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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ken Lay Chair in Economics and Business Ethics

What does this afternoon’s Incredibly Guilty verdict against Ken Lay mean for universities, you ask?

You’ve come to the right place.



Monsieur Lay, having a soft spot for the University of Missouri, gave the institution over a million dollars to endow a chair in economics -- the Ken Lay Chair.

All through his trial, the university’s been dithering - - Should we wait until the verdict to return the money? Should we return it now? Do we have to keep his name on the chair? Even if he’s convicted, should we keep the money, establish the chair, keep his name on it, but call it -- as one university trustee has suggested --the “Ken Lay Chair in Economics and Business Ethics”? So as to, you know, simultaneously honor the gesture and, as an English professor might put it, “interrogate” it?



All this soul-searching might have been put to rest a few months ago, when Lay suddenly demanded all the money back. Screw the chair thing -- he now wanted to donate it to struggling post-Katrinans.

But oh ho! Oh no! You don’t just give a university money and take it back when you change your mind!

Said Missouri. Lay threatened to sue.

Then he changed his mind again. He didn’t want the money back for New Orleans. He wanted it back to pay his legal fees.

Time reviewed these dizzying events a few weeks back:



Seven years after making a $1.1 million gift to endow a chair in economics at the University of Missouri, Lay is now trying to have the money returned. Last September, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he personally sought to have the money — as yet unused — transferred back to Houston to assist 14 charities in relief efforts, including preacher-author Joel Osteen's megachurch.

Five months later in February this year, the trustee for Lay's assets went to the campus in Columbia, Mo., seeking the money to pay for legal fees instead. The trustee went home empty handed, but now university alumni — only recently apprised of the negotiations — are buzzing with indignation. The university, meanwhile, is stuck with the name — and has put off all decisions about the chair, including who will fill it, until the verdicts are in.

…Hovering over the entire saga is the question of whether it's such a good idea now to have an economic chair named after Ken Lay, given Enron’s spectacular collapse. Members of the alumni board have bandied about the question of retracting Lay's name, which was added at his request in 2002 — just after the company went bankrupt.

Although discussions with Lay are ongoing, the university is required by its agreement to honor the name. Lay's family has a longtime connnection with Mizzou: his late mother worked at the university bookstore while his father, a Baptist preacher, had strong ties to the community in Columbia. "It's not the university's goal to be antagonistic with a fine family," says Charton. The final call is up to the MU Board of Curators, an appointed board, which oversees university affairs.

The search for an academic to fill the chair continues, meanwhile, with over 60 candidates screened in the last eight months. Battistoni suggests one solution to the controversy would be to make ethics part of the lesson. "If the university is going to do a chair in economics named after him, to be true to its own values, the university should set it up as the Ken Lay Chair in Economics and Business Ethics."



Sixty people are vying for the privilege of holding the Ken Lay Etc. After today, will they still be so eager?

One solution would be to honor only one name - either “Ken” or “Lay” - and substitute a new, diversionary name for the dropped one. Examples: The Fritos Lay Chair. The Ken Doll Chair. The Lay Lady Lay Chair.
Posted at: 5/25/2006 01:35:00 PM