RICHARD H. BRODHEAD'S SUCCESSFUL ADAPTATION TO PERKS & PRIVILEGES OF THE PRESIDENCY

http://dukefactchecker.blogspot.com/2011/06/fuqua-committees-pissed-over-leaks-of.html

A QUOTATION FROM “FACT CHECKER” ON THE LATEST BRODHEAD BOONDOGGLE (WITH RETROSPECTIVE COMMENTS ON THE PRESENT AND INDEFINITELY ONGOING DR. ANIL POTTI SCANDAL. [“FC” = FACT CHECKER.]

Six professors in the Fuqua Business School -- who served on two committees responsible for in-depth investigations of the degrees proposed for Kushan -- have written their colleagues to express their dismay that documents they call "confidential" found their way onto Fact Checker.

Loyal Readers should know that we had a copy of this sniveling e-mail before most of the intended recipients even knew it had hit their in-boxes. This occurred at the same moment we were posting a demand that President Brodhead release two more key reports, these from the Boston Consulting Group. The reports, written in 2008, include finding after finding, recommendation after recommendation, that the small coterie of administrators who put together the Kunshan Folly ignored in their hell-bent drive to start a campus in China to teach Chinese.

With Brodhead not responding, Fact Checker will make the secret reports available at midnight Sunday, as promised.

The six professors make some assumptions, including one that is sheer guesswork on their part: that the source or sources for the series of documents we have liberated is/are within the Business School.

As Loyal Readers know, we are extremely well sourced. We can tell you, for instance, that when we broke the news that one of Dr. Anil Potti's collaborators, Dr. Joseph Nevins, was asking for retraction of their published work, that our source was not within the Medical School.

Most recently, a Deputy Fact Checker obtained in the heart of Allen Building itself, the specific cost of Brodhead's airfare -- $14,315.80 -- for a lavish three week summer-time spree through Europe, Asia and Africa. That's for Uncle Dick alone, not counting his wife Cynthia, whom FC has revealed is paid $132,500 for her spousal duties. Nor does it include supporting personnel for the trip, the director of the Nasher Museum, for example, who is going to London to be with the Brodheads at the Tate for an alumni gathering.

Mind you, this is occurring at a time of austerity in Durham, when the budget for research and travel for the Arts and Sciences has been slashed from $500,000 annually to $100,000.

IT WOULD APPEAR THAT AFTER THE MISERABLE DECADE OF THE 1970S WHEN BRODHEAD HUNKERED DOWN AND KEPT HIS NOSE CLEAN HOPING THAT THE ASSURANCE THAT HE WAS IN A “TROTH” SITUATION WOULD CULMINATE IN PROMOTION AND TENURE HE HAS ADAPTED VERY SUCCESSFULLY TO THE PERKS OF THE PRESIDENCY. THE PERKS MAY HELP HIM PUSH OUT OF MIND THE FACT THAT ALTHOUGH HE IS NO LONGER FACING CHARGES OF CONSPIRACY HE IS STILL FACING DISCOVERY ON CHARGES OF “OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE” AND “FRAUDULENT CONSTRUCTION.” AND HE IS FACING VERY SERIOUS QUESTIONING ABOUT THE HEADLONG RUSH TOWARD GLOBAL EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSITY.