Monthly Archive for June, 2012

Page 2 of 4

Looking into the Weird Fox News Defense of Dragas

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 21, 2012 in UVa. 28 Comments

In what may stand as the sole defense of UVA Rector Helen Dragas published by a major media outlet, Fox News today published an opinion piece by University of Maryland professor Peter Morici. What’s most notable about it is the extent to which Morici parrots the language that Dragas has started using (specifically, describing President Teresa Sullivan as an “incrementalist”). That seems like a funny coincidence. Speculating that there might be a connection, I asked on Twitter if anybody knew of a connection between Morici and Dragas’ PR firm, Hill and Knowlton. It wasn’t long before I got a great response from Thomas Talhelm, pointing out that Accuracy in Media called out Morici in 2005 in an article about astroturfing:

Sheldon Rampton of the liberal Center for Media & Democracy monitors the public relations industry. He says some corporations are trying to smuggle their views into the media as objective news. He cites the case of U.S. Steel company Nucor Corp., which hired Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, to argue in favor of steel tariffs. Morici was quoted in scores of newspaper articles and wrote two dozen letters to editors. In most cases, his role as a paid consultant was not disclosed.

He says that one of the most common tactics of PR firms is to ghost-write editorials and get experts to sign them, sometimes with embarrassing results.

There’s no easy way to know whether Hill and Knowlton has paid Morici to write this article—though I have asked him—but it does seem like a pretty reasonable explanation.

Sullivan Gets the Upper Hand on Dragas

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 21, 2012 in UVa. 33 Comments

The momentum of the Dragas vs. Sullivan power struggle shifted decidedly to President Teresa Sullivan’s advantage this afternoon, after a day of small victories for her was capped off by news that a Board of Visitors meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. First came word that ten of the eleven deans of the schools had signed a letter demanding the restoration of Sullivan to the presidency—the only non-signatory was McIntire Dean Carl Zeithaml, who wasn’t asked to sign, what with his position as kinda-sorta-interim president. (“Relationship status: it’s complicated.”) Then President Sullivan issued a statement calling for civility, the first communication from her since all of this went down, the real purpose of which seems to have been to remind people that she’s still president.

Finally, the big news of the day came out just a few minutes before 5 PM—at the last possible moment—that a special meeting of the Board of Visitors is scheduled for 3 PM on Tuesday, with a topic of “possible changes in the terms of employment of the President.” It was clear this morning that a board coup against Dragas was underway, with at least three members prepared to call for a meeting (the necessary number), but they wouldn’t want to have called that meeting unless they knew that they had a majority of the board in support of restoring Sullivan to the presidency. Implicitly, calling this meeting means that they’ve got the votes. This came at the end of a long day of vocal rabble-rousing by Sullivan supporters in the community, who have been organizing on the “United4Honor” Facebook group to get people to call and write the BOV and the governor, to embolden members of the BOV to come out as Sullivan supporters.

Another small bit of news today came in the form of a letter to the Cavalier Daily from BOV member Glynn Key. You’ll remember Key for having left the board’s marathon late-night session on Monday night/Tuesday morning. It hasn’t been clear why Key left, or whether she supported or opposed the coup against Sullivan. In the letter, she writes:

It would be personally convenient and gratifying if I described what happened in Executive Session, in order to explain to you why I departed at 1:30 am. But you know that it would be improper and dishonorable for me to breach the confidentiality requirements for Executive Session.

At a minimum, we now know that she left in protest of something occurring in that meeting. A think that a reasonable person reading this would conclude that she did not support the ouster of Sullivan, and her premature departure was tied to that.

There is still a rally scheduled for 2 PM on Sunday afternoon, which will now surely be infused with a level of enthusiasm—and probably attendance—not yet seen in this multi-week showdown.

BOV Coup Against Dragas is Under Way

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 21, 2012 in UVa. 20 Comments

Several members of the UVA Board of Visitors are plotting a coup, the Washington Post reports. Sullivan is said to have indicated that she’d resume her presidency if the Rector Helen Dragas were sacked, and with the resignation of Vice Rector Mark Kington, there appear to be enough votes to restore Sullivan. (During the late-night BOV session on the 18th and 19th, at one point there was an even split to restore Sullivan, which somehow turned into a 12–1 vote in support of making Carl Zeithaml the interim president. That seems to explain why the meeting went on for so many hours.)

Procedurally, there’s a deadline of 5 PM today for a call for a BOV meeting to be held on June 27. Only three BOV members need to agree to hold such a meeting in order to make it happen, though presumably they wouldn’t bother to do so unless they either had those eight votes, or believed that they could get them in the next six days.

Internal BOV E-Mails Released

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 20, 2012 in UVa. 31 Comments

The Cavalier Daily has FOIAd the UVA Board of Visitors’ internal communications—specifically, those sent and received by Rector Helen Dragas and now-former Vice Rector Mark Kington—and it’s good, good stuff. I think everybody could use some help translating them, especially from folks with deep knowledge of UVA, so if you spot anything interesting in them, please post a comment explaining! The short version is that this is all about online education, with Dragas and Kington convinced that if UVA doesn’t change its model immediately to teaching people via the internet, it’ll be a buggy-whip factory in no time.

Over at the Washington Post, Daniel de Vise and Anita Kumar have already provided their own timeline-based interpretation, and at the Progress Bryan McKenzie has summarized what he sees as the interesting bits. Also, the Cavalier Daily—having gotten these e-mails as printouts, which strikes me as a bit malicious—tweeted out the best ones last night as they scanned in the pages.

BOV Vice Rector Kington Resigns

Published by Waldo Jaquith on June 19, 2012 in UVa. 29 Comments

Mark Kington has resigned from the UVA Board of Visitors. The vice rector of the board, he worked for months with the rector, Helen Dragas, to engineer the removal of Teresa Sullivan as president of the university. In his resignation letter to Governor Bob McDonnell, Kington says he’s resigning “in order to better serve this university which I love and respect, and to help bring about new leadership on the Board of Visitors at this critical time.” His resignation comes just hours after the board’s 2:30 AM vote to name McIntire School of Commerce Dean Carl Zeithaml interim president. Kington’s term started July 1, 2010, and isn’t over until July 1, 2014. Under § 23-70, a replacement appointment to complete his term “shall be made by the Governor subject to confirmation by the Senate and the House of Delegates.”

Speaking of resignations, computer science professor William Wulf resigned today, writing that he does “not wish to be associated with an institution being as badly run as the current UVa” that he “want[s] no part of this ongoing fiasco.”

Sideblog