Posted By Feng Gao on October 5, 2015

A review of postings about scientific integrity and intellectual honesty, with observations regarding elite centrism – Part 3: peeking into the academic hierarchies

 

ongoing, third part posted on Feng Gao’s Posts – Rites of Spring, dated September 18, 2015

(full article here)

 

Synopsis:

(A shorter version has been posted as, “About scientific integrity, intellectual honesty, elite centrism, and academic hierarchies”, on the Facebook community page, History, Culture and Politics)

Feng Gao writes:

———————–

Part 3 of my latest blog-post series, “A review of postings about scientific integrity and intellectual honesty, with observations regarding elite centrism – Part 3: peeking into the academic hierarchies”, has appeared on Feng Gao’s Posts – Rites of Spring. There is also an excerpt on the Facebook community page, “Science, Education Progress, and New Millennium Bugs”.

I begin this Part with a review of my September 2014 post on the Facebook community page, History, Culture and Politics, about academic dishonesty and negative management style and biases exhibited by Leslie Berlowitz as president and CEO of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose 17-year reign at one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies – one founded during the American Revolution by John Adams and other Harvard graduates – ended in 2013 over a resume-embellishing scandal.

Berlowitz had falsely claimed a Ph.D. degree in some resumes:

“The non-existent Ph.D. was the official reason for Berlowitz’s resignation, as a leading academic explained that “academic integrity is what we hold most dearly”:

“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.”””

A former vice president in charge of fundraising at New York University, Berlowitz’s resume also made it appear she had been in charge of academics:

“…

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.””

Berlowitz’s management style alienated Academy members and staff:

““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.

…

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.”

…

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.””

Berlowitz “was an incredibly nasty person who chewed people out in unacceptable ways”, and “kisses up and kicks down”.”

I point out that Berlowitz’s harsh manners toward others below her suggested a stern kind of hierarchy focus:

“These are damning characterizations of her management style, but they also point to the reality that a rather stern hierarchy must have existed in Berlowitz’s domain of operation so that acting in such manners were useful, or at least meaningful for her.

That hierarchy seemed to be a pro-business one:

“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”.

So Berlowitz was initially hired for her ability to raise money, especially from the business community, and she then wrestled power toward the latter.”

My September 2014 post also looked at controversies about Berlowitz’s priorities and ways in the selection and election of Academy memberships, including awarding herself membership without going through the election, taking over the formerly honorary presidency, and interfering with the selection and election processes:

““… 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.”

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.”

Berlowitz’s propensity to interfere with the selection and election of memberships was even more controversial, to the point that an Academy member called for a “complete inquiry” into her management:

“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.”

As quoted, Berlowitz acted as a gatekeeper deciding “who gets in and who stays out based on her friendships or other reasons”, and demanded to see all the ballots before they were officially tallied.

I hope she did not purposefully falsify or even destroy some ballots in order to enforce her decisions on “who gets in and who stays out”!”

Berlowitz liked to grant memberships to wealthy business persons, especially for their donations. My September 2014 post focused on the controversy of the 2012 induction of former Citigroup chairman Sanford “Sandy” Weill, and the criticism from journalist Robert Scheer:

“The 2012 selection of a prominent wealthy businessman, Sanford “Sandy” Weill, drew scorching criticism from journalist Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig:

“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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.”

Related to Part 2 of the current blog article, Scheer had been a key member of the 1960s’ Berkeley anti-war movement led by Jerry Rubin and Stephen Smale, the latter my Ph.D. adviser in the 1980s.

Scheer is well known for his 1976 Playboy interview with then future U.S. President Jimmy Carter:

“Scheer’s most widely-known journalist work is probably a 1976 Playboy magazine interview with then Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, in which Carter admitted to adultery in his heart:

“I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes that I will do–and I have done it–and God forgives me for it.”

Carter then asserted that he would not be lying and cheating like Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson:

“I don’t think I would ever take on the same frame of mind that Nixon or Johnson did–lying, cheating and distorting the truth. . . I think that my religious beliefs alone would prevent that from happening to me.”

As I write this blog post, 90-year-old President Carter, an American Academy of Arts and Sciences member since 1993, is undergoing treatments for skin cancer that has spread to his lever and his brain; but he remains in high spirits, asking God for strength and continuing work at his home church, at the Carter Center, at Emory University where he has been a Distinguished Professor, and at Habitat for Humanity.”

Bypassing my September 2014 post’s discussions on Weill’s role in getting President Bill Clinton to repeal the Glass-Steagall law and the ensuing economic collapse, I focus on two issues not yet investigated by the press, about Berlowitz’s pro-business, pro-personal friendship and pro-management biases in the selection of Academy memberships.

One issue was the likely long-time personal friendship Berlowitz had with Weill, also chairman of the famous Carnegie Hall:

“Berlowitz’s daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Tuttleton, in 2000 married Joseph Richard Arron, son of the late Judith Arron, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall in New York City:

…

Weill Cornell Medical College where Sarah Tuttleton studied for her MD and Ph.D. had been named after Sanford Weill and his wife Joan.

