Court Filings in Kentucky Give a Vivid Glimpse of a Dean’s Interrogation

by E Wayne Ross on April 24, 2009

The Chronicle News Blog: Court Filings in Kentucky Give a Vivid Glimpse of a Dean’s Interrogation

“Dean, I can help you. I can work with you. Okay? But you need to know upfront that lying to a federal agent potentially could have … some criminal ramifications.”

It’s not every day that a campus police detective interrogates a dean. But a brief filed yesterday in a federal court in Kentucky offers a vivid portrait of the scene that unfolded last June, when Jeffrey G. Jewell, an investigator with the University of Louisville’s police department, spent more than six hours grilling Robert Felner, dean of the university’s College of Education and Human Development. Four months later, Mr. Felner was indicted on charges of embezzling more than $2-million from a federal research grant and from contracts with three urban school districts.