… has been arrested for forgery of a prescription drug. Oxycontin, of course.
Bradley H. Jack was at Lehman Brothers before it went bankrupt; he left in 2005 with an $80 million severance. He owns the most expensive house in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Guess you can’t call it hillbilly heroin anymore.
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“Had Brad Jack worked for a culture that supported rather than culled illness, maybe we would not be reading today’s headlines [about his drugs arrest].”
Boo hoo. A new form of sympathy for our times. Vicky Ward argues that Bradley Jack’s fate had nothing to do with Jack’s own ability to discern that his bottomless greed kept him working at greedy evil sicko Lehman Brothers. Noooo. Lehman Brothers was supposed to be Ben & Jerry’s – a soft, supportive environment – and its failure to be this put Jack in jail.
This blog’s category, TRUSTEES TRASHING THE PLACE, chronicles the twisted, tortuous, Catch-22ish character of university trustee appointments.
You want someone filthy rich, but you don’t want someone filthy. Someone rich as Croesus, but not a criminal.
You’re after a person who may be greedy as all get-out, but who’s also a generous philanthropist. A market predator and a shaping-young-minds idealist…
UD ain’t saying it’s impossible to find people like this. America was built by high-minded robber barons. But from pious Yeshiva University’s Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin to the petty thieves of lesser schools, it’s easy to find compromised trustees.
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It’s not so easy to know what to do with them. Yeshiva held on to the Madoff/Merkin tag team until their investment strategies became an unignorable scandal. Other universities move very quickly, dumping a trustee as soon as there’s a whiff of conflict of interest or fraudulent dealing. Scroll through this category for details.
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The latest story, one UD has been following for awhile, involves veteran University of Cincinnati trustee Stanley Chesley. Here’s the background on this attorney’s astounding greed and cynicism.
The latest on Chesley has him about to be disbarred. He is an embarrassment to the political culture of Ohio, where the attorney general has just pulled him from a high-profile case; and of course he is an embarrassment to the University of Cincinnati, where he presides over the intellectual and ethical – and legal – life of the institution.
UD understands as well as universities do the process by which robber barons cleanse theirs souls – or at least brighten their images – via philanthropy. The process is not to be sneezed at, I guess. But when the delicate balance between predation and patronage is upset, universities look like asshole-enablers. U Cincinnati needs to have a little parley with the governor (who appoints their trustees) and tell him they want this guy out.
It’s a mad mad mad mad mad mad world at Auburn University; but every now and then, under incredible external pressure (lawsuits, legislative boycotts, mass uprisings), a glimmer of sanity appears.
As in : The dread Bobby Lowder has decided not to seek yet another term as an Auburn trustee (he’s been one since 1983).
To be sure, the rest of the trustees are a sad bunch; but getting rid of Lowder is a big first step.
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UD thanks an Auburn reader for the link.
Am I gonna have to stop beating up on Alabama?
One of its high-profile trustees is reported to be “pretty confident” he won’t be indicted for insider trading.
Whew!
… is currently being sued over its reappointment of the bodacious Bobby Lowder to the board of trustees.
… and, as expected, does after all award an honorary degree to Tony Kushner.
Clyde Haberman, quoting the chair of CUNY’s board of trustees on freedom of speech, asks the crucial question.
If free expression is such a “bedrock” principle, how come it didn’t occur to any of [the trustees] to make that point while Mr. Wiesenfeld was holding forth on Mr. Kushner?
Here’s UD‘s guess on the answer to that question. Her guess is based on absolutely no inside knowledge — just knowledge of Wiesenfeld’s bull-like personality, and knowledge of the way genteel groups of people – like university trustees – tend to behave.
UD suspects Wiesenfeld is a well-established irritant on the board, a person the other trustees dread and try to pretend doesn’t exist. When he suddenly went off on Kushner, the main thing going through the minds of his fellow trustees, let’s say, was How do we neutralize this guy prontoprontoPRONTO?? How do we make him go away? From their point of view, anything was better than challenging Wiesenfeld on this (or any other) matter and having to enter into a conversation with him. So they went along. They gave in.