From 1995 till her cancer death in 1998, Berlowitz’s future late in-law Judith Arron ran a successful Carnegie Hall fundraising campaign under the watchful eyes of Sanford Weill, Carnegie Hall’s chairman:

…”

The music hall’s management while under Weill’s chairmanship, who retired in early 2015, is facing new controversies reported by the press:

“Billionaire Ronald Perelman took over the chairman position and soon controversies engulfed the organization, over possible past mismanagement:

…”

I also point out that Berlowitz’s former institution NYU had a link to the 2015 death of the mathematician John Nash as in Part 2:

“Elite family networking was natural for Berlowitz, given her former vice-president fundraising role at NYU, located near Wall Street and the Financial District in Manhattan. In the context of Part 2, NYU has included the world famous Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where in the 1950s the mathematician John Nash hung out and did research work suggested by Louis Nirenberg there, that contributed to the pair’s jointly receiving the 2015 Abel Prize awarded by the King of Norway – and unwittingly to the terrible deaths of Nash and wife Alicia in the devastating last leg of their return.”

The second issue regarding Berlowitz’s biases with Academy memberships is the 2009 induction of Maria Klawe – former University of British Columbia computer science department head with whom I have had a political dispute since 1992 as in Part 1 – and others.

Firstly, it was the timing of Klawe’s election to the Academy, in April 2009 soon after her joining the Microsoft board of directors, which had taken place soon after the start of my political blogging:

“As mentioned in Part 1, in 2009 I was taken aback to learn that Klawe was appointed a board director of Microsoft Corporation, given the timing of the March 9 announcement – only about 40 days from my political blogging’s start on January 29.

The importance of my first blog article, in two parts, to my blogging has been far more than a start: it was from themes begun in that article that major themes of Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog article have arisen.

My second blog article, a multi-part one, had a significant start in its first Part, dated February 20, focusing on issues of ethics and conduct concerning former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, surrounding the Mulroney-Schreiber affair of 2007-2009 and the Airbus Affair that had become public in 1995. With reasoned arguments, I countered political attempts to brush off the old Airbus Affair and vindicate Mulroney, refuting the punditry of Peter MacKay, son of former Mulroney cabinet minister Elmer MacKay, and cabinet minister in 2009 under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

…

So in 2009 I had reasons to think that when Klawe was made a Microsoft board director in March, a senior level of the company was aware of my political blogging.

About 40 days later in April 2009, Maria Klawe was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”

The official Academy announcement came on October 9, one day before the induction ceremony, with a elaborate sample of the honored:

“Pioneering research and scholarship, artistic achievement, and exemplary service to society will be celebrated here on Saturday, October 10, as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences officially welcomes its 229th class of new members.

As part of the Induction ceremony, five members of the new class will address their colleagues: ground-breaking mathematician and Fields Medal recipient Terence Tao; Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health Elizabeth Nabel; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California Ronald George; celebrated ballet dancer and choreographer Edward Villella; and former Northrop Grumman Corporation Chairman and CEO Kent Kresa.

The ceremony will also include actor James Earl Jones and singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris reading from the letters of John and Abigail Adams.

“The Induction ceremony celebrates the Academy’s mission and the accomplishments of its newly elected members,” said Chief Executive Officer Leslie Berlowitz. “Through three centuries of service, the Academy and its Fellows have been dedicated to intellectual leadership and constructive action in America and the world.”

The 212 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members are leaders in research, scholarship, business, the arts, and public affairs. They come from 28 states and 11 countries and range in age from 33 to 83. They represent universities, museums, national laboratories, research institutes, businesses, and foundations. This year’s group includes Nobel laureates and recipients of the Pulitzer and Pritzker prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, Academy, Grammy, and Tony awards, and the National Medal of Arts.

Among this year’s inductees are geochemist Stein Bjørnar Jacobsen, who used radioisotopes to date the formation of the Earth’s core; U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III; authors Gish Jen, Jamaica Kincaid, and James Salter; Civil War historian James McPherson; green technology investor and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Partner John Doerr; Exelon Corporation CEO John Rowe; and actor Dustin Hoffman.

Other new Fellows who will be inducted are mathematician and founder of modern complexity theory Michael Sipser; environmental policy expertEdward L. Miles; innovator in developmental economics Esther Duflo; and university presidents H. Kim Bottomly (Wellesley College), John Casteen III (University of Virginia), Ronald Daniels (John Hopkins University), James Wagner (Emory University) and Maria Klawe (Harvey Mudd College).

This year’s Foreign Honorary Members come from Europe, Canada, and Asia and include microbiologist Lelio Orci; ecologist Spencer Barrett; paleontologist Jennifer Clack; entomologist H. Charles Godfray; Professor of Psychology Claes von Hofsten; economist Mathias Dewatripont; and Hong Kong-based filmmaker Wong Kar Wai.

…”

Secondly, a pro-management inclination was evident as 3 of the 5 ceremony speakers were senior management figures:

“Leading the names were 5 inductee speakers for the official ceremony. The first was mathematician Terrence Tao, a Field Medalist with the reputation of a rare math genius…

Despite Nobel laureates being among this new class of 212 fellows and 19 foreign honorary members, a Fields Medalist topped the announcement. The Fields Medal is the mathematics community’s highest honor, which my Ph.D. adviser Stephen Smale had received in 1966 as in Part 2. In 1967 Smale was also inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Of the 5 inductee speakers, Tao was followed by Elizabeth Nabel, a U.S. government research institute director, Ronald George, the chief justice of California, dancer-choreographer Edward Villella, and Kent Kresa, former chairman and CEO of a top U.S. aerospace and military technology company.

