitzer Hall, Gann credits the rapid expansion of CMC's academic programs for the rise in its peer assessment score. One of the first new departments added was the First Nations studies department. "We didn't want our new ethnic studies departments to have sub-par faculty, as is the case at some of our peer institutions. That's why we went right for the best. Luckily, Professor Ward Churchill accepted our offer for the tenured position."

CMC is the first liberal arts school in the nation to offer more than 50 different majors. "My critics used to say that we couldn't be the best at everything," Gann said. "I invite them to take a look at our course offerings!"

The administration is most proud of the leadership department, which occupies two-thirds of Pitzer Hall. By all accounts, the leadership department's "Semester in Pyongyang" program is the first of its kind.

The Marian Miner Cook Co-op is the largest all vegan co-op among liberal arts colleges. "Once CMCers began to agree with each other on everything, there was less of a need for the forum that the Athenaeum offered," said Rainbow Wilson, advisor for the co-op. "In fact, some would argue that it is better for conservative opinions not to be shared in an environment devoted to tolerance and education. After all, hate has no home at CMC."

The report from U.S. News suggests it was the mascot change that put CMC over the top. "Come on, stags?" said Vice President of Student Affairs Jeff Huang. "I wonder if our founders even understood how offensive such an aggressive, stereotypically masculine mascot would be at a college trying to air out its dirty laundry." The CMS Lambs celebrate their fifth anniversary this year.

It has not been an easy road for CMC, and there continue to be hurdles to its progress even today. According to Dean Vos, the school accidentally admitted a self-identified "conservative" student in 2014, but by chance, he decided not to come here. "That was really a close call," said Vos. "I have made it my personal mission to see that it never happens again."

Unfortunately, the old government and economics faculty still do not have their promised new offices. Instead of new offices, the board of trustees approved the purchase of the giant mud pit just east of Claremont Blvd. With the generous donation of some elderly alumni, the government and economics professors were able to pitch a few tents in the bottom of the pit. Gann, in a moment of charity, offered them some desks and chairs that were about to be thrown out. She says that next year the school plans on setting up a wireless network in the pit. "We're just thankful to be back in the city limits," says an unnamed government professor.

"You can't please everybody," said Gann. "In order to impress college provosts, presidents, and deans of admission, there were difficult decisions I had to make. We want to compete for the best students here at CMC, and the new rankings from U.S. News will make that dream possible."

Petition Calls for New CMC President, In Wake of SAT Scandal

2012-02-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

Artwork courtesy of Art Geek, Chelsea Carter, Scripps

Patrick Atwater CMC '10 and a few others have been pushing this petition encouraging Claremont McKenna to get a new president.

Here are my reasons for signing it, explained in the piece I wrote that got picked up by Real Clear Politics:

Dean Vos, the man who resigned for allegedly tinkering with the results, reported to Claremont McKenna President Pam Gann directly. It's possible he acted without her knowledge, but it's hard to believe Vos acted alone. Vos was many things--avuncular, if a touch bureaucratic and insincere--but he was no statistician or econometrician, much less a Machiavellian spreadsheet manipulator. He would have needed help to make those targets year-after-year.

Gann is at best complicit; and at worst, ignorant, and ignorance is no excuse, especially when you are entrusted with the reputation, the hopes, and the increasing fortunes of many families. Gann, who speaks often and laudatory of "leadership," but real leaders take responsibility and refuse to follow others rankings. They don't hide behind the school's lawyers.

We need a leader that understood as Jack Stark did: character matters and Gann's character has long been suspect. Fortunately, we can remove her and send a signal to the whole world that we take this matter very seriously.

I quote Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, who said this to The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. "Ponder the fact that the very president (Gann) who bemoans the data also very openly celebrates the institution's rankings on her webpage. What does that say about the culture? It's a matter of environment."

What Do You Do When Your College Cheats You?

2012-02-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

I've come out of retirement to share this with you.

The Cheating and Fraud at Claremont McKenna

Posted by Charles C. Johnson

Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts school nestled in the foothills on the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles County, dishonored itself and defrauded the public in a cheap effort to bolster its national rankings in U.S. News and World Report. But if that weren't bad enough, Claremont's deception calls into question the very worth of its students, faculty, and graduates.

Richard Vos, Claremont's dean of admissions for 25 years, resigned in disgrace this week after admitting to systematically manipulating the college's SAT scores since 2005. Vos evidently altered the mean, median, and range of SAT scores to boost the college's position on the influential list of college rankings.

The scheme worked. Claremont McKenna cracked U.S. News & World Report's list of top 10 liberal arts colleges, placing ninth in 2011. But Vos escalated the fraud when he passed along the fake scores to the U.S. Department of Education and Western Association of Schools & Colleges. By so doing, Vos has jeopardized the college's accreditation and eligibility for federal funds. The college's bond rating may be downgraded, taking the value of a degree down with it.

The news is humbling and humiliating for Claremont students who until recently boasted on a now-defunct Facebook page, "It's okay you haven't heard of CMC, you wouldn't have gotten in anyway." How many potential students will bother to apply now that the college is mired in fraud?

