Boston University
Office
of the Provost
One
Silber Way
8th
Floor
Boston,
MA 02215
Dear Provost
Morrison:
I am a senior,
tenured professor in the College of Communication Department of Film and
Television. I have given the better part of my career (23 years and counting)
to Boston University, and at different points have served as both Director of
Film Studies and department Chairman. I have an extensive publication record
and a high public profile (dozens of interviews for major media and internet outlets).
I am writing because I feel I am being forced, against my natural inclination,
to take actions that will have a seriously adverse impact on the reputation of
the university, the administration, and student recruitment. I’d ask your indulgence,
as I explain what has brought me to this moment. I apologize for the length of
what follows, but it is dictated by the fact that it is necessary for me to
summarize a series of events that spanned many years.
President
Brown has placed great emphasis on the importance of high standards of ethical
conduct, including “dealing with others honestly
and in good faith,” “being respectful of the rights of others,” and “not
taking advantage of another person.” I quote from the “Boston University Code
of Ethical Conduct” and the documents that accompany it. He has said that “deans, directors, department heads, and other
supervisors are responsible for fostering respect for the values embodied in
the Code and for promoting compliance with it….. [and that] university
employees who have questions or concerns about … possible unethical behavior …
should speak with their supervisors ….” The Code also mentions the possibility
of serious penalties associated with a supervisor’s “failure to report a
violation or … withholding information relating to a violation.”
These are fine
words, but personal experience has shown me that the reality is quite different.
Over the past eight or more years, and throughout the entire period of time
President Brown has led the university, I have documented a number of acts of
professional misconduct, unethical behavior, and procedural violation by a
small number of individuals in the College of Communication, which I either
directly experienced or witnessed. The violations were all over the map and took
place at every level—the legacy of thirty-five years of administrative high-handedness
and bureaucratic entitlement inculcated and rewarded by a previous Boston
University President and the administration he put in place under him. (I’d
note that the university culture of those decades is far from dead and that many
of the same personnel still hold the same offices.)....
[Thus the opening. The full text of the letter, which lists numerous ethical issues, procedural violations in connection with the hiring, tenure, promotion, and pay system,
and acts of serious professional misconduct, is available in the original posting.
and acts of serious professional misconduct, is available in the original posting.
The conclusion of the letter to Provost Morrison follows.]
There is no
other way for me to interpret the state of non-response that continues into the
present except as being one more illustration of BU’s actual treatment of
faculty members who raise issues about ethical violations or who call attention
to acts of serious professional misconduct—a state of administrative
non-response that, on top of everything else and in addition to all of the
previous events, counts as one more set of violations of the “Boston University
Code of Ethical Conduct.” The administrative non-response of the past two years
is additional evidence (if additional evidence were needed!) that reports about
professional misconduct and mistreatment submitted to senior administrators are
not discussed, not investigated, not corrected, and, in fact, not even replied to.
(To say the obvious, I don’t count being yelled at, called names, mocked, or
dressed-down in public in front of students, colleagues, and others as a valid
reply.) Despite protestations and PR to the contrary, the BU of the past
clearly lives on in the Brown administration.
My most recent
memo to Ombuds Montemurro expressing dismay about the lack of administrative
response to the information I have provided was sent to her via email on June
18, 2011. I include the text of that memo following this letter. (I’d note that
in order to keep the Provost’s Office as fully informed as possible about the ethical
issues I have raised and my continuing need to receive redress for the
unethical, unprofessional ways I have been treated, I carboned Associate
Provost Sandell when I sent this memo, just as I have carboned Associate
Provost Sandell on, or sent her hard copies of, most of my previous
communications with Ms. Montemurro.) In that memo, I explained that although I
had scrupulously kept my reports “in house” and attempted to “work within the
system” up to that point, the only remaining course of action I saw available
to me, due to the non-response at all levels, was to “go public” with what I
had observed and documented—both in terms of the behavior of colleagues and
administrators and in terms of the administrative retaliation I have personally
experienced (and continue to experience) for reporting the events I have. I said
that, as reluctant as I was to take action outside the university system, and
as destructive to the college and university as such action would inevitably
be, it seemed that this course of action was being forced on me.