… UD figures universities with a penchant for sketchy money guys (Yeshiva had Ezra Merkin too) have instituted Trustee Early Warning systems so they can dump the guys before the federal government moves in for the kill.
Brown University’s TEW system must be going
awhooogawhoooga
right now.
…yet another target for his political rage.
So far, he has failed to have his way with two targets: A professor, and a playwright.
Despite Wiesenfeld’s insistence that the professor be fired for views about Israel with which Wiesenfeld strongly disagreed, the university professor was not fired. Well, he was fired, but then he was rehired because of free speech protests.
And now, it’s just been announced, the executive committee of CUNY’s trustees will shortly meet. It will almost certainly reinstate the honorary degree Wiesenfeld succeeded in withholding from Tony Kushner, another person with whom Wiesenfeld strongly disagrees.
It’s a strange, and probably really frustrating, pattern. Wiesenfeld gets his way; he gets the people purged. But then the decisions are reversed.
And why? Well, as the head of CUNY’s trustees explains:
Freedom of thought and expression is the bedrock of any university worthy of the name.
It’s a credit to CUNY that they appointed to the board a man whose free expression is … so remarkably free. Remarkably.
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Oh. And to make the Stalinism complete: Wiesenfeld has said he’ll forgive Kushner if Kushner will make before him a public apology for his apostasy.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld is a very wealthy man – a wealth management man. He is politically powerful. He sits at the center of New York City glamor and influence.
Like Donald Trump – a very similar man – he takes these remarkable advantages and bullies other people with them.
Unlike Donald Trump, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld has a position of influence at an American university. He sits on the CUNY board of trustees.
Trump is a free agent, if you will. He can be a braggart and a bully on his own time.
(Actually, Trump has his very own university, which he runs in his very own way. Fine.)
But having taken a position of trust at a legitimate American university, Wiesenfeld was under a serious obligation to be serious about this, to discover for himself the values of universities, as well as the public demeanor expected of someone representing universities.
Wiesenfeld’s blackballing of Tony Kushner for his critical views of Israel continues to receive big national and international attention. Wiesenfeld has not only further damaged his own reputation (he already had a bad one), but he has damaged the reputation of CUNY. The story is hot – it will go on burning through CUNY for some time.
Trustees are not supposed to bring shame to a university. They are supposed to bring money, good will, and – if you’re very lucky – good oversight.
In his latest interview about denying Kushner an honorary CUNY degree, Wiesenfeld responds to a New York Times reporter’s suggestion that more care might have been taken to ascertain Kushner’s views (at least one trustee had never heard of Kushner) with this post’s headline.
Wiesenfeld to New York Times: DROP DEAD.
Tony Kushner betrays some naivety about university trustees.
Because one of CUNY’s trustees dislikes what he takes to be Kushner’s stand on Israel, the university has rescinded an honorary degree it was about to confer on him. Background here.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who has well-established self-control issues, is the trustee who knocked out Kushner.
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Update: Wiesenfeld’s been having quite the purge-party.
Earlier this year, Wiesenfeld and Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind tried to force Brooklyn College to fire an adjunct professor they believed held strongly anti-Israel views. The university initially fired the professor, Kristopher Peterson-Overton, but soon rehired him, saying it believed the criticism by Wiesenfeld and Hikind was politically motivated.
The governor couldn’t be prouder
To reappoint Robert E. Lowder.
A trustee supreme
For a school that’s a dream!
(Though of course there are one or two doubters.)
… [In] South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley, a Tea Party favorite, tossed out Darla Moore, a longtime member of the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees who had given money to one of the Democratic candidates for governor. Haley said she wanted “a fresh set of eyes.” This would not be all that big a deal except that Moore is the biggest donor in the university’s history. She has given at least $70 million to the school, which would seem to be worth one heck of a lot of sets of eyes.
Moore is being replaced by Thomas “Tommy” Cofield, a lawyer and Haley supporter …