Berlowitz’s emphasis on honoring the management is evident: depending on how Nabel is counted, only 2 or 3 of the 5 were artists/scientists, whereas 3 of the 5 were senior management figures.”

Of the 5, Elizabeth Nabel had an intriguing history in the context of all 3 posted Parts of my current blog article:

“Elizabeth Nabel has been at several institutions of special interest for this blog article; she is or was:

1) a graduate of Weill Cornell Medical College, i.e., Bewlowitz daughter Sarah Tuttleton’s alma mater named after Sanford Weill;

2) a former professor at the University of Michigan, i.e., the university where Stephen Smale and William Ayers joined leftist student movements, as discussed in Part 2;

3) when inducted into the Academy in 2009, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, a leading U.S. government research institution and funding agency for medical research as quoted in Part 1; and

4) since January 2010, professor at Harvard Medical School and president of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a center of the 2014 Haruko Obokata-Charles Vacanti scandal discussed in Part 1.”

After naming 2 entertainment stars to perform in the ceremony, the main sample of new members contained 9 names with 3 senior management figures.

Thirdly, the next group of names that included Klawe and 4 other presidents of U.S. universities and colleges, exhibited not only a pro-management bias but an unspoken, politically driven hierarchy view:

“Maria Klawe was mentioned in the next group, as the last of 5 “university presidents”, of Wellesley College, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins University, Emory University, and Harvey Mudd College – Harvey Mudd is not a university but Klawe was not alone as Wellesley College headed the 5.

Taking into consideration political, social and cultural factors, I can interpret the order of these 5 as an order of the 5 institutions: the elite private leading American women’s college, with Hillary Clinton among its alumni and located in New England as the Academy; followed by the public university founded by U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson, located in the Washington, D.C.-Virginia area; then by the elite private first research university in U.S. history, also located near the U.S. capital; then by the elite private academic home of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; and then by the elite private college headed by Klawe.”

I wonder if there is intrinsic academic significance in such a “pre-ordained hierarchy”:

“If such an inexplicit, pre-ordained hierarchy of the academic institutions had any significance to the Academy and Berlowitz – I would have to think it had – then America’s bright and industrious young minds would have been attracted to them accordingly, or young minds there would have been moulded industrious and bright accordingly.”

I then find a famous Wellesley graduate, Hillary Clinton, to illustrate why the leading U.S. woman’s college could deserve a place ahead of some excellent and historically significant universities:

“That has been true for at least one famous case, Hillary Clinton, in 1969 new Wellesley graduate Hillary Diane Rodham, who was considered so phenomenal that she and 4 other new U.S. college graduates were featured in a June 20, 1969 Life magazine article – even more pre-destined for success than, as in Part 2, MIT professor John Nash at 30 featured by Fortune in 1958:

“…

Intelligent, intensely curious and, from a young age, driven to find a way to somehow contribute to the world around her, Hillary Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College in the fall of 1965. It was there, in Massachusetts, that the moderate Republican underwent her transformation (she might characterize it as “an evolution”) to committed Democrat.

By the time she graduated from Wellesley in May 1969, Hillary Rodham was already such a notable figure that she was featured, along with four other speakers from four other schools — and excerpts from their commencement addresses — in the June 20, 1969, issue of LIFE, in an article titled, simply, “The Class of ’69.”

Her speech was, perhaps not surprisingly, less strident and confrontational than those of the other student speakers quoted in the issue; as early as 1969, Hillary was showing signs of that phenomenal ability to modulate her message — without diluting or compromising it — that helps explain so much of her success in public life. The other student speakers featured in that June 1969 issue included Yale’s William Thompson; Justin Simon at Brandeis; Mills College’s Stephanie Mills, now an author and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute; and Brown University’s Ira Magaziner — a high-profile student activist … Today, Magaziner works for the Clinton Foundation.”

I can similarly interpret the order of the 5 schools as listed above that were featured in Life magazine in 1969, if only to make a point that the arrangement of names in American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ 2009 induction announcement wasn’t a freak and my interpretation of it isn’t a fluke. But sometimes something is better left unmentioned.

Nonetheless, I would point out that Ira Magaziner, the last of the 5 listed above, has been the CEO of and the brains behind the Clinton Health Access Initiative.”

In the Academy announcement ahead of the 5 school presidents were 3 scientists listed in the same group, headed by Michael Sipser in the field of theoretical computer science Klawe had been a part of:

“The 5 “university presidents” in the Academy’s 2009 announcement was preceded in the same paragraph by 3 scientists, headed by Michael Sipser, “mathematician and founder of modern complexity theory”.

That to me is also intriguingly interesting, just like the mathematician Terrence Tao heading all names, because complexity theory is a part of theoretical computer science which Maria Klawe’s research has been in, intersecting mathematics.

But I am very perplexed that Sipser was called “founder of modern complexity theory”. Modern complexity theory has been around for well over a decade before Sisper. who studied for his UC Berkeley computer science Ph.D. under Manuel Blum – husband of Lenore Blum mentioned in Part 2 – whose 1964 MIT Ph.D. thesis already had a title in complexity theory, “A Machine-Independent Theory of the Complexity of Recursive Functions”, and whose “contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory” was honored by the 1995 A. M. Turing Award – computer science’s highest honor – of the Association for Computing Machinery and by his induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year.

