Courier-Journal: The real surprise
August 29, 2008
As it turns out, the most surprising aspect of the Felner Affair at the University of Louisville is not the possibility that taxpayers’ money was squandered or pocketed. Waste and corruption are all too common.
What’s shocking is the failure of top university administrators to look seriously enough, and early enough, at evidence that Education Dean Robert Felner was leaving academic wreckage behind, as he stomped toward his goal of giving the college a bigger and better national profile.
It’s not as if feedback from the College of Education and Human Development was cheerful, as Mr. Felner was installed as a change agent. Indeed, informal complaints and formal grievances piled up.
Looking back, 21 former faculty who just sent a blistering letter to the U of L board about their experiences with Felner are hurt and outraged by the slow and insubstantial response. And they should be.
President James Ramsey and Provost Shirley Willihnganz should have admitted much, much sooner that Felner’s tenure was collapsing into an organizational and managerial debacle. And they should have reacted accordingly.
Instead, even in the backwash of a federal investigation into the way Mr. Felner handled a $694,000 federal grant, Dr. Ramsey was still dismissing some faculty complaints and grievances as “anonymous crap.” And, just this week, board chairman J. Chester Porter pronounced himself “satisfied” with the way the administration handled faculty criticism and charges. He did this without serious investigation of the letter’s specifics and before a proposed Faculty Senate review produced any findings. All of which calls into question the university’s good faith in dealing with allegations that people and careers were being abused.
This is no way to recruit the best and brightest professors and researchers, or to become a top 20 metropolitan research campus.
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