Character and values—It's happening here?

(Note--this is a very different post than what I have done--it has my interest at this moment and I will probably write more along some of the themes in future entries.)

There is a local story going on in the city where I live at the University of Louisville. The former dean of the ”School of Education” is currently under federal investigation as to how he spent grant money.

Today (24 August 2008), the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the closest thing to an editorial that is not an editorial—a personality piece starting on the front page of the first section. It was more than a personality piece . . . it was actually an expose' of the guy's history and behavior. I conclude that this is the newspaper's not-so subtle statement that the guy should be ran out of town and fast.

The guy in question is under investigation for how he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Apparently, the grants were for the University of Louisville, and a big chunk was not spent at the University of Louisville, but the guy in question has reportedly spent them elsewhere.

I make the disclaimer that I am drawing my facts from the Courier-Journal and I am going to choose not to use names. I also am making the disclaimer that I am going in the order of the facts as they have usefulness to me in this blog (you can read the story for yourself if you want—your public library should have access to the story though its web-based database).

The former education dean was reported to have been emotionally abusive. The story said that he humiliated faculty publicly. He was also reported to have stood out in the hallway and mimicked the faculty member who had applied for his position but lost to him. (That faculty member moved on to another school). The story reported that a student got up and shut the door to the hallway. That is childish behavior if it really happened.

The story also had reports of the former dean engaging in sexual harassment at U of L and at one of his former places of tenure. Why is this surprising in light of this next piece of information?

The former education dean was married four times and is being divorced from his fourth wife. I think that secularism downplays how many times people get married. I want to say that it does matter. It takes maturity to stay in a marriage. Even if someone is not book-smart, they can be mature enough to be in a marriage and do just fine. I think that four marriages is indicative of someone's lack of maturity. (And this guy is a doctoral-level clinical psychologist?)

While I am not going to tell an abused person to stay with an abusive and tyrannical spouse, I have had numerous patients who have been married several times. In hearing their stories, I repeatedly found that they had tremendous abandonment issues and jumped from marriage to marriage impulsively without realizing that they were repeating the same mistake again and again. They needed to be good consumers of the person they were dating—and fight the negative thoughts that they were never-ever-ever-ever going to find someone again . . . and thus jump into bed and get married to the next person that said hello to them.

The more endearing part of the story is that two people I used to go to church with were quoted about how shady and hypocritical this guy was. These two people are of high character in my opinion—which had me all the more mindful.

Anyway, this guy was allowed to stay for awhile by the University. He was a “high performer.”
University administrative officials were quoted a number of times. The university president called the earlier complaints '”anonymous crap.”' The provost's comments were interesting as to how she dismissed early complaints because she took the view that faculty members were rigid in their ways and being naturally resistant to change. She also said that most organizations give '”high performers'” time to change their ways.

The term “high performer” then stuck with me. The guy had an appearance of being a high performer. He had done some good work earlier in his career. He worked fast and slashed and burned quickly. In his slashing and burning he was abusive and ruthless. He had enough success in bringing in the money, which likely bought him time and the appearance of being a high performer--but then he has had a number of short-term jobs in the process.

Money covered a multitude of character defects and sins . . . until the sins became too great to be covered by the money. The University of Louisville is striving to become a leading research university—something encouraged by the powers in Louisville and Kentucky. The University strongly encourages pursuit of grants and has some pretty verbose rules about spending the money.

Nevertheless, as I am learning from academia, many people are there who cannot function in the regular work world. I have had a number of professors who have few if any people skills—and would probably not make it past the 90 day probationary periods of a regular job because they cannot work well with others (clinically these are called narcissistic and borderline personalities).
I think that the University of Louisville has a number of them.

These low-emotionally intelligent types are protected by political correctness. They know how to invoke political correctness when it serves their interests—but will violate it in like manner too. What you get is a cloud of emotional dysfunction that ironically masquerades as acceptance. However, political correctness is really emotional and intellectual tyranny—academic freedom and freedom of thought on most campuses does not exist.

An example in the form of “a rabbit I want to chase” was when I was at Iowa State University back in the 1980's. The dean of students was a black lady who appeared to be a controlling borderline personality. Since I was a journalism student at that time, I had heard the story from the white “Iowa State Daily” editor who did the story himself. She wanted him to read back the quotes—which he did. However, she then reached across the table—grabbed his notebook—and read them for herself. I had one other second-hand encounter which told me something was not right with this woman—when I got into Clinical Social Work—she was one of the first that came up on my scope as a past example of a Borderline Personality who is a paranoid control freak.

All that being said, my gestalt is that the provost was thinking along these lines. The former education dean could hide in the cloud of emotional dysfunction until it became clearer and clearer, that the former dean was a problem. The story hinted that more and more complaints were made and insinuated that the former dean was leaving for such a reason. The elephant in the middle of the room is that he was leaving to take a job that paid $50,000 less per year than what he made at U of L. It appears that his high performance was not mattering anymore and his heavy-handed methods were bringing diminishing returns.

After the recitation of some of the details of the story, I have thoughts about leadership and character. There are multitudes of people in leadership around the world with bad character, little emotional intelligence and little moral fiber. I might have a little sympathy for the former dean given the details of his upbringing and my understanding of how personality disorders happen.

However, it comes back to me how this guy brought in money and made changes. It did not turn out until five years later how he spent the money and made the changes that something was supposedly done. Character took a back seat for such a long time.

I think that money will always replace character as the first standard in judging performance. It is becoming more evident that way in academia and in most work places--even with corporate statements of purpose and value.

Given this push for grant money it seems that the biggest message outside of the money piece is that universities are not proving to be places where character is nurtured and practiced. There are two many personality-disordered faculty members who can provide cover for the even sicker personality disordered faculty and administration who accidentally know how to manipulate situations under the cover of research grants and political correctness.

The story tells me that it is questionable whether the University of Louisville can honest say that character “is happening here.”