Three academics mentioned in Part 1, whom I knew, had done work in complexity theory, all considerably more senior than Sipser in their time in the field: my former UBC colleague David Kirkpatrick – husband of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick who in November 1992 collaborated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to suppress my political activism as in Part 1 – Klawe’s husband and my former UBC colleague Nicholas Pippenger, and Richard “Dick” Karp, a friend of Klawe’s and a prominent computer science professor and mentor figure when I was at Berkeley.

Karp was the Turing Award winner and an inductee of the Academy in 1985 – 10 years ahead of Sipser’s adviser Manuel Blum.

…

So it is unlikely that Michael Sipser was “founder of modern complexity theory”.”

I have an extended interpretation of the hidden hierarchy for this expanded group of names:

“As for Michael Sipser, currently MIT dean of science, he was head of the MIT mathematics department from 2004 to 2014 – the position once held by former Communist Party member Ted Martin, who in that role took part in suppressing John Nash’s political activism in 1959 as in Part 2.

As the Academy under Leslie Berlowitz gave great priority to honoring the management, it could be a reason that its 2009 induction announcement exaggeratedly described Sipser as “founder of modern complexity theory”, namely that his MIT department head position warranted the Academy’s consideration but was not senior enough to secure his entrance – unlike Klawe’s “university president” position.

In addition, MIT is located near Harvard, on the property ground of which the Academy has been housed, and thus closer to the Academy in both proximity and elite perspectives than even Wellesley College.

…

I can further interpret the subgroup of names in the Academy announcement paragraph that included Sipser and the “university presidents”, as an expanded hierarchy including the 5 institutions represented by their presidents: starting with an MIT department head, followed by a senior professor – Edward L. Miles – of the University of Washington, the leading university of a state named for the founding U.S president and located where Microsoft Corporation is, then by a more junior MIT professor – Esther Duflo – and then by the order of the presidents of the 5 universities/colleges interpreted earlier.”

And lastly, hidden behind the pro-management biases and the hidden hierarchy was the intriguing omission of important new Academy members, Nelson Mandela and Robert Gates, from the announcement:

“The selection and placing of names in this Academy induction announcement formed a carefully thought out, socially “appropriate” yet highly preferential hierarchy, that overwhelmingly favored the management class: not counting the foreign honorary members, there were 11 featured as in senior management, and 13 – including Michael Sipser – not described as in management.

Add to the existence of such an hidden hierarchy structure the fact that a special and prominent new foreign member was omitted in the mention, and the bias exhibited in this 2009 induction announcement by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences under Leslie Berlowitz was evident: Nobel Peace Prize laureate, former South African president Nelson Mandela.

…”

The Academy honor for Klawe as a college president was a contrast to her husband Nick Pippenger’s lack of such honor, who had been viewed as a “two notches” better researcher, and her marriage to whom had brought Klawe into IBM where she rose in the management hierarchy:

“But now her academic management role has brought Klawe much farther ahead of her scientist husband in societal honor and media recognition: induction by American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and Fortune magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders at No. 17 in 2014 as in Part 2.”

The honor for Klawe had been seeded in Canada:

“The seeds for the great surge in honor and recognition for Klawe had been planted in Canada. Back in March 2009 when she was elevated to Microsoft’s board of directors, Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper noted that it was a transplanted Canadian with many honorary Canadian university degrees:

…

I am not aware of any honorary degree for her scientist husband Pippenger.”

Klawe had been a Canadian academic administrator since 1988 until moving to Princeton University in 2003. Canadian press archives contain a similar thread from 1989 to 2000, that showed no press coverage for the UBC computer graphics field’s 1989 founding faculty member Alain Fournier, who then died of cancer in August 2000, whereas Klawe received various major press coverage in relation to computer graphics:

“Recently, I came across the “In Memoriam” page of UBC computer science department and noticed that Cahoon is not included in the tributes…

The “In Memoriam” does not only memorialize late professors since former computer facility manager Rick Sample is on the list. On the other hand, Sample had a master’s degree but not a Ph.D. that Cahoon had.

…

Nonetheless, I have no obvious facts to support the guess that academic hierarchy propriety is behind a ‘Sample is in and Cahoon stays out’ situation for the “In Memoriam” page…

But when it comes to Alain Fournier, there were more known facts with which I can reason that a “stays out” decision may well have been applied to him regarding press coverage…”

It started in November 1989, when department head Klawe told the press her inspiration from Pixar animator Bill Reeves, and her getting a $5m joint project with IBM to start UBC computer graphics, without mentioning UBC’s Fournier:

“Bill Reeves, a Canadian animator at Pixar whose credits included an Oscar for the short film “Tin Toy”, was invited to visit…

…

In short, inspired by Bill Reeves as she stated, Klawe wanted to build up computer graphics in the mode of Pixar animation, aiming to “drive it by applications to medicine, to education, to architecture”, with a $5 million joint project with IBM which gave a $1m contribution “in equipment and know-how” to start “Grafic, short for graphic, film and computers project”.

…

The above press story mentioned only two names, Maria Klawe and Bill Reeves. But what experts were there at UBC to actually start the field? Alain Fournier had arrived in 1989.

Fournier moved from the University of Toronto after his wife, Adrienne Drobnies, had received a job offer at Children’s Hospital in Vancouver; while not an original expert in animation, Fournier had collaborated with Bill Reeves on a special project:

…

Back in 1987 at the University of Toronto, Fournier’s name had been mentioned in a Toronto Star newspaper story on computer graphics and landscape design applications:

…”

Why did Klawe not tell the press about the UBC computer graphics professor who had collaborated with Pixar’s Reeves at Lucasfilm and been mentioned in the press while at the University of Toronto? My analysis leads to several factors behind the omission:

“1) According to his biography for the 1994 Achievement Award of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society, quote earlier, Fournier’s specialty At U of T had been “creating a modelling/rendering lab”, while someone else, Ron Baecker, was an animation expert;

2) his collaboration with Bill Reeves at Lucasfilm in the mid-1980s had been on some special effects only, “work on the modelling of ocean waves”;

3) he was away in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1985 to 1987 when the Toronto Star story on John Danahy’s landscape design applications appeared in May 1987, and thus mostly likely was not as active in that project as the others mentioned; and

4) the U of T project described in Toronto Star was probably not yet bona fide animation as in movie-like, but multiple-view modeling of scenes.

The above points are consistent with the early facts at UBC: UBC’s first computer graphics lab founded by Alain Fournier and Peter Cahoon was named “Imager”, whereas the IBM-funded project Klawe announced was “Grafic, short for graphic, film and computers project” – with the word “film” in it.”

Such a scenario is also consistent with Klawe today as Harvey Mudd College president, who has continued to prefer Pixar animation:

“A recent Harvey Mudd anecdote also corroborates this scenario, namely that Maria Klawe much preferred Pixar, or at least industry-level animation. In 2013 the college completed a new central academic building, and the ceremony’s main feature was Pixar animation lead researcher Tony DeRose:

…”

Another UBC computer graphics professor Kellogg Booth, a more senior leader figure, came in 1990 and was later given provincial press coverage twice:

“…

When Kellogg Booth arrived in 1990, he became the director of the university’s Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre, or MAGIC. Here is a The Province story in December 1994 – after I had left UBC – featuring MAGIC director Kellogg Booth on medical applications at B.C. Children’s Hospital, i.e., workplace of Fournier’s wife mentioned earlier:

…

So Booth not only was a computer graphics group leader above Fournier, responsible for university-level interdisciplinary work and broader applications, but got to make all the press presentations on the medical applications at Adrienne Drobnies’s hospital – I wonder how it might feel to Alain Fournier’s sense of manhood.”

The important message was not only that Maria Klawe was the boss, but that she was one of the few women in academic management:

“Perhaps not unlike with Leslie Berlowitz at American Academy of Arts and Sciences, when I was at UBC the message seemed to be that Maria Klawe could made decisions the way she wanted even though she wasn’t at the top, because she was the ‘only’ woman; a 1990 press story mentioned her as UBC science faculty’s only female department head, and quoted dean of science Barry McBride – as in Part 1 he later helped Klawe crush my political activism:

…

In a sense, it was unwittingly predicted that my 1991-1992 challenge of Klawe’s management was going to be difficult.”

In 1993, Klawe secured $8m funding from Electronic Arts to start a video game research project, leaping over Fournier into a “two notches” trendier spot in the computer graphics field:

“…

What I cited as above was a The Vancouver Sun story. But even the Toronto Star, which had mentioned Fournier in a 1987 story quoted earlier, now featured Klawe’s new video game project, GEMS (Games for Education in Math and Science):

…

Video game is more dynamic and technologically more challenging in user interactivity than animation alone, which itself is already more dynamic than image modeling. In this sense, in one leap into the field Klawe landed at a spot “two notches” trendier than Fournier’s – no doubt the $8m Electronic Arts funding, more than IBM’s $5m in 1989, was the key.

But Klawe had social and political goals, which she outlined in a magical vision that gave her project 3 political flavors of her interest: education, mathematics, and bringing girls into game playing.”

Through the 1990s, Klawe received major press coverage for each step forward in her video game project:

“On October 1 the next year – 2 months before the The Province story on Kellogg Booth’s MAGIC center and B.C. Children’s Hospital – another Toronto Star story on Klawe’s video game research project reported progress for an Electronic Arts computer game, Counting on Frank, teaching mathematics and attracting girls to it in a culturally old-fashioned way:

…

Another year later in November 1995, Klawe was now a UBC vice president and “a leading expert on using video games in teaching”; a research assistant of hers produced computer software for teaching geometry to children:

…

Klawe became not only regularly featured in the major press, but also a part of the media one more year later in November 1996, as a member of a CHUM Television advisory board along with Raminder Dosanjh, wife of Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh in B.C. Premier Glen Clark’s government…

…

By March 1997, Klawe’s research project, now called E-GEMS (Electronic Games for Education in Math and Science) with the word “electronic” added in front, led to a specialized computer game, Phoenix Quest, for teaching math in a way girls would enjoy:

…”

With her games project E-GEMS, after 1995 Klawe no longer did theoretical computer science work; yet she dubiously claimed of being a “theoretical computer science researcher”, at least twice:

“Klawe no longer spent time in her previous theoretical computer science field, but ran the E-GEMS lab as reported in a The Globe and Mail story that appeared at the end of March 1997, about the character Julie in Phoenix Quest:

…

In May, Klawe received a Women of Distinction Award from the Vancouver Young Women’s Christian Association:

“Maria Klawe. Theoretical computer science researcher at the University of B.C. Initiated e-gems, which developed computer games for mathematics education. Held national and international posts in math and computer science. Winner in the Science and Technology category.”

