(This article was originally posted on September 5, 2014, on my Facebook community page, History, Culture and Politics.)
On July 31, 2013, Leslie Berlowitz, president and chief executive of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, resigned following reports she had embellished her resume.
Berlowitz, who had overseen the honorary society for 17 years, had been on paid leave for over a month after The Boston Globe reported that she had falsely claimed a New York University doctorate and misstated her work history in federal grant applications and other documents.
Berlowitz also came under fire for harshly treating staffers, micromanaging the Academy’s affairs, barring scholars from viewing the Academy’s historic archives, and receiving an outsized pay package—more than $598,000 in fiscal year 2012 alone for an organization with only a few dozen staffers, several times what her peers at other institutions were paid.
(“Embattled head of American Academy of Arts and Sciences resigns after questions about resume“, Todd Wallack, July 25, 2013, Boston.com)
In June, The Globe had reported that in at least two applications for federal grants over the past decade, Berlowitz had stated she received a doctorate in English from New York University in 1969. For example, in the application for funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities she claimed to have a “D. Phil” — the British abbreviation for a doctorate of philosophy or PhD — from NYU. In an employment ad, the Academy also repeatedly described her as a doctor.
(“No record of academy head’s doctoral degree: Where deeds are honored, one is in doubt“, Todd Wallack, June 4, 2013, Boston.com)
The nonexistent doctorate was also in a draft of an obituary the Academy prepared for use in the event of her death. The obituary praised her as “a scholar of American literature” who “received undergraduate and doctoral degrees from New York University”.
(Todd Wallack, June 4, 2013, Boston.com)
NYU spokesman James Devitt said the university had no record of Berlowitz receiving a doctorate or completing her dissertation. A resume on file at NYU from when Berlowitz worked there indicated she was still working on her doctorate in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Academics typically have little tolerance for people exaggerating their educational credentials. At other academic institutions, people who fabricate degrees have often faced severe consequences. Marilee Jones, a popular admissions dean at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, left in disgrace in 2007 after she admitted falsifying her degrees, and Doug Lynch, a vice dean at the University of Pennsylvania, resigned in 2012 after revelations that he had falsely claimed to have a doctorate from Columbia University.
“In most situations at a university, lying about a professional degree would be grounds for instantaneous dismissal”, said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. “In academia, academic integrity is what we hold most dearly.”
(Todd Wallack, June 4, 2013, Boston.com)
The controversy attracted national attention because of the institution’s prestige. Founded during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, and other Harvard College graduates as Boston’s answer to Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, American Academy of Arts and Sciences conducts research, holds lectures for members, and elects scores of the brightest scholars, artists and leaders every year.
As the controversy went public, New York University released a summary of Berlowitz’s NYU career record:
“Leslie Cohen (Tuttleton) Berlowitz began her career at NYU in 1968 as a graduate assistant and teaching fellow in the English Department at NYU’s University College at University Heights in the Bronx. In 1970, while a graduate student and teaching assistant, she became one of three assistants to the dean of University College. In 1971 Berlowitz also became a lecturer in the English department. With the closing of the Heights campus in 1973, she moved to the Washington Square campus and was Assistant Dean for Administration at Washington Square and University College from 1972 to 1974. From 1974 on, Berlowitz held several administrative positions in goals planning and academic planning and affairs including Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs 1981-1984, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs 1984-1988 and Deputy Vice President for Academic Affairs 1988-1991. In addition, she was Director of the Humanities Council from 1979 through 1997. Her last position at NYU was Vice President for Institutional Advancement from 1991 through 1997 when she left the university to become executive officer of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
(“Guide to the Records of the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Leslie Berlowitz 1970-1980“, June 14, 2013, New York University Archives)
The NYU record indicates a fast career launch and smooth rise for Berlowitz within NYU, on an administrative track: in 1970 as a graduate student she became an assistant to the Dean, and a year later was on the faculty and 2 years later Assistant Dean for Administration. From 1981 on, she was a university-level executive as Assistant Vice President, Associate Vice President, and Deputy Vice President for Academic Affairs, and in the 1990s prior to moving to the Academy she was Vice President for Institutional Advancement.
Others noticed that her Academy resume had identified herself as former NYU vice president for academic advancement – her most senior NYU position – when it was actually vice president for institutional advancement – management of fund-raising rather than academic programs.
It should have been of no surprise what Berlowitz was and wasn’t.
At the Academy, she impressed directors by raising money, balancing the budget, and launching new programs, according to several former members of the governing board (council). She helped to energize a once-sleepy institution by stepping up fund-raising and launching new initiatives, such as modernizing the categories of fellows, including adding the fields of Computer Science and Philanthropy.
While it appeared that her past resume fudging now ended her long reign at the Academy, Berlowitz’s critics had actually tried to oust her a number of times, for other reasons, unsuccessfully.
In 1997, the first year at the helm of the Academy, Berlowitz was almost fired because of her heavy-handed management style, according to a former member of the governance council. Robert Haselkorn, a professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago, told the press in 2003, “I have been trying to get rid of her for the past seven years.”
(“A controversial subject at the academy: Is Leslie Berlowitz reviving the intellectual institution or just dividing it?“, Alex Beam, August 23, 2003, Boston.com)
In 2000, Roger Myerson, an Economics professor at the University of Chicago and vice president of the Academy’s Midwest Center, tried to get the council to move Berlowitz out of administration to concentrate on her forte, raising money. Myerson also opposed the appointment of Boston businessman Louis W. Cabot to the Academy’s vice presidency. According to Myerson, “The administration was not being monitored full time by somebody who really cares about scholarship”.
(Alex Beam, August 23, 2003, Boston.com)
Then Academy president Dan Tosteson, a former dean of the Harvard Medical School, had hired Berlowitz in 1997 along with commissioning a strategic plan to transform the Academy into a broader, more diverse national organization. But by 2003 Tosteson and Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel Prize-winning Harvard Chemistry professor, “made a thorough investigation of her performance and found it to be very uneven”, Tosteson said. “Everyone told us the same story”, Herschbach said. “She was an incredibly nasty person who chewed people out in unacceptable ways. She kisses up and kicks down.”
(Alex Beam, August 23, 2003, Boston.com)
In 2003 faced with opposition within the Academy’s top level, Berlowitz mobilized support from other members of the Academy’s 17-member governing council, including former MIT professor Carl Kaysen, former Academy president Leo Beranek and former Harvard professor of Political Economy Francis Bator. Berlowitz pointed out that her 7th anniversary at the Academy was just around the corner. “Maybe we should have a party”, she mused. “A survival party.”
(Alex Beam, August 23, 2003, Boston.com)
Bwelowitz’s 7th anniversary survival then turned into a personal triumph. She was voted by the governing council to become a member of the Academy.
Every year, the members of Academy of Arts and Sciences elect some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, artists, and leaders to join their institution. The 2004 election took place in the spring, but shortly before the October induction ceremony the 17-member governing council decided to add one more name of its own: Leslie Cohen Berlowitz.
The Academy then quietly inserted Berlowitz’s name into the original 6-month-old announcement, making it look as though she had been voted in by the around 4,000 members in the spring. “It was a terrible thing to do”, Stanford University History professor emeritus Peter Stansky, a former council member, said. “It’s a lie.”
(“Academy’s council added its chief to honoree list: 2004 selection, executive’s role in annual process draw criticism“, Todd Wallack, June 18, 2013, Boston.com)
An Academy spokesman noted that the council had the option of electing one candidate a year on its own (since increased to two) under the Academy’s bylaws, and that Louis W. Cabot nominated Berlowitz based on her service to the Academy.
In 2009, Louis W. Cabot became chairman of the governing council, and in 2010 Berlowitz consolidated control of the Academy by also taking over the title of president, a position previously reserved for an honored scholar from outside the administration, such as Dan Tosteson who had hired Berlowitz and then tried unsuccessfully to remove her.
So it wasn’t a coincident that in July 2013 when Berlowitz was to step down, in a letter announcing the decision to the Academy members, council chairman Louis W. Cabot also announced his own departure in October, to be replaced by Don M. Randel, former president of the University of Chicago and of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for a 3-year term.
(“Embattled President of American Academy of Arts and Sciences to Resign“, Jennifer Schuessler, July 25, 2013, The New York Times)
It appeared that “academic integrity”, which academics “hold most dearly”, was what mattered and prevailed once Berlowitz’s resume altering was discovered and publicized.
Berlowitz believed it was just a distraction. “I never intentionally misrepresented my accomplishments to obtain an improper benefit for the academy or for myself”, Berlowitz said, “the current debate has become a distraction for the academy”.
(Todd Wallack, June 18, 2013, Boston.com)
Still, some critics felt that Berlowitz had also become overly involved in the member-election process, acting as a gatekeeper for who gets in and who stays out based on her friendships or other reasons. Several former employees said she pushed committees to add or drop candidates, and demanded to see all the ballots before they were tallied by the membership office.
“There needs to be a complete inquiry into how the academy has been managed, across the board, including how the academy chooses fellows”, demanded Jean Strouse, a Biographer inducted into the Academy the same year as Berlowitz.
(Todd Wallack, June 18, 2013, Boston.com)
But even without a dig into the delicate election ballots issue, there has been a considerable amount of information in the press about what some of the larger controversial issues were during Berlowitz’s reign at the Academy.
During that time, the number of business executives and philanthropists inducted annually rose from roughly 7 to 11, including philanthropist Teresa Heinz Kerry, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and former Liberty Mutual chief Edmund F. Kelly. In fact, for 5 of the Academy’s 6 biggest donors, accounting for more than 1/3 of the $39 million the Academy raised from 2006 to 2010, either they were inducted into the business and philanthropy category or their foundation heads were.
For example, Boston Scientific Corp. cofounder Peter Nicholas, who became a member in 1999, gave $2.4 million during the period. John Cogan, a Boston investment executive who joined the Academy in 2005, gave $1.9 million. And Gershon Kekst, who founded a prominent Wall Street communications firm and was elected in 2006, gave $1 million through his family’s foundation.
“Honoring the mere accumulation of wealth taints the honor of authentic achievements in the arts and sciences”, said James Miller, former editor of the Academy’s scholarly journal, Daedalus. “It’s supposed to be an academy, not a highfalutin club for the leisure class.”
(Todd Wallack, June 18, 2013, Boston.com)
An Academy spokesman, however, noted that the institution has always included business leaders. Ray Howell said that philanthropists and business leaders are typically among the most generous donors for nonprofits, but he declined to say who picked the executives to appear on the Academy’s ballot or what criteria they used. Several members said they did not know either.
In 2012, Hillary Clinton, Melinda Gates and Sanford “Sandy” Weill, a prominent New York businessman and corporate executive, were among the new members of the Academy.
(“Academy of Arts and Sciences Honors Creator of “Too Big to Fail”“, Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, April 20, 2012, AllGov.com)
A former president of American Express Company and Chairman and CEO of its subsidiary Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, former Chairman of Primerica Corporation and former Chairman and CEO of Travelers Group, Weill became Chairman Emeritus of Citigroup after retiring from its CEO position on October 1, 2003, and then from its Chairman position on April 18, 2006, and was elected a member of the Academy in 2012 for his contributions to banking and philanthropy.
Honorary Chairman of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, a nonprofit forum of CEOs and Chairpersons, Sanford Weill and his wife Joan had donated more than $800 million to non-profit organizations, especially for healthcare, including to Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
(“Sanford I. Weill and Dr. Joseph J. Fins Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences“, April 17, 2012, New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College)
Noted political journalist Robert Scheer became really indignant about this one, writing:
“How evil is this? At a time when two-thirds of U.S. homeowners are drowning in mortgage debt and the American dream has crashed for tens of millions more, Sanford Weill, the banker most responsible for the nation’s economic collapse, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
So much for the academy’s proclaimed “230-plus year history of recognizing some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders.” George Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Albert Einstein must be rolling in their graves at the news that Weill, “philanthropist and retired Citigroup Chairman,” has joined their ranks.
Weill is the Wall Street hustler who led the successful lobbying to reverse the Glass-Steagall law, which long had been a barrier between investment and commercial banks. That 1999 reversal permitted the merger of Travelers and Citibank, thereby creating Citigroup as the largest of the “too big to fail” banks eventually bailed out by taxpayers. Weill was instrumental in getting then-President Bill Clinton to sign off on the Republican-sponsored legislation that upended the sensible restraints on finance capital that had worked splendidly since the Great Depression.
…
At the signing ceremony Clinton presented Weill with one of the pens he used to “fine-tune” Glass-Steagall out of existence, proclaiming, “Today what we are doing is modernizing the financial services industry, tearing down those antiquated laws and granting banks significant new authority.” What a jerk.
…
Citigroup went on to be a major purveyor of toxic mortgage-based securities that required $45 billion in direct government investment and a $300 billion guarantee of its bad assets in order to avoid bankruptcy.”
(“For He’s a Jolly Good Scoundrel“, Robert Scheer, April 18, 2012, truthdig.com)
“The banker most responsible for the nation’s economic collapse” was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences?! Now that’s surprising.
Let’s see how the mainstream press described Sanford “Sandy” Weill. Two years prior to his election by the 4,000 members of the Academy, journalist Katrina Brooker had interviewed Weill and The New York Times published her detailed story about him in January 2010, under the title “Citi’s Creator, Alone With His Regrets”:
“”Over the last two years, Mr. Weill has watched Citi — a company he built brick by brick during the final act of a 50-year career — nearly fall apart. Although every taxpayer in the country has paid for Citi’s outsize mistakes, for Mr. Weill the bank’s myriad woes are a commentary on his life’s work.
…
Citi’s troubles are well chronicled: a failure to integrate its disparate parts worldwide or to keep tabs on risky investments and free-wheeling operations. These lapses led to billions of dollars in losses and multiple bailouts, and the government now owns a quarter of the company. Citi’s shares fell from a high of $55.12 in 2007 to about a dollar early last spring, and now trade at $3.31.
…
“Sandy took advantage of changes in the industry to build a financial colossus,” says Michael Holland, founder of Holland & Company, a money management firm. “In the end it didn’t work, and we are now paying for that as taxpayers.”
…
One news item, in particular, was crushing: Last winter, The New York Post ran a picture of Mr. Weill on its front page with the headline, “Pigs Fly: Citi Jets Ex-C.E.O. to Cabo.” He had taken the corporate plane to vacation in Mexico, weeks after Citi had accepted a $45 billion taxpayer bailout. The flight provoked a public outcry and media frenzy.”
(“Citi’s Creator, Alone With His Regrets“, Katrina Brooker, January 2, 2010, The New York Times)
Wait, money manager Michael Holland said Weill merely “took advantage of changes in the industry to build a financial colossus”, in spite of all the media fuss about his ‘pig-flying’.
But some critics, not just Robert Scheer of Truthdig, saw Weill as the villain, or as Katrina Brooker referred to, “the architect” who created a chaos:
“Mr. Weill built his wealth, status and power by creating what was once the world’s largest bank. Now, as Citi struggles to regain its footing, Mr. Weill’s legacy has taken on a darker hue. Though he was once viewed as a brilliant dealmaker, some critics now cast him as the architect of a shoddily constructed, unmanageable financial supermarket whose troubles have sideswiped investors, employees and average citizens nationwide.
“The dream, the mirage has always been the global supermarket, but the reality is that it was a shopping mall,” says Chris Whalen, editor of The Institutional Risk Analyst, of Citi’s evolution over the last decade. “You can talk about synergies all day long. It never happened.”
…
Old accomplishments — once sources of admiration — now draw criticism. Mr. Weill’s successful push to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act is under attack. To create Citi, he fought to change laws that had prevented banks, insurers and brokerage firms from merging. But in the wake of the economic crisis last year, Congress has introduced laws to reinstate parts of the legislation. In November, Mr. Weill’s former co-C.E.O. at Citi, John Reed, told Bloomberg News that he was sorry for his role in helping to end Glass-Steagall.”
(Katrina Brooker, January 2, 2010, The New York Times)
Weill focused on talking about Citigroup, acknowledging the bank’s failure and expressing personal sadness about it, but otherwise remaining unrepentant about his responsibility, blaming it on having picked the wrong successor, Chuck Prince:
“During a series of recent interviews, Mr. Weill spoke candidly about the loss, frustration and humiliation caused by Citi’s fall. “I feel incredibly sad,” he says. He remains baronially wealthy, but says he has endured financial pain, too: until a year ago, he says, the bulk of his investment portfolio was split equally between Citi stock and Treasuries.
…
“It’s never going to be the same company that it was,” he said one morning shortly before Christmas.
…
Mr. Weill says that the model on which he built the company was not at fault, that it was the management that failed. For this, he accepts partial responsibility.
“One of the major mistakes that I made was my recommending Chuck Prince,” he says of his handpicked successor, who ran the company from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Weill blames Mr. Prince for letting Citi’s balance sheet balloon and taking on huge risks.
…
In addition to initially supporting Mr. Prince as C.E.O. — even though Mr. Prince had never run a bank — Mr. Weill also pushed out Jamie Dimon, a well-regarded banker who now runs JPMorgan Chase. And Mr. Weill personally recruited Robert Rubin to Citi after Mr. Rubin stepped down as Treasury secretary. Mr. Rubin, who has since left Citi and declined to comment about his tenure there, has been criticized as failing to help rein in the bank’s excesses.
…
“Look what it’s done,” he says. “It’s hurt the dreams of so many people.””
(Katrina Brooker, January 2, 2010, The New York Times)
Well, given that former Presdient Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, personally at CitiGroup at Weill’s invitation, couldn’t prevent the debacle, perhaps “Sandy” had some credit in his conviction.
By the time of the recent financial crisis Weill had retired; and he then focused his retirement energy on charitable fundraising and giving:
“These days, Mr. Weill keeps busy with charities and his personal investments. He is up at 5 a.m., reads all the papers, turns on CNBC. He is chairman of Carnegie Hall, Weill Cornell Medical College and the National Academy Foundation and is on the boards of six other institutions.
His foundation gave $170 million in cash last winter to Weill Cornell; such generosity has endeared him to the philanthropic world. He has raised $950 million for Weill Cornell’s $1.3 billion fund-raising campaign and recently put together a $110 million bond offering for Carnegie Hall.
“It was like being back in business again,” he says. “I get the same kind of kick by getting somebody to make a major charitable contribution. It’s the same kind of adrenaline rush.””
(Katrina Brooker, January 2, 2010, The New York Times)
When the world is all about winners not losers, Weill was right on. His business “adrenaline rush” took him to the top of the financial world, with a monster frenzy created and attributed to him; and “the same kind of adrenaline rush” in charitable causes has now brought him the honor of being elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a Philanthropist.
After all, unlike Leslie Cohen (Tuttleton) Berlowitz, “Sandy” didn’t fudge his resume, did he? We can all read.
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