Corey Robin's Blog, page 99

What the Market Will Bear

So that New York Times article I discussed in my last post mentions as an aside that General Petraeus and Macaulay Dean Ann Kirschner spent the spring emailing each other about an oped they hoped to get published in the Times.

JK Trotter, the Gawker reporter, has now gotten dozens of pages of emails between these two, of which he estimates roughly half are devoted to this draft oped.  He has just tweeted two different parts of this draft. It’s—how shall I put this?—a real meeting of the minds.

@CoreyRobin @slicksean small preview of Petraeus’s draft of the “op-ed” mentioned in the Times pic.twitter.com/NKylZfongX

— J.K. Trotter (@jktrotter) July 16, 2013

@CoreyRobin @slicksean pic.twitter.com/eBY0NJdSYv

— J.K. Trotter (@jktrotter) July 16, 2013

This is what we were about to pay $200,000 for. And what we’re already paying however-much-a-dean-makes $245,000 for. Damn, that would have been an expensive oped!

CUNY Backs Down (Way Down) on Petraeus

Today CUNY announced that it would pay General David Petraeus exactly $1 to teach two courses next year. As the New York Times suggests, the scandal just got to be too much for the university and for Petraeus:

It was supposed to be a feather in the cap for the City University of New York’s ambitious honors college. Or perhaps a careful first step back into public life for a leader sidelined by scandal.

One way or another, the news that David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director and commander of the allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, would be a visiting professor at the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY this coming academic year was supposed to be great publicity all around.

Instead it turned into a minor scandal all its own, as some professors and politicians expressed outrage over his six-figure salary, and others accused the university’s administration of lying about just what the salary was.

On Monday, it was announced that Mr. Petraeus would, on second thought, teach for just $1.

This is a huge victory, of which all of you who sent emails and signed petitions should be proud. If this blog contributed one iota to this effort—if all of us did indeed just save CUNY $149,999 to $199,999—I could not be more pleased. I hope that money can now be put to a good cause: increasing the salary of Research Foundation employees by 3%, providing full tuition wavers for 26 students or books and other supplies to 120 students, or any of the other many needs of our faculty, students, and staff that have been identified in recent weeks.

The question of a potential cover-up still remains. The Times reports:

Those documents and others provided by CUNY reveal an extensive and friendly e-mail correspondence between Mr. Petraeus and Dr. Kirschner. The two went back and forth about the seminar, an op-ed article they contemplated writing together, and even their day. They do not appear to have exchanged e-mail about reducing his salary until word of his compensation — far more than most CUNY professors receive, for far less work — began making headlines.

CUNY officials insisted that those headlines were wrong, that despite the offer of at least $200,000, Mr. Petraeus had agreed to a smaller sum, all from private funds. To back up that point, Dr. Kirschner then wrote him a letter “memorializing our discussions over the past few months regarding your appointment as Visiting Professor at Macaulay Honors College at $150,000.”

That “memorializing” letter failed to convince critics. So a while later she released a document that was described as an early draft of the agreement. But that draft had never been sent, making its relevance unclear, and it was not included with the original cache of documents that had been released.

Several points to note.

1. The Times has obtained additional documents beyond those obtained by Gawker in its FOIL request. Those documents include direct correspondence between Dean Ann Kirschner and Petraeus prior to Gawker‘s July 1 story.

2. None of these additional documents includes any mention of a lower salary. It’s possible that CUNY discussed the lower salary with Petraeus’s representatives rather than Petraeus himself; it’s also possible that these discussions occurred entirely by phone.  The Times doesn’t tell us one way or another. What we do know is that Kirschner and Petraeus never discussed via email a lower salary until after the Gawker story broke.

3. Kirschner’s May 29 letter, with the lower salary figure, was never sent. CUNY has claimed the letter was “sent” by Kirschner to other “CUNY offices.” From the Times piece it’s unclear if it was simply not sent to Petraeus and/or his representatives or if it was never sent to anyone.

Gawker reporter J.K. Trotter tells me he has just received the Macaulay FOIL documents. Once he goes through them, we’ll find out the whole story.

While questions remain, I want to reiterate that this is a major victory, one that I myself did not think possible. Again, it’s a testament to all of you.

But more important I hope that we can soon begin to discuss the real issues at CUNY that this scandal has exposed: that most of our classes are taught by adjuncts who are woefully underpaid and disrespected; that we have a university administration that seems to put the glitz and glitter of celebrity hires, drawn from the higher circles of power, ahead of excellence and equity; and that we are a cash-starved institution that needs resources and competent leaders rather than austerity and starstruck administrators.

Update (July 15, 10:30 pm)

In my rush to post this, I forgot to thank a bunch of individuals. First and most important to J.K. Trotter of Gawker who broke the story and generously shared information throughout the past two weeks. I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more from and about Trotter in the future. He’s that rare thing: a reporter who’s actually got a nose for the news. Second, to Republican State Assemblyman Kieran Lalor and his chief of staff Chris Covucci. It’s not often that I find myself in alliance with folks on the other side of the ideological spectrum; was pleased to be in this case. Third, to Brad Lander and Bill de Blasio. I’ve tangled with these officials in the past; I was glad they took the stand that they did on this issue, and in Lander’s case, that he went the extra mile to organize on this issue. And again thanks to all of you. Good work.

Update (11:45 pm)

Kirschner has posted about the Petraeus hire on her website. The headline (which she also tweeted):

Dr. Petraeus teaching at Macaulay for $1, no typo there, just good will. Wonder if you know it when you see it?

 

Next Week in Petraeusgate

Next week, Gawker reporter J.K. Trotter will be getting a second cache of Petraeusgate documents from CUNY. This batch will come from Macaulay Honors College; the first, which Trotter published in his Gawker story, came from CUNY Central.

What to look for in that second cache: the May 29 offer letter to Petraeus that Macaulay Dean Ann Kirschner allegedly drafted and shared with CUNY officials. (If you need a quick refresher on the significance of that letter, see below.)

Here are the two scenarios.

Scenario 1: The Macaulay cache does contain the May 29 letter

This scenario raises many questions. Seven to be exact.

First, if Kirschner did indeed draft and share that document with other “CUNY offices” on May 29, as the university maintains, why was there no evidence of it in the first batch of FOIL documents from CUNY Central? As Trotter has explained:

Records between campuses frequently overlap. The Central Office records contain correspondence not only between Petraeus and Ann Kirschner — who does not work in Central Office — but between Kirschner and other faculty members about Petraeus’s appointment. It would be extremely odd for the Central Office records to include these particular emails but not Kirschner’s May 29 letter, if in fact Kirschner circulated it among CUNY officials.

Second, to which “CUNY offices”—and more important, individuals—did Kirschner allegedly send the document to? Will those individuals confirm that they received it on or about May 29?

Third, by what vehicle—email, fax, interoffice mail, US mail, courier—was the document sent? In their explanation of the document, CUNY claims that Kirschner “sent” it to other CUNY offices. That’s a capacious, and ambiguous, verb. Originally, CUNY claimed that Kirschner had emailed the document. But an email would have to show up in a FOIL release, and it would have to have a time stamp.  Perhaps that’s why the university opted for “sent” instead. “Sent” could well have been a lawyer’s improvisation, designed to provide university administrators with enough wiggle room to say that Kirschner communicated the contents of the document without pinning themselves down as to how. Come to think of it, that might also explain that weird locution “CUNY offices.” An office can neither confirm nor deny that it received a document. It can’t even return phone calls.

Fourth, does the document have a time stamp on it, proving that it was indeed shared on May 29, as the university claims?  Without that time stamp, one could easily surmise that the university is merely inserting a document that it created after the fact into a FOIL release. That would, of course, be illegal, so I’d be surprised if the university were to take that route. But without the time stamp, it’s hard to resist that speculation.

Fifth, was there any response to the document? From whom? What did it say?

Sixth, after it was shared (and perhaps revised) with CUNY Central, why wasn’t the document immediately forwarded  to Petraeus or Petraeus’s attorney Robert Barnett? Why were its contents only communicated on July 1, just after the Gawker story came out?

Seventh, why, prior to July 3, which was when the May 29 letter first appeared, did several CUNY officials claim, repeatedly, to Trotter and to NYS Assemblyman Kieran Lalor that there were no more written documents related to the Petraeus hiring other than the ones that Gawker had published on July 1? How was it that this May 29 document was suddenly discovered after Lalor’s accusation (see below)?

Scenario 2: The Macaulay cache does not contain the May 29 letter

This scenario raises only one question: Why not?

If Kirschner sent the document on May 29, there has to be a record of it, and it has to be in the FOIL documents. So why is not there?

The only possible explanation I can come up with is: Kirschner typed the document, saved it on her laptop or some other portable electronic device, walked (or perhaps was chauffeured) to CUNY Central’s office, met with Goldstein or some other official, talked with him or her about the new terms, and then left. Without a trace.

Or perhaps CUNY administrators are more imaginative than I am.

We’ll find out next week.

Other News

The news coverage and commentary is starting to pick up.

Assemblyman Lalor hits all the right notes in an oped in today’s Daily News:

The average CUNY adjunct makes $3,000 per class. In 2009, Eliot Spitzer signed on to teach a political science class — and was paid $4,500 for the semester, an amount that the New York Times described as “the highest rate paid to the highest level of adjunct City University faculty.”

Can one man, carrying nothing close to a true professor’s workload, be worth 33 to 50 times that sum? And how engaged in the life of the university will Petraeus truly be, given that he’s also slated to be a professor at the University of Southern California, 51/2 hours away?

CUNY officials claim the salary is not a problem because the money is coming from private donations, not tax dollars. But earlier this week, they told my office that they have yet to receive any donations specifically made to pay for Petraeus’ salary.

Instead, they plan on using unearmarked donations to CUNY’s Research Foundation.

This means other projects will go unfunded. And even if CUNY does ultimately receive a donation for Petraeus, that donation might have gone to something else.

Alex Pareene is characteristically scathing in today’s Salon :


I know Barnett is doing his best for his client here, but has he really figured out all the ways Petraeus could monetize his influence? (Or “share his expertise” or however he justifies it to himself, if he bothers to?) There’s a million different jobs David Petraeus could pretend to do for a lot of money.


Major institutions of American life with money to burn, David Petraeus is waiting for your call! Why not hire the general as your new editorial cartoonist, or commissioner of the New York City public schools? Maybe he could do your taxes, if you pay him six figures and give him some help? He could design your next home, library or hospital, because how hard could architecture be for the man who won both of our most recent wars?

Chronicle of Higher Ed blogger—and New School historian—Claire Potter “can’t even count the levels of yuck” about this hire. But she does a pretty job!

As one wag pointed out on Twitter, all CUNY would have to do to make this right is appoint Petraeus as a football coach, and then everyone would agree that he was a bargain.

And last, Chris Hayes did a quick segment on his show when the story first broke.  His conclusion about Petraeus?

He’ll work about three hours a week with the help of a group of graduate students to take care of course research, administration and grading. That works out to approximately $2,250 per hour. Terrific news for David Petraeus, slightly less terrific news for the number crunchers.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has still not covered the story, despite jumping all over the Spitzer hire in 2009.

A Quick Refresher

On July 1, Gawker published Trotter’s story claiming that Petraeus was getting paid $200k. Several hours later, Kirschner sent an email to Petraeus saying that he would be paid $150k. The next day (July 2), Lalor accused CUNY of coming up with the lower figure only after they had been embarrassed by the Gawker story. The day after that (July 3), CUNY published a document, dated May 29, from Kirschner to Petraeus, which contained the lower salary offer. The point was clear: we (CUNY) did not make this new figure up after the story broke.

Paul Krugman on Petraeusgate

Krugman:

There are, I think, things I might want to hear David Petraeus talk about. But “recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy” definitely don’t fit.

Ouch.

Petraeus Prerequisites

So the man whose course description reads thus—

In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will examine in depth and then synthesize the history and trends in diverse public policy topics with a view towards recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy.

—has the gall to include in his course prerequisite this:

Excellent writing and presentation skills are a must, as is the ability to work well as part of a team.

I don’t begrudge Petraeus that “ability to work well as part of a team.” With his platoon of TAs, he clearly can do that. But the excellent writing skills?

Incidentally, the course is limited to 16 students.  How many TAs has Petraeus been given to administer, run, and grade for the course?

As Kieran Healy said on Facebook:

Time was, a professional bullshitter like Tom Friedman would pretend to be a military commander like David Petraeus. Now it’s the other way around.

This is What We’re Paying $150,000 For?

David Petraeus’s course description is up. The course is called “Are We on the Threshold of the North American Decade.” That sounds like a question to me, but there’s no question mark.

Here’s the description:

In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will examine in depth and then synthesize the history and trends in diverse public policy topics with a view towards recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy.

This is what we’re paying $150,000 for?

Update (11:35 pm)

Yasmin Nair just suggested a different course title on FB: “Can you believe that CUNY is seriously paying me this much money for this shit”

No question mark.

(Thanks to J.K. Trotter for pointing this description out on Twitter.)

More Coverup at CUNY?

One of the issues in Petraeusgate is who is paying for this hire: the taxpayers or private donors? In her email of July 1—the last communique from the administration to Petraeus that we know of—CUNY Dean Ann Kirschner writes:

Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has provided private funding for your position, which will be paid through the CUNY Research Foundation.

Previously the administration had claimed that Petraeus’s base salary would be “supplemented” by private donations that had yet to be secured. Now, the administration suggests that the position in its entirety is to be covered by private funds; the funds have been secured; and they’ll be administered by the Research Foundation (RF).

My friend Alex Vitale, who’s a sociology prof at Brooklyn College, is going to be blogging about the RF later today, so I don’t want to get too much into that.

But here’s the short and the skinny. The RF is a semi-private arm of CUNY that, among other things, administers the large research grants that CUNY faculty secure from institutions like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health, etc. For administering those grants, the RF in concert with individual CUNY colleges charges something in the neighborhood of 50% of the grant’s value—on top of the grant itself.  So if a professor applies for $100k from the NSF, CUNY will add an additional $50k or so to the grant application to cover the costs of administering it. That’s standard practice at most universities; it’s how they make a lot of their money. Administrators at the RF and the colleges then use that money to pay for everything from the RF’s operating costs to the colleges’ operating costs. Again, standard practice.

But here’s the deal: that money also provides a kind of discretionary fund for CUNY administrators to support their pet projects. Like, say, hiring an expensive general with fancy tastes and little appetite for work?

Let’s go back to that July 1 email: “Chancellor Matthew Goldstein has provided private funding for your position, which will be paid through the CUNY Research Foundation.”

The wording is admittedly elusive, perhaps strategically so, but the clear suggestion is that Goldstein got private donations for the hire, channeled them through the RF, and Petraeus’ salary (and graduate assistants, and travel fund, etc.) will come from that.

But in that July 2 letter that New York State Assemblyman Kieran Lalor sent to interim chancellor Bill Kelly, Lalor wrote:

According to the CUNY spokesman, Petraeus will be paid from the University’s Research Foundation. However, there are no grants or donations specifically earmarked by donors to pay for Petraeus. That means the salary will come from the Foundation’s general funds.

That statement hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.

Who is this mysterious CUNY spokesperson? What specifically did s/he say? And to whom did he say it?

Turns out it’s Jay Hershenson, CUNY’s Senior Vice Chancellor for University Relations. He said it to Lalor’s chief of staff Chris Covucci.

Today, Gawker reporter J.K. Trotter followed up with Covucci: “Did Hershenson explicitly state that Petraeus’s salary would come out of unearmarked funds?” he asked in an email.

Covucci replied:

Yes, when I spoke with him last Monday that was what he said. It took some prodding to get that out of him, but I directly asked if the Research Foundation or the University had received any donations earmarked for Petraeus’ salary. He said no. I asked if that meant they would be using unearmarked funds in the Research Foundation. He said yes.

Unearmarked funds.  What does that mean?

It could mean general gifts from donors that were not stipulated for any purpose.  If that’s the case, those of us who’ve charged CUNY with diverting resources to this hire that could have been better spent elsewhere are correct.

Or it could mean funds secured from the administrative overheard of grants that were provided by private foundations (say, the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation).  If that’s the case, those of us who’ve charged CUNY with diverting resources to this hire that could have been better spent elsewhere are again correct.