Maria Klawe still a “theoretical computer science researcher” at this point, as reported?

Klawe’s official resume at Harvey Mudd College shows that her last theoretical computer science research paper, collaborated with B. Mumey, was published in 1995, and thereafter papers were about electronic games, learning and education, and female participation.

During my 4 years at UBC, Brendan Mumey was the only graduate student Klawe produced, earning a Master’s degree, but Klawe’s current resume doesn’t even list him as her former student.

During that 4 years Klawe taught only one course once – a graduate course jointly taught with me in the fall of 1991 …

…

On March 8, 1998, 29-year-old Kori Inkpen, who had received her Ph.D. in 1997 supervised by Klawe and Booth jointly, was featured in a The Province story:

…

I get a sense from the March 1998 press story that the technology at the University of Washington in Seattle where Inkpen was doing research, was even trendier than Klawe’s electronic game: it was virtual reality.

Today Inkpen is a research group manager at Microsoft. Brendan Mumey, Klawe’s master’s student in theoretical computer science, received his Ph.D. also in 1997 from that leading university in the state named for the founding U.S. president.

With the upgrade of her goal from bringing girls into video-game playing to inspiring them “to seek careers in computer science”, in the Inkpen press story Maria Klawe was now called “an evangelist for an expanded role for women in the information-technology sector”. …

In this sense, eventually in March 2009 when Klawe became a board director of Microsoft Corporation, she ascended to the top of an empire that has reigned over the computer technology world in the state of Washington and beyond.

But that would happen one step at a time. In the fall of 1998 Klawe became UBC dean of science and it was a news item …:

…

Maria Klawe still a “theoretical computer science researcher”?

Oh well, I guess a person of her high position – as in Part 2, she had chaired American Mathematical Society’s board of trustees in 1995-1996 – could claim whatever at UBC.”

When she became UBC dean of science in 1998, Klawe’s goal of bringing girls into game playing had been upgraded to getting more women into computer science:

“The UBC science deanship gave Klawe broader authority to actually get more women into computer science. She immediately implemented a 2-year program adopted by both UBC and SFU – obviously already planned as she just became dean – to train university graduates in computer programming, attracting some of them from outside of science, with half of the spots reserved for women; she also started a programming project to appeal to girls, “virtual family”, featuring a cartoon family of four:

…”

There was no mention of UBC’s Alain Fournier at all in the Canadian major press, until a May 8, 1999 letter to The Vancouver Sun from an Alain Fournier in Vancouver, about computer graphics:

“… The full letter is as follows:

“It is always comforting to see some honesty and courage where you do not necessarily expect it. Your May 1 story “Empire of hype” by Katherine Monk in the Mix section was a welcome drop of sanity in an ocean of hype. Not being especially a fan of Katherine Monk’s movie reviews (after all, movie critics are here to disagree with) and having tremendous admiration and respect for George Lucas and his accomplishments, I was not prepared for that.

Your reviewer made exactly the right points. This is only a movie — there are many important issues around the fact that many Canadians, mostly educated and trained here, work for the U.S. industry in computer graphics, animation, games and special effects. The amount of control George Lucas and his organization is exerting is indeed frightening. Using Godzilla as a reminder of what could go wrong was a very nice touch — it seems that only the big dead lizard can actually scare them at this point.

Reality is always more complex than fiction. Control can be good if it forces theatres to give viewers the best possible quality of image and sound. Control is bad if you threaten employees with dismissal for speaking to the media, or threaten journalists implicitly with dire retribution if they do not toe the line.

I am not looking forward to the June interviews (the “second wave”) telling us how wonderful it is to work for the creative genius and how the company appreciate the excellent training they got back in Canada. And yes, I am looking forward to see The Phantom Menace(TM).””

Fournier’s letter confirms my analysis that games were “two notches” trendier than graphics; but he viewed “special effects” as the most:

“Without being explicit, Fournier in effect outlined his order of importance of the subjects in computer graphics, as quoted above:

“… many Canadians, mostly educated and trained here, work for the U.S. industry in computer graphics, animation, games and special effects.”

Indeed like in my earlier analysis, animation was more than graphics, games were even more. But “special effects” were the most – Fournier must be thinking about the ocean-wave modeling he had done in the mid-1980s with Bill Reeves at Lucasfilm, that it should have given him higher value at UBC.”

Fournier also expressed criticisms of George Lucas and Lucasfilm:

“… in his letter Fournier clearly intended to criticize the negative side of influence and control by George Lucas and his company, that it was “indeed frightening”:

…

Did Fournier have a personal axe to grind when mentioning, “threaten employee with dismissal for speaking to the media, or threaten journalists implicitly with dire retribution if they do not toe the line”? As I have reviewed in detail, since moving to UBC in 1989 he was given no press exposure at all, in sharp contrast to Maria Klawe and Kellogg Booth, for computer graphics.

Fournier also made clear in his letter that he was not fond of working at Lucasfilm, though he would like to see “The Phantom Menace”:

“I am not looking forward to the June interviews (the “second wave”) telling us how wonderful it is to work for the creative genius and how the company appreciate the excellent training they got back in Canada. And yes, I am looking forward to see The Phantom Menace(TM).””

Fournier sounded hostile.”

11 days later a May 19 movie review by Janet Maslin in The New York Times on Lucas’s new Star Wars movie, “The Phantom Menace”, reminds me of Fournier’s misfortune, over a year before his cancer death:

“… Here is an excerpt from Janet Maslin’s movie review in The New York Times on May 19, 1999:

“Things look dicey for the new “Star Wars” crew when their undersea craft is threatened by a large aquatic critter. But then an even mightier beast appears, and it swallows up the first. “There’s always a bigger fish,” observes the Jedi sage Qui-Gon Jinn, speaking for more than marine life on the planet Naboo, where the sequence takes place. That description also sums up the earthly atmosphere into which George Lucas’s pathologically anticipated “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” arrives today.

… Nobody, not even camp followers ready to turn this souped-up “Star Wars” into the second coming of the Grateful Dead, wants to be sick and tired of a film before it hits the screen.

…

… Whether dreaming up blow-dryer-headed soldiers who move in lifelike formation or a planet made entirely of skyscrapers, Mr. Lucas still champions wondrous visions over bleak ones and sustains his love of escapist fun. There’s no better tour guide for a trip to other worlds. Bon voyage.”

Once upon a time Alain Fournier had been a George Lucas “camp follower” working with Bill Reeves at Lucasfilm, but in May 1999 he probably felt more like a “blow-dryer-headed soldier”, only “pathologically” looking forward to seeing The Phantom Menace.

I certainly feel resonance with Fournier’s criticism of ‘bad control’ that threatened employees with dismissal for speaking to the media, given the experiences of my UBC dispute with Klawe and the Canadian justice system’s suppression of my political activism to expose wrongs, as mentioned in Part 1.

But I was a pretty small fish compared to Fournier, and presumably he was to another.”

In the mid-1990s I did see a short TV segment on UBC computer graphics, with a few seconds of appearance by Fournier, and impressive images of the old Yuan-Ming palace and gardens of China:

“In the mid-1990s there was one short TV news segment I saw that had a few seconds of appearance by Alain Fournier, showing computer graphics-generated, impeccably photographic images of the old Yuan-Ming imperial palace and gardens of China. Some of the images can be found on UBC Imager lab’s website.

In a 2010 blog post on the history of Christianity in China, I mentioned some of the Jesuit missionaries’ roles in the 18th-century imperial China, including helping design the unprecedented Yuan-Ming palace and gardens – an infusion of Eastern and Western architectures and cultures:

…

The Yuan-Ming Palace, or Yuan-Ming Garden, was burned to ruins during the Second Opium War of 1860. Prior to his death, in January 2000 a research group led by Alain Fournier published a paper on their goal to recreate a digital version of the Yuan-Ming splendours:

…”

On May 17, 1999, a press story reported Klawe’s comments on the successful sale of UBC computer science spin-off company WebCT founded by instructor Murray Goldberg; I compare it to Fournier’s plight of no press coverage:

“On May 17, 1999, 9 days after publishing Fournier’s letter, The Vancouver Sun reported the successfully sale of a UBC educational software company, WebCT, to a Massachusetts-based educational software company, quoting Klawe’s appraisal that the new company “has a chance to be one of the university’s most successful spinoff companies, rivalling QLT Phototherapeutics and its light-based drug delivery systems”:

…

Clearly in the view of “computer sciences dean” Maria Klawe, medical applications were greater but an educational application for ease of use was good – with or without “special effects”, I can sense.

Klawe’s words that no one was “more deserving” than UBC computer science instructor and founder of WebCT, Murray Goldberg, stood in stark contrast to what Kellogg Booth had said in December 1994 on medical applications at B.C. Children’s Hospital, previously quoted:

“You may do something very good, but if it falls short of expectations, then you may have caused deep disappointment.”

Booth’s language may have sounded like the mafia’s, but Klawe had big ambitions for computer science’s applications, and for computer graphics to move in the direction of animation and video game. The lack of press coverage for Alain Fournier could mean that Fournier’s “very good” research might not meet that kind of “expectations”.”

I opine that Fournier’s research focus was valued low due to Klawe’s hierarchy view, and compare hers to Berlowitz’s:

“The hierarchical view that Klawe most likely held, ranked animation above high-quality images, and interactive games further above, for UBC computer graphics; and for UBC computer science more generally, it ranked user applications above scientific research per se, and medical applications further above.

Not unlike the unstated hierarchy exhibited by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences under Leslie Berlowitz’s leadership in its 2009 induction announcement, various external considerations outweighed traditional academic merits.

The money generated by applications was doubtlessly a key factor, as illustrated by the various press stories’ emphasis on Klawe’s obtaining industry funding, much like Berlowitz’s emphasis on honoring business and philanthropy and, especially, contributions to the Academy.”

Before Fournier’s death, in July 2000 a UBC science faculty $25,000 special bonus for faculty members in computer-related departments caused a controversy in the press; as a decision maker pushing for it, Klawe evaded public responsibility:

“On the opposition side, one faculty member was cited saying it would create division among science faculty, but he stayed anonymous because he “fears reprisals for speaking out”; only one faculty member, nuclear chemist Donald Fleming, was named in expressing opposition, stating, “A university is not a dot.com company”, “A university is a collection of people dedicated to the idea of basic research.”