I would have
thought that that memo at least would
have received a response, but, par for the course and true to form, it too was
accorded no response whatsoever—either from the Provost’s Office, another BU administrator,
or the university Ombuds. It has now been more than three months and it has still
not even been acknowledged, let alone replied to by anyone (including the university
Ombuds). The university is nothing if not consistent. The BU administration and
now the Ombuds Office are maintaining a perfect record of not dealing with faculty reports of professional misconduct.
I am writing today
to give the university one final opportunity to address these issues in a
timely way to keep them in-house. For something like eight years by this point,
I have scrupulously kept all of my communications and appeals for redress inside the system. I have declined
numerous requests from the media and others to air my grievances publicly. I
have been an absolute and complete team-player in this respect, even as I have
endured numerous insults, indignities, and outright punishments for filing the
internal reports that I have. I find it hard to believe that it is really the
desire of the administration to force me to go public about these issues—to
post them on a blog or to speak to reporters about them.
Surely verbal
abuse, denial, dismissiveness, name-calling, sarcastic come-backs, and punitive
actions (my program Director’s, Chairman’s, and Dean’s responses) or see-no-evil
silence and head-in-the-sand denial (the response I have received from higher
levels of the university administration) are not the only reactions BU
administrators are capable of when they receive reports of professional
misconduct from a senior faculty member. Surely this is not the way reports about
professional misconduct from senior faculty are supposed to be treated according
to President Brown’s “Code of Ethical Conduct.”
Even at this
late date, eight or more years into the administrative mistreatment and personal
abuse I have been accorded in response to my reports, and almost two years
after I met with and communicated these issues to the university Ombuds, I am
hoping that there is a desire, however overdue, to redress the treatment I have
received and continue to receive. The culture of the university and the
educational life of its students are the real losers. The students deserve better.
Sincerely,
Ray Carney
Professor of
Film and American Studies
Author of: The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism,
Modernism and the Movies (Cambridge University Press); The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (Cambridge University
Press); Speaking the Language of Desire:
The Films of Carl Dreyer (Cambridge University Press); American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra (Cambridge University
Press); American Dreaming (University
of California Press at Berkeley); Shadows
(British Film Institute/Macmillan); Cassavetes
on Cassavetes (Faber and Faber/Farrar, Straus); The Adventure of Insecurity; Necessary
Experiences; Why Art Matters; and
other books, essays, and editions, translated into more than ten languages.
Web site:
www.Cassavetes.com (ordered to be removed from the university server and
suspended at the demand of my Chairman, Dean, and Provost)
cc: President
Robert Brown
Associate Provost Julie Sandell
Francine Montemurro, University Ombuds
*
* *
The conclusion to the original blog posting (available in the side menu under March 2013) follows:
The reader may, naturally enough, be interested
in the Provost’s response to the preceding memo—or her response to any of the
subsequent memos and emails I have sent her. It won’t take long to describe. As
has been the case with all of my other reports of ethical violations in my
College, and my descriptions of the financial, bureaucratic, and personal
retaliation I have experienced for making such reports, Provost Morrison did not
offer a single word of reply. Not a token “thank you for expressing your
concerns” note. Not a “we’ll look into it” note. Not a “let’s meet to discuss
this” note. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Silence.
In the eighteen months [as of the date of the March 2013 blog posting; at the point of this blog posting it has now been been three years, but none of the facts that follow have changed] since I wrote the
memo reprinted above, I have followed it up with additional reports to the Provost and other administrators on related
topics, with numerous requests for action, and with multiple requests to meet and
discuss the issues I have raised--to brainstorm how best to deal with them and resolve
them. Those memos have also gone unresponded to. The Provost has not written me a
single word in reply. Nor has any other BU administrator.