What Effect on Job Prospects?

I graduated from Claremont McKenna last May with a B.A. in government and economics and about $14,000 in student loan debt after working odd jobs to put myself through school. And though I'm working, many of my classmates are still looking. How will this scandal affect their job prospects in industries like finance and government, which depend on honesty, now that the very legitimacy of their diplomas is in doubt? Will employers look askance at their college transcripts? Who could blame them if they did? I wouldn't trust another statistic from the college after this scandal.

Yet some within the Claremont community have decided to rationalize and excuse the disgrace, blaming the "culture" of U.S. News rankings, and not the college's administration, for promoting fraud. Like the student caught cheating who claims he should never have taken the class, this argument is as shameful as it is pathetic. The time to criticize the rankings is before, not after, you get caught trying to manipulate them.

Other colleges, such as Reed, St. John's, and Skidmore, simply refuse to take part in the U.S. News ranking process. But Claremont's fundraising team is only too happy to stress the latest up tick in this category or that, as if it all meant something deep. But it is nothing more than an expensive popularity contest: as with all financial bubbles, we believe we're good because others tell us we're good--and we shell out more money. Nobody in the administration seriously questions the content or quality of a Claremont education because we're too busy measuring how diverse or how small a class is rather than what is taught in it.

Still others on campus claim that the fraud only increased the average scores per class by "10 to 20 points," as if a little cheating is okay. In fact, as the Claremont Port Side, a campus magazine, reported, some students who did not report SAT scores at all had scores simply manufactured on their behalf. While 76 students did not submit results in 2009, only 48 were listed by the college in its released scores; the remaining 28 were bumped up into the higher percentiles. The SAT scores were exactly the results you would need to qualify for elite status and for up-and-coming college. Vos's decision to keep test scores at 700, when they had, in fact, fallen to 680, was psychological as anything else. Indeed, for top performing students, a minimum of a 700 math and 700 verbal score is what is needed to be competitive at elite colleges.

Vos reported to Claremont McKenna President Pam Gann directly. It's possible he acted without her knowledge, but it's hard to believe Vos acted alone. Vos was many things--avuncular, if a touch bureaucratic and insincere--but he was no statistician or econometrician, much less a Machiavellian spreadsheet manipulator. He would have needed help to make those targets year-after-year.

Gann is at best complicit; and at worst, ignorant, and ignorance is no excuse, especially when you are entrusted with the reputation, the hopes, and the increasing fortunes of many families. Gann, who speaks often and laudatory of "leadership," but real leaders take responsibility and refuse to follow others rankings. They don't hide behind the school's lawyers.

If everyone cheats, only the honest are suckers. That's quite a descent from the standards the founders of Claremont Men's College set in 1946. Back then, the college's motto was "Civilization prospers with commerce." Today, the college's administration seems to think it can prosper through fraud, and that raising money raises the value of one's degree.

Only in higher education is the victim of a fraud expected to pay back his loan promptly and without complaint, and of course, to "give back" to the alumni fund. But where do we go to get back our good name?

--------------------
Charles C. Johnson is a writer living in Los Angeles.

Jaffa Reviews New Aristotle Book

2011-07-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

Aristotle and the Higher Good

By HARRY V. JAFFA

ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins

339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.

Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead — gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He did so saying there were those who thought this was the greatest book of all time. Churchill returned it some weeks later, saying it was all very interesting, but he had already thought most of it out for himself. But it is the very genius of Aristotle — as it is of every great teacher — to make you think he is uncovering your own thought in his. In Churchill’s case, it is also probable that the classical tradition informed more of his upbringing, at home and at school, than he realized.

In 1946, in a letter to the philosopher Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss mentioned how difficult it had been for him to understand Aristotle’s account of magnanimity, greatness of soul, in Book 4 of the “Ethics.”

The difficulty was resolved when he came to realize that Churchill was a perfect example of that virtue. So Churchill helped Leo Strauss understand Aristotle! That is perfectly consistent with Aristotle’s telling us it does not matter whether one describes a virtue or someone characterized by that virtue. Where the “Ethics” stands among the greatest of all great books perhaps no one can say. That Aristotle’s text, which explores the basis of the best way of human life, belongs on any list of such books is indisputable.

In his great essay “On Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss emphasizes the continuity between pre-philosophic political speech and its refinement by classical political philosophy. It is part of the order of nature (and of nature’s God) that pre-philosophic speech supply the matter, and philosophic speech the form, of perfected political speech, much as the chisel of the sculptor uncovers the form of the statue within the block of marble. Before the “Ethics” men knew that courage was a virtue, and that it meant overcoming fear in the face of danger. Aristotle says nothing different from this, but he also distinguishes true virtue from its specious simulacra. The false appearance of courage may result, for instance, from overconfidence in one’s skill or strength, or from one’s failure to recognize the skill or strength of his opponents. The accurate assessment of one’s own superiority of strength or skill, which means one really has no reason to fear an approaching conflict, is another false appearance of courage. A false courage may also result from a passion that blinds someone to the reality of the danger he faces. In short, the appearance of courage may be mistaken for actual courage whenever the rational component of virtue is lacking.

The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.

Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome. The volume before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. Many Greek words cannot be easily translated into single English equivalents — for example, the Greek wordtechne, which appears in the first sentence of the “Ethics.” It is here translated as “art,” as it usually is. But the Greeks made no distinction, as we do, between the useful arts and the fine arts. The most precise rendering is probably “know-how,” but that does not seem tonally right. The best solution is to use an approximation like “art” and supplement it with notes. This is what the translators have done, in this case and others, with considerable thoroughness.

They have also supplied an informative introduction, as well as “A Note on the Translation,” a bibliography and an outline of the work. All this precedes the main text. Afterward comes a brief “Overview of the Moral Virtues and Vices,” a very extensive and invaluable glossary, a list of “Key Greek Terms,” an index of proper names and at last a detailed “general index.” Together these bring the original text within the compass of every intelligent reader.

Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, believed that in the “Ethics” Aristotle had said everything needful for happiness in this life. Thus Aquinas did not write his own book on ethics, but instead wrote a commentary on Aristotle. This tradition was extended by the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, Leo Strauss, who wrote that all his work had no other purpose than to address “the crisis of the West.”

But what is the West? And what is its crisis? According to Strauss (and many others), the West is the civilization constituted at its core by the coming together of classical philosophy and biblical revelation. The vitality of Western civilization results from the interplay of these alternative principles, though each contains within itself what claims to be exclusive and irrefutable authority. Symbolic of this authority are Athens and Jerusalem. In “The Second World War,” Churchill remarks that everything valuable in modern life and thought is an inheritance from these ancient cities. The debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”) and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any other.

In their brilliant and highly readable “Interpretive Essay” Bartlett and Collins suggest, without positively asserting, that Aristotle offers a solution to the problem, or crisis, of human well-being. But they seem to doubt whether it can meet the challenge of the God of Abraham. But these two principles are not adversarial in all respects. Indeed, much of Strauss’s work is a radical attack — made with the greatest intellectual competence — against the latter-day enemies of both the Bible and a Socratic Aristotle. Strauss maintained that Athens and Jerusalem, while disagreeing on the ultimate good, disagree very little, if at all, on what constitutes a morality both good in itself and the pathway to a higher good.

Aristotle’s greatness of soul (magnanimity) may seem to resemble pride, the greatest of sins described in the biblical canon. But Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of the “Ethics” offers proof against theological negativism. And in the “Summa Contra Gentiles,”Thomas made the case for sacred doctrine on the basis of Aristotelian premises. It is an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that the highest good of each species is accessible to all, or nearly all, its members. For man the highest good is wisdom. But since few if any human beings attain it, Aristotle’s nature requires a supernatural correlate: the afterlife. Whatever one thinks of this argument, it points to a dialectical friendship between Athens and Jerusalem. All the more reason for them to join forces in the desperate struggle, still going on, between civilization and barbarism.

Harry V. Jaffa is a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. His books include“Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates” and “Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics.”

James Wolfensohn, Our Commencement Speaker, And His Insufficient Pro-Palestinian Street Cred

2011-06-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

James Wolfensohn, our commencement speaker, was recently mentioned in The Weekly Standard blog.

It turns out that the dear Mr. Wolfensohn was rejected by the American University of Beirut for his supposed insufficient love of the Palestinian cause even though he was awarded for promoting the Palestinian cause.

If Sir James Wolfensohn, the cofounder of Edward Said’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, doesn’t deserve to be honored at the American University of Beirut (AUB), then who does? Recently, the former World Bank chief found himself in the midst of controversy after AUB had announced that he would receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the June commencement address. Faculty members and students signed a petition in protest, arguing that honoring Wolfensohn “undermines AUB’s legacy in the struggle for social justice and its historical connection to Beirut, to Palestine and beyond.”

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PCACBI) was part of the campaign, as was Al Akhbar, a Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper where the anti-Wolfensohn crowd was given free rein to vent against the university for daring to honor him. On the other hand, another Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star, which has no ties to Hezbollah, was much more circumspect in its criticism of the boycott. One AUB professor, who felt compelled to comment without attribution, dismissed the campaign “as an ‘illusion of victory’ for the Palestinian cause, given what he termed the 'moderate' position on Israel often espoused by Wolfensohn.

In a statement, an embarrassed AUB president Peter Dorman argued that Wolfensohn was “on record” for having “criticized Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories,” and had extensive pro-Palestinian credentials. For instance, Wolfensohn resigned his position as quartet chief after the international boycott of the Hamas government in Gaza, and in 2007 he was rewarded with the Palestinian Authority's prize for excellence and creativity. Apparently AUB agitators have tougher standards than the PA.

Richard Rodner, Wikipedia-Censor, is Leaving CMC at the End of June

2011-06-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

You remember Richard Rodner, don't you, dear reader? He's the PR flack that censored and sanitized Bassam Frangieh's Wikipedia page. Today, he was probably let go or possibly fired. (It doesn't say he's retiring or going to a new company, so that's what I'm left to speculate.)

Anyways, I'm very pleased and I hope you are, too. He mismanaged CMC's PR for far too long.