As dean of science Maria Klawe kept a low profile amid the heated debate, stating she would answer questions at a later meeting, letting the university’s acting director of public affairs handle the media:

…

As quoted, the decision needed the approval of UBC faculty association, and its president Norma Wieland had expressed opposition, stating that collective bargaining was the only process by which salary money could be distributed to faculty members.

As for Maria Klawe’s role, I note that, the special-bonus decision for faculty members in these two departments was consistent with her outlook of the academic hierarchy as reviewed earlier, i.e., her outlook was computer-industry influenced and applications dominated. In this case, the bonus money would come from UBC’s industry liaison office.

I also note that several months earlier on April 3, 2000, Klawe had been quoted in the press over UBC offering extra-high starting salaries to new computer science faculty members in order to compete with the University of Toronto:

…

Clearly, Klawe wanted to extend the extra pay to all faculty members in computer-related fields, but encountered opposition from other science faculty members.

…

It looked like Klawe did not address the issue as the dean should and, again instead, brought in the higher management, letting UBC associate vice president of human resources Jim Horn address the fairness issue in general.

…

The preferential bonus decision was then supported by both vice president academic Barry McBride and chancellor William Sauder, despite reservations expressed by two UBC board of governors members:

…”

This controversy revealed a lack of academic freedom for individual faculty members:

“Reading the overall press coverage of the preferential bonus issue, I come to the impression that, ironically, the debate revealed the lack of academic freedom when it came to individual faculty members airing their disagreement with the management.

From the start, a faculty member expressed fears of reprisals. The one faculty member who spoke out with his name quoted, Donald Fleming, was described as: “a senior chemistry professor”, and “a nuclear chemist who does research at the Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF)”, as quoted earlier. This suggests that only a senior professor whose research involved a prestigious nuclear facility could speak out without as much fear for reprisal from the authorities.

…

So on the part of the faculty members, the carefully chosen open expression emphasized the prestige of the established academic hierarchy.

This faculty preferential bonus case therefore played out as a cultural clash, between a more industry- and application-oriented academic hierarchy Klawe and the UBC administration promoted and the prestige of the established academic hierarchy protected by collective bargaining.”

I also find striking similarities to my 1992 political dispute with Klawe discussed in Part 1:

“1) The official opinion on the faculty members’ side belonged to the faculty association…

2) there definitely were fears of reprisal on the part of individual faculty members when it came to speaking out, as one said so anonymously…

3) like in 1992 when department head Klawe got dean of science Barry McBride to help suppress my opposition, this time dean Klawe got the university’s other management figures to face the public criticisms; and

4) like myself in 1992, only one faculty member, this time Donald Fleming, expressed opposition in his name openly, although his colleague Brian James later seconded him.

Now, I can see an academic-hierarchy rationale why my challenge of Klawe’s management style in 1991-1992 was so easily suppressed: given my lowly position in the established academic hierarchy, the tradition-minded faculty members likely did not take my issue seriously, and the faculty association’s collectivism simply screened it out.

So it is quite possible that established academic hierarchical propriety is behind why the UBC computer science department’s current “In Memoriam” page features former computing facility manager Rick Sample along with the late faculty members, but not former Imager lab founding researcher Peter Cahoon.”

Shortly after Fournier’s death, in October 2000 Klawe was praised as a “goddess of tech” in the press:

“On October 2, 2000, in the same month when Fiume published the above-quoted article in memory of Fournier, Maria Klawe was described in a Montreal Gazette newspaper story, as one of the “digital dozen” of “goddesses of tech”, like Grace Murray Hopper:

…”

On September 11, 2001, the day of the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in the U.S., a Canadian newspaper story featured Klawe under the title, “Educator shakes Dilbert image”; it also confirms my analysis of her hierarchical view of computer graphics:

“In Part 2, I have reviewed a The New York Times article that intriguingly appeared on September 11, 2001, the day of the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in the U.S., featuring William Ayers, former leader of the Weather Underground organization that had carried out anti-Vietnam War terrorist bombings in the U.S. during the 1970s.

On that same day, the Canadian newspaper National Post featured Maria Klawe in an article with an interestingly combative title, “Educator shakes Dilbert image”, about her goal of changing computer science’s “Dilbert image”:

“For too many people, computer scientists have a nerdy, Dilbert image, and Dr. Maria Klawe would like to reprogram that way of thinking. “We need to work hard with the entertainment and media industry to change the image of these kinds of careers. I know many men and women in this industry who lead well-rounded lives,” she says.

“I think if we don’t get a broader representation from our society and the people who are designing and developing our technology, we are not going to get the technology that will best serve society.”

…

On changing images, Dr. Klawe knows plenty of computer scientists who would gladly provide career advice, movie plotlines or characters for free. She is working to change public perceptions, but is looking for that “hook” to get Hollywood players to the table.

It’s like getting people to quit smoking … you have to do a lot of things and it takes a lot of time – but over time, it’s happening.””

As Klawe indicated in the September 11, 2001 press story, she set her sight at Hollywood for her next goal of “reprogramming” people’s perception about computer science, like getting people to quit smoking. If Hollywood has not responded to Klawe, Fortune magazine