Or it could mean funds secured from the administrative overhead of grants that were provided by the government. If that’s the case, those of us who’ve charged CUNY with diverting resources to this hire that could have been better spent elsewhere are again correct—and the money is in fact coming from the taxpayers.

What it does NOT mean is that private donors have given money in order to pay for this hire.

So here is a simple follow-up question for the media: Are these unearmarked funds from private donors, from the overheard of grants from private foundations, or from the overhead of grants from the government?

One other question for the media.  Specifically, the New York Times. In 2009, when Eliot Spitzer taught a course at CUNY, the Times raised its eyebrow because he was being paid $4500. The highest adjunct rate. Petraeus is due to make $75,000 per course. Why hasn’t the Times said a word about this?

And if you haven’t signed the petition against the Petraeus hire, please do so now.

NYC Councilman Initiates Petition to CUNY re Petraeus

NYC Councilman Brad Lander has initiated a petition to CUNY.

The request is straightforward:

Rescind the $150,000 payday for David Petraeus and put those funds toward supporting low-income students or for more teachers.

So is the explanation:

At a time when the City University of New York (CUNY) pays an adjunct faculty member carrying a full course load as little as $25,000 per year, the university has offered former CIA Director David Petraeus $150,000 to teach a seminar next year. That is just 15-20 students.

Even though these are private donations, they surely could be better spent – to help students who cannot afford to pay the 30% tuition increase that CUNY has been implementing over five years. And it is outrageous to spend so much on one class, when some CUNY classes are so over-subscribed that students sit on windowsills and radiators because all the seats are full.

CUNY has been underfunded for decades – a sad sign of our under-commitment to higher education. That means the CUNY administration needs to make every dollar count toward educating the young people of New York.

CUNY’s mission is to provide a college education to the “children of the whole people,” and these expenditures of funds are an insult to the people of New York, especially those most connected to CUNY, and that mission.

So sign the petition here. And please circulate it widely on FB, Twitter, and other social networks.

A Debate on Petraeusgate

Two of my former students—Zujaja Tauqeer and Jennifer Gaboury—posted comments on one of my posts about Petraeusgate. I thought both comments (one critical of my position, one in keeping with my position) were thoughtful and worth reproducing here. Zujaja is a Rhodes Scholar, pursuing a DPhil at Oxford in history. Jen is a full-time lecturer and Associate Director of Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College.

Zujaja Tauqeer

I’m going to have to disagree with the whole “CUNY’s job is to provide an affordable education to immigrants” criticism angle to the Petraeus hiring and the “it doesn’t matter if it’s donor-funded, that’s still diverting money from somewhere else” angle as well. (I’d like to acknowledge at the outset that I’m quite close to the issue having been a Macaulay student, later been an adjunct at CUNY, and having recently met Petraeus).

Petraeus of course wasn’t hired for all of CUNY, only for Macaulay Honors College though he is doing some CUNY-at-large lectures etc. The very existence and promotion of Macaulay Honors College program, through massive private donations, for the last 10 years as “a magnet for the city’s finest students” casts doubt on the promotion of this issue as reflecting on CUNY, the “cash-strapped public institution with a mission to educate poor and working-class students”.

Macaulay has thrived on selective donations, secured no doubt by Goldstein steering donors in a particular direction, for the benefit of a select group of students (who incidentally are not exempt from being poor, working class, and immigrants). The largest donation in CUNY’s history, $30 million by the Macaulays, was to buy a building near Lincoln Center for the benefit of Macaulay students and staff and instructors (though some of it did go to the endowment). Then, the students are provided free Macbook Pros, two advisers of their own at every campus, a whole college staff to themselves, $7500 in study grants over the course of their four years, stipends every term, and the perks go on and on.

All of this (like Petraeus’ salary apparently) is donor-funded, and so would ostensibly also be subject to the same criticism that it is funneling donor resources away from adjunct pay/tuition for “poor immigrant students”/staff salaries/etc towards the benefit of Macaulay students alone.