Here's to hoping for a speedy transition.

Oh, and thanks for the help with the story that won me the Breindel award.

From: "Montez-Rose, Christina" <Christina.Montez-Rose@ClaremontMcKenna.edu>

Date: June 17, 2011 2:02:16 PM PDT

Subject: Announcement

Memorandum

Date: June 17, 2011

To: CMC Faculty & Staff

From: Ernie Iseminger, VP of Development & External Relations

This is to announce that Richard Rodner, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications will be leaving CMC at the end of June. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Richard for his leadership of our Office of Public Affairs and Communications, and for his dedication to the college.

Initiatives launched under his leadership include CMC’s new visual identity, the newly launched CMC Web site, CMCIQ, the new CUC collaborative satellite uplink broadcast studio, and the new look and editorial style of the award-winning CMC Magazine which continues to strengthen alumni, parent, and community engagement with our campus. Through these and other efforts, Richard helped to increase the visibility of our campus, promote the accomplishments and contributions of our faculty, students, staff, and alumni and enhance Claremont McKenna College’s image and stature.

We are grateful for Richard's contributions to our campus over the past two and half years. We wish him and his wife, Marcy, the very best in all that lies ahead.

My Total Vindication: On Winning the Breindel, the Bartley, and the Novak Awards

2011-06-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

Permit me to brag a little, having now won the $10,000 Eric Breindel Collegiate Award, the Robert F. Bartley Fellowship, and the Phillips Foundation's Robert Novak Fellowship.

I was called all manner of wicked things for daring to expose Bassam Frangieh's pro-Hezbollah, pro-Hamas views and Richard Rodner, Dean Gregory Hess, and President Gann's feeble attempts to cover them up and slander me and my reputation.

Thank you to everyone who supported me throughout. We won. They lost.

BigPeace.com contributor Charles C. Johnson has won the Eric Breindel Collegiate Journalism Award for a series of articles uncovering the radical views of Claremont McKenna College professor Bassam Frangieh.

Johnson exposed Frangieh’s support for the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Frangieh’s dislike of the United States. His articles ran in the Claremont Independent, and Johnson also wrote a separate series of posts on the same subject for BigPeace.com. The research Johnson conducted included extensive translations of interviews that Frangieh had originally conducted in Arabic, which Johnson arranged at his own expense.

The administration at Claremont McKenna circled the wagons, and the faculty passed a resolution behind closed doors supporting Frangieh on the basis of his contribution to diversity of “race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion and cultures, geographic and national origin (both U.S. and international), socio-economics, life experiences, and intellectual viewpoints.” Johnson persisted in the face of that stiff, and at times intimidating, opposition.

Johnson, contacted for comment about his award, said: “I would never have won this great award without the help of Andrew Breitbart and the people at BigPeace.com believing in me and my work.”

The award includes “a cash prize of $10,000, as well as a paid internship…at either Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, or the New York Post.” Johnson, who graduated from Claremont McKenna this spring, is already working at the Wall Street Journal this summer after winning another, separate award.

BigPeace.com editor Peter Schweizer congratulated Johnson: “He’s a superb contributor. Fearless and committed to the truth. We applaud him and congratulate him for his fine work.

Adam Kokesh CMC '06 Civilly Disobeys at Jefferson Memorial... And Gets Body Slammed

2011-05-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

As per usual, Kokesh figures out a way to get into the national news. Good on him. Be safe, Adam, and remember civil disobedience is still disobedience.

WSJ's Bret Stephens Asks Kissinger About Minxin Pei And Finds Out that Kissinger Has Never Heard of Him

2011-05-29T20:35:00.000-07:00

In this weekend's interview for The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens interviews Henry Kissinger. Here's the relevant exchange.

I ask him if he has thoughts about the argument advanced by Carnegie Endowment scholar Minxin Pei in his widely acclaimed book, "China's Trapped Transition," which contends that an autocratic China will never fulfill the promises of genuine economic reform. Mr. Kissinger has heard of neither the author nor the book, so I summarize the argument.

Mr. Kissinger resorts to generalities. "In the next phase," he says, "[the Chinese] will have to align their political reality with what has been happening in the last 20 years under the impact of reform." I try to pursue this line of questioning by asking what he makes of evidence that Beijing has been backsliding on economic reform, using the case of Google as an example. He says, "the issue of reform, of political reform, will have to be substantially up to the next group of leaders."

Kissinger was pretty cagey in the interview, but it was otherwise fairly interesting.

I have to say that I'm in the Pei camp when it comes to skepticism about the Chinese overtaking America, though I have to wonder how genuinely he believes it himself. It seemed from my few months in his class that he was controversial for its own sake as if bucking the conventional wisdom were the only means by which he could distinguish himself from the clamoring, teeming Chinese experts out there.

Perhaps the class got a bit more interesting after I dropped it but I don't know. I ultimately dropped the class. I was more interested in working at The Claremont Review of Books and other work than the class itself, which struck me as a bit more pedestrian than anything else. If one regurgitated the readings, one did better than if one did not. For example: if you disagreed with the received wisdom that China's currency was too low or that income inequality is truly a problem in China or (anywhere for that matter), you were criticized in the class.

I guess that's I.R. classes for you. Anyways, I've always enjoyed reading Pei's academic work but I'm not so convinced he was the greatest teacher. Sorry to ramble, but my advice would be read his stuff, think about it, and go about your way.

Seeing My Grandparents in D.C.

2011-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Bernadette and I went to D.C. this past week. It was a lot of fun. She had never been to D.C. before. My favorite part was when she got to meet my grandparents. They weren't the most communicative and it was tough to find them, given that there were a lot of people around them, but we managed to find them OK.

We made sure to send the pictures to my father. After all, without them, my father wouldn't be around and so I wouldn't be around.

I hope I get to see them again and maybe next time have a conversation.

What My Ordeal Can Teach Male Students Accused of Harassment by the College

2011-05-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

I have become convinced that Claremont McKenna needs to reform its investigation procedures in light of the witch hunt against me by my ex-girlfriend, Tina Nguyen CMC '11 (Thien-Nga Nguyen) and the college's unapologetic support of it.

Tina called me on May 18th. It was a strange number so I picked it up. I heard who it was when she spoke and then immediately hung up. She called back and left a voice mail on my machine.

In the message she admitted that she made up the whole thing because she "just didn't know how to get [me] to take it down." (She was referring to the blog post where I criticized her decision to make stuff up about me from high school and give it to a Twitter account.) She also admitted to cheating on me, which she had initially denied. She said she was a different person now. But how different could you be when you lie about accusations against a student? She said, "no matter what I tried to do, I never tried to get you expelled. You can ask Dean Spellman about that."

Right... which is why she falsely accused me of harassment and defamation and derailed the final semester of my academic career. If Tina is serious about being sorry, she could do the following: Apologize to me, write a letter which I will post online here admitting she lied, and ask the college to change its policies so that the accused can defend himself against false charges. Accusing a male student falsely about harassment is morally reprehensible -- and needs to stop before another student has to suffer the indignity and fear of having his life uprooted. It is especially unfair to the real victims of harassment, some of which have been my friends. Harassment is a very serious charge and it now seems obvious that the college is ill equipped to play judge, jury, and executioner in arbitrating disputes of this nature. I have heard of other students who have been harmed by the college's wanton disrespect of due process.

My parents worried that I wouldn't graduate -- Dean Spellman threatened me with not being able to graduate until the matter was resolved, even though I begged her to drop the investigation -- and I was seriously affected. I spent over 40 hours talking with lawyers, preparing letters, explaining to my scared girlfriend, friends, and family that I was totally innocent. I cringe to think what would have happened had I given in with all the pressure building up against me.

My grades suffered as a result and I am petitioning Dean Hess on Monday to have a few more days to resubmit my papers. (My professors and academic advisors have all OKed it.) If Tina really is sorry, she should write him a letter in my favor.

Remarks at the Phillips Foundation Dinner on May 17

2011-05-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

I won a fellowship from the Phillips Foundation in D.C. for $7500. The title of my project is "Enemies, Domestic: An Investigation into Appeasement of Evil by America's Colleges." Bernadette and I visited the National Press Club where I gave the last -- and by far the shortest -- speech there to some approval. Here is its text:

I know I'm the last one, so I'll be brief.

I know better than to get between people and the exit -- but I would be remiss if I did not thank the beneficence of Mr. Phillips, the help of Mr. Farley, the patience of Ms. Henderson, and the support of everyone at the Phillips Foundation. I would also like to thank my boss -- and my friend -- Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute, who is also in attendance. Together, we are part of a team that publishes the Claremont Review of Books, one of the best quarterlies in the country. I can say that more honestly now that I am off to The Wall Street Journal. Of course I am also very grateful to my fellow fellows, especially fellows past, who I understand contributed some $7500 to make my project possible.

My project is not about our friends, but about our enemies -- radical Islam.... and American higher education. The nexus between the two is a problem for those who love liberty. We can talk about it later, but over drinks because if there is one thing that unites the two especially it is their disdain of conservatives having a good time.

Atheism 101: Pitzer Embraces "Secularism Studies"

2011-05-20T10:31:00.001-07:00

I am pretty much of the view that anything with the word "studies" appended to it isn't really serious. Observe: "Gender Studies," "Black Studies," "Chicano/a Studies," and on we go.

Still I can't quite wrap my head around it.

Truth be told, I'm not really sure what my faith is. I believe in God, but that's about it.

It seems just another media stunt on the part of Pitzer to get itself more attention, sort of like the YouTube class it offers. If that is indeed the case, well done, because Pitzer certainly has gotten quite a bit of it. My favorite has been yesterday's op-ed, titled "A Bachelor's Degree in Atheism," by Alan Jacobs. A simple graff:

The sociologist behind the new Pitzer department, Phil Zuckerman, clearly isn't telling a narrative of decline: "There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious," he told the New York Times. "I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious."