So a large part of the issue then is not about CUNY making a celebrity hire, but whether we have an ethical problem all along with a selective Macaulay Honors College existing that funnels donor resources away from CUNY at large to benefit a chosen group of students in a multitude of ways–one of which is the appointment of a “celebrity”. Macaulay students go on to other great universities and jobs, and the Honors College now provides CUNY with its greatest number of fellowship recipients year after year (2 out of 5 Rhodes in the history of CUNY are from Macaulay, despite it being only 10 years old). Macaulay has been hugely successful in motivating hundreds of the best and brightest of NYC every year to stay in CUNY and save boatloads on tuition to get a great education befitting their needs, while also contributing to their city and to the intellectual environment at CUNY.

We take almost all our classes with other CUNY students so that the supposed ‘smart’ kids aren’t segregated from the supposed ‘poor, working class immigrants’ (which anyways is a trite and politicized characterization of CUNY students being thrown around with which I have quite a problem).

Macaulay provides CUNY with a claim to an equitable education system in which there is a greater dissemination of ideas among people of different classes and life circumstances, while catering to the needs of students that can make so much more out of higher education and raise CUNY’s profile (and later give back to CUNY like William Macaulay himself).

Many other criticisms are also there but these are the more ideological ones that I wanted to address. I believe the consumers and donors involved have the supreme right to decide whether a “celebrity hire” is something that Macaulay needs (and I find it ridiculous to believe that donors could be persuaded to part with such ridiculous sums of money against their will—they gave because they wanted to so why disrespect their choice, even if other choices were ostensibly there?).

Perhaps then it is necessary to look at this from the prism of an elite school after all, with Macaulay being, in resources and student body make-up, an Ivy League caliber institution. And so if we get to the deeper criticism here, not wanting to funnel resources away from CUNY-at-large for the benefit of a select few, does this mean that next we’ll be trying to take away Macaulay which has been so successful and such a boon for CUNY?

Jennifer Gaboury

Ms. Tauqeer correctly points out that many of the objections in this situation call into question the rationale for the Macaulay Honors College in the first place (as I too suggested: http://pscbc.blogspot.com/2013/07/petraeus-at-cuny-roundup.html). I’d like to see the Honors College shut down. I have no doubt that it’s, as indicated, a “boon” for its students (some of whom I teach and advise at Hunter College). If you’d like to go to a school where private donors make gifts to support your education, there’s a place for that: it’s called private college. Many of them are excellent.

CUNY’s mission is to serve students of New York City and it’s an abrogation of that duty to siphon off resources to a select few – to direct millions and millions of dollars to just 400 students when there are close to 500,000 in the neglected and underfunded CUNY system.

I’ve thought quite a bit about the Macaulay building; it’s just a 20-minute walk from the dangerously overcrowded West Building where I spend most of my time at Hunter. Doubt it’s dangerous? Come and ride the escalators at a peak hour in a building never intended to accommodate a share of Hunter’s now 20,000 students.

One of my worst moments as a teacher was watching something that happened about six years ago in a summer class. A pipe was leaking in the ceiling, an all too common occurrence, and a panel suddenly gave way and pieces of soggy tile and foul smelling water poured down on a student and all her things. I will never forget the look on her face just after it happened – not only shock, but the humiliation and hurt that seemed to ask: don’t I deserve better?

I don’t begrudge Honors College students the resources they get. It’s that I’d like to see those things for all students.

NB: I’m curious to hear everyone’s thoughts on these arguments. But I’m going to be stricter than normal and not tolerate any comment I deem disrespectful or rude. Anything crossing a line will get deleted and the commenter will be banned. Zujaja and Jen are tough cookies and can handle themselves fine. But as their former professor I feel especially responsible for what gets said in this forum.  So be as critical as you like, but be civil and polite.

When Philip Roth Taught at CUNY

I was just reminded by Kathy Geier on FB and Twitter that when she was a student at Hunter College in the early 1990s, she took a comparative literature course with Philip Roth. According to Kathy, Roth had no TAs, designed the course himself, graded all the papers (and there was a lot of writing), and was paid reasonably. The last point was confirmed by Ken Sherrill, whose memory of Lillian Hellmann teaching at CUNY I spoke about here.

About all of which Scott Lemieux said:

What I find really strange about this is that he [Roth] apparently put together a syllabus for a course without at least 3 grad students to help him; almost as if he was an expert in the field he was hired to teach about or something. That seems like a deeply odd way for higher education to proceed.