Certainly this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied. Secularization—a long-term decline in religious belief, at least in the form we know it in the West—doesn't have a clear precedent in human history. And if scholars give sociological, political and cultural explanations for the presence of religious belief, should we not expect them to treat belief's absence in the same way?

The Perks and Pitfalls of Wolfensohn’s Global Life

2011-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Below please find my op-ed for The Claremont Independent written before this weekend's commencement ceremony, which, in all honesty, was mercifully brief.

The Perks and Pitfalls of Wolfensohn’s Global Life
By Charles C. Johnson

You can tell a lot about our college’s hopes for its students by the president’s choice of commencement speakers. This year’s is a should-have been CMCer and we are could-be James Wolfensohns.

The “banker to the poor” was no Mother Theresa. He took no oath of poverty and amassed a $350 million fortune as consultant, bureaucrat, think tanker, and above all, banker. He all but coined the term “too big to fail” when he plotted to bail out Chrysler in the 1980s. He went on to become a worldly World Bank bureaucrat, who, not content with his own millions, misspent billions on liberal good works to make poverty history. It persists, despite him, or perhaps, to spite him. No matter. He got rich countries to write off $42 billion of debt incurred by poor nations assuring his place as “the Elvis of Economics,” as Bono, another past CMC guest, called him. He demands the U.S. government to spend, spend, spend on microfinance, foreign aid, debt relief, etc., etc. You might even say he’s nothing but a hound dog for liberal causes du jour.

After the World Bank, Wolfensohn turned to the Middle East, where his special talents made him “special envoy” to direct Gaza’s economy. He might have reasoned that with his knack for networking he could stop the Palestinians from murdering Israelis. When all else fails, name dropping beats bomb dropping, as Churchill might have said. Alas Wolfensohn’s bore offensive didn’t take because, as he told the Jerusalem Post in 2006, matters were “above my pay grade.” Initially blaming Hamas for murdering Israelis next door and even doubting whether America would take kindly to similar acts, he soon recanted and got right with diplo-speak by blaming Bush for not taking the peace process seriously enough. Bush’s real offense, though, is not taking Wolfensohn seriously enough.

If that weren’t enough to assure his seat at the world wonk table, he set about badmouthing America. America, he tells us, spends far too much on her own defense and too little on what the foreign policy glitterati call “foreign aid.” You know these lines by rote, if not by heart, if you’ve taken a Haley I.R. course… Terrorism is handmaiden to poverty and not ideology. Wolfensohn, who warned of a “tsunami” of poverty, said he had the cure for what ails us in the fight against terrorism – more money. We bailed out autos why not bail out third world tin pot despots?

By the time people realized that that policy failed – much as they are starting to realize that the Wolfensohn-endorsed microfinance project has also failed – the “force of nature” would blow over the next project for though he was an admitted “late developer,” he was an early – and masterly – networker. Despite his lackluster academic credential – he failed several university exams – he talked his way from a Sydney tenement to Harvard Business School. He got the job of World Bank president when Bill Clinton, at Wolfensohn’s Wyoming home, asked him what he would do there – not exactly a meritocracy.

Wolfensohn even found time for a little culture – playing cello before Carnegie Hall, with his pal Yo-Yo Ma, fencing for the 1956 Olympic team, and globe-trotting of the sort you might read in a CMC admission essay: “In July 1973 Elaine and I took a rare break from the mayhem of New York and Schroders. We were sailing on a 72-foot ketch from Panama to the Galapagos ... the voyage was memorable, and the night watches along with the stars and accompanying dolphins and occasional whales were an experience never to be forgotten.”

With a bit of pluck and a lot of luck, the self-described little fat boy, born to downtrodden British Jews in the Depression in Australia, aspired to greatness. He wanted to be a “global player” and plotted accordingly in his room: “What would I have to do to become prime minister, a leading banker, a judge of the Supreme Court, an Olympian, a Rhodes scholar? What would it look like to be Mr Justice Wolfensohn or governor-general Wolfensohn?'”

What, indeed! Unsurprisingly, the answer to this, and nearly every question confronted by Wolfensohn is money – and a lot of it. Money buys all sorts of things – acceptance, accolades, and even access, according to reports from an anti-corruption watchdog group.

Money is why, according to Bloomberg, Wolfensohn overlooked the shady finances of international fugitive and financial criminal, Viktor Kozeny, the infamous “pirate of Prague.” Kozeny, flush with cheating Czech taxpayers out of a billion dollars, turned to Wolfensohn to sanitize his next deal in Azerbaijan. Wolfensohn met with Kozeny twice and gave his coveted World Bank endorsement. Kozeny then went on to defraud investors to the tune of $182 million. According to the Government Accountability Project, Wolfensohn “lent his reputation and his institution’s support to precisely the kind of fraud and theft he so frequently denounced.” “None of the World Bank officials in a position to anticipate corruption was able to expose it, given that the bank president had helped to conceal it,” the report noted. He behaved less than admirably, which compounds the irony of having a financier with shady ethics ties at the same time Claremont considers an ethics general education requirement.

Wolfensohn refuses to tell that tale. He doesn’t namedrop there. Nor does anybody else, for that matter. Wolfensohn’s underling, Johannes Linn, tasked by Wolfensohn with investigating the alleged corruption on the part of Kozeny, became director of the Wolfensohn Center at the Brookings Institution when he left the bank. Later Linn denied ever having heard of Viktor Kozeny. But Beatrice Edwards of the Government Accountability Project, a nonpartisan watchdog group, points out that Kozeny was “the most notorious international financial criminal in the region. She considers it “unimaginable that Linn would not have heard of him.”

Of course that story didn’t make the cut in his book, A Global Life. Perhaps he learned once and for all that money, while it buys access to the clubs he wanted to join, cannot buy the things of the soul. For that, you need more than mere networking. “You can’t succeed with just a good Rolodex if you can’t deliver. You have to perform to the absolute highest standard.” And it sure helps if you have friends, even if fickle. In contrast to class-based Britain, Wolfensohn loves America: but even as he talks about how great America is, he namedrops. “The thing I revere about this country is that you can deal with people as people, regardless of their wealth. I could today call up Warren Buffet or whoever is the richest person in this country - I know most of them - for a coffee.”

We learn from Wolfensohn’s memoirs that he is a great many things and he will tell you about all of them but one thing he is not is a devoted family man. He lived as his memoir suggests – globally, not locally, copping to not knowing his children and confessing that while his cancer-stricken wife begged him not to take a job that led to being away from home, he took it anyway. Those were his “lost years.”

Some of us can’t afford lost years – these past few ones having often been lost enough. As we ponder commencement and family gathers, it is difficult not to be lost in thought about what is next. Here’s a thought: We ought to wish to be good husbands, good fathers, good co-workers, good sons, and good citizens. Our parents – like all good parents – gave us a better life. And so we don’t seek a global life, but a good one. If we are lucky, maybe it’ll be a great one.

What the College Accused Me Of -- Or, Why I Haven't Been Blogging

2011-05-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I have graduated it is time to explain to my readers why it is that I have been incommunicado these past days.

My cheating, lying ex-girlfriend, Tina Nguyen (Thien-Nga Nguyen) CMC '11, was apparently very upset with my blog post describing her as a cheating, lying ex-girlfriend who was making stuff about me and sending it to my admirers on Twitter.

Tina then made up a frivolous complaint against me saying that I had "harassed" and "defamed" her and brought in the Dean of Students. There was only one problem: I had, in her own writing, emails and chats that showed she had cheated and lied.

Here's the back story: I received an email from Dean Mary Spellman before I left the country saying that I had to come in and talk to her about an investigation she was completing. Apparently, I was being "investigated" for a violation of the school's Code of Conduct. I immediately called Dean Spellman and she kept insisting that I come in and meet with her. I told her I would not until she told me what I was accused of and who was making the accusations. She said I was accused of "harassment." I thought she was joking, but she assured me she was not, and said, "Well, I'm innocent." She demanded I come in again and I told her I couldn't because I was leaving for overseas during Senior Week. I refused until I could have both my recorder and my attorney present. (I did that because I may be deciding to sue both my ex-girlfriend, the Dean of Students, and the College.)

Emails ensued and she finally admitted that I was being investigated for "harassment" and "defamation" for a blog post I wrote.

I explained to her that I was not going to come in until I was told what I was charged with and who had accused me. I told her that I had retained counsel -- who worked pro bono, by the way -- and that I would not be attending as it did not fit in my schedule. (I was leaving the country within 36 hours.)

I also informed her that her investigation into my speech was illegal and in direct violation of both the college's promise of free speech and the Leonard Law. I complied with the investigation -- by telephone -- though I made clear I did not have to, and gave her a list of witnesses that would corroborate everything I said, which they did. Dean Spellman still did not allow me to have my digital recorder and my attorney could not come back from D.C. fast enough. I filed a counter-claim against Nguyen for lying, abuse, and misuse of the school's procedures.

Need less to say, I was cleared of all of the charges against me. Here's a letter from Dean Spellman:

Dear Charles:

As we have previously communicated, I have conducted an investigation into a complaint made by Ms. Tina Nguyen, which alleged that certain comments made on your blog about the student were in violation of the College’s Basic Rule of Conduct.

As part of my investigation, I conducted interviews with you, the complainant, and the witnesses identified by both of you. I also reviewed the documentary information provided by you and the complainant.

Based on my review of the information provided, I do not find evidence that warrants further action by the College. As a result, no disciplinary charges will be filed in this matter, and no record of the complaint or this investigation will be included in your educational record.

I have also conducted an investigation in response to your counter-complaint. This investigation included interviewing witnesses identified by you, communications with Ms. Nguyen, and a review of the documentary information you provided. Based on my review of the information provided, I do not find evidence that warrants further action by the College. As a result, no disciplinary charges will be filed against Ms. Nguyen.

Please also note that, pursuant to Section XIV (A) of the Judicial Procedures, all records and communications related to this process will be maintained as confidential records within the Dean of Students Office.

If you have any concerns or objections to my determinations, please be advised that you have the right to appeal my decision to President Gann.

Sincerely,

Dean Spellman
_________________________________________
Mary J. Spellman, EdD
Dean of Students
Claremont McKenna College
Heggblade Center 104

Claremont, CA 91711

My advice to any male wrongly accused of harassment? Refuse to meet until they tell you the charges and fight like the devil. That's how I avoided the attacks on me.

Here's one letter that I wrote her on May 4, 2011:

Hi Dean Spellman,

As you have still not told me what the specific complaint(s) is/are against me and only after I asked repeatedly did you tell me on the phone that I was facing a "harassment" and "defamation" inquest for something I wrote on my personal website, I'm afraid I cannot meet with you at all, though again I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you may have in writing or to meet with you with the presence of my digital recorder and attorney. I am sure that you are mistaken about whatever it is that I am accused of doing and ask that you stop this Kafka-esque inquisition against me, but if you feel the need to pursue this further, please know that I will be taking it to the highest levels.

Why do I need a digital recorder? Here's why: A transcript of any conversation we might have is very important, especially in this case as I may decide to pursue legal action against either the person or persons making what I suspect are utterly false accusations against me designed to cause me stress and terror. This is even more the case as you have explicitly threatened me with not being able to graduate. Unfortunately, as a male college student accused of harassment, merely to be "investigated" for harassment would ruin me in the eyes of my peers and, given that there is a public website that posts slander against me, professionally as well.

Moreover, to be accused of defamation, which I'm not sure you have any power to enforce or investigate anyways, is potentially damaging to my career as a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, especially as I prepare to go to Norway on one of the most important trips I have ever taken.

In past emails I have answered your questions and will answer still more of them, if you wish. But I am very pressed for time as I am about to leave the country and finish my academic work by May 6 when grades are due. As it currently stands, you are interfering with my academic responsibilities as a student and my professional obligations post-college and causing me a lot of anguish in the final days of my educational career by failing to answer the simplest of questions about what I am being investigated for, who is launching the investigation against me, and why.
You might think that I am taking this too hard, but to put it mildly I am frankly terrified of the school's procedures. Claremont McKenna, after all, has been found of having FIRE's speech code of the month in February 2011. In the past, friends of mine who were innocent of the charges against them have been found guilty on the flimsiest of evidence, while people who have assaulted women have been given slaps on the wrist while the district attorney brings a case against them. The last person who was "investigated" for something he wrote was Brad Kvederis, who won his lawsuit against the college in the late '90s for an undisclosed sum. His newsletter was a saucy satire; my website is an award-winning news site.

I am especially worried as you have not been forthcoming with what the subject of your investigation is. You first told me that I was being "investigated" for a violation of the school's code of conduct. You would not tell me what I was being investigated for until I called you on the telephone and, after I asked repeatedly, told me it was for harassment and defamation, neither of which are defined in the school's code of conduct. You then informed me the past night that it was for something I wrote on my personal website, which you have no right to use against me by virtue of California's Leonard Law, as I informed later. Then, when I agreed to meet with you and to answer your questions, I asked to have my attorney and/or my digital recorder present so as to have a transcript that might be used later. You refused my basic request to meet with you and you alone.

As I have already noted to you, you have no standing, no legal right to "investigate" me for something I have written in print on my personal website by virtue of California's Leonard Law. If my accuser or accusers think I am afoul of the Leonard Law's protections, they can challenge me in court, if they see fit, where I will have more safeguards than one dean deciding, on a lark, to investigate me for something someone or someones said against me, especially when that dean has a history of calling students into her office for offensive lunch time conversations.
I implore you to let me answer your questions via email and/or to let me have a digital recorder present. (My attorney is not able to come back to the West Coast on short notice.) Nevertheless, I am certain that I will be exonerated because truth is an absolute defense against defamation and "harassment" does not apply here.

Again, I assure you that I want to help with any good faith investigation against me. I'm sure we can put this behind us.

Thank you again,
Charles

Back From Norway, Back to Work

2011-05-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

I'm back from Norway. Sorry I haven't been blogging regularly. I'll explain exactly why when the long arm of the college isn't threatening me with not being able to graduate.

--Charles

How Chapman Solved Its Parking Problem

2011-05-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

One of the promises of the past ASCMC political campaign was to fix the parking problem. It never happened.

Well, Chapman University has figured out what to do about the parking problem.

So Long Dean Castro: You Won't Be Missed Here

2011-05-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Forum confirms the rumor that Dean Fid Castro is leaving this summer.

I said pretty much everything I had to say about him in the post I wrote calling for him to be fired earlier last year, except this: "Good riddance." (It was the most commented upon post in Forum history, I believe and past Forum editor and abuser Michael Wilner, I'm told, deleted it for precisely that reason.)

Like all but a few administrators at Claremont -- Dean Huang being the exception that proves the rule -- he was a bully and a thug. He seldom if ever had students' best interests at heart, such as when he told David Daleiden CMC '10 during his ordeal at Pomona that

"You have no right to be on Pomona's campus. You have no more right to walk across Pomona's campus than you do to walk through someone's living room. You have no contractual agreement with Pomona college; you are not a student at Pomona; you have no more rights at Pomona than an individual walking his dog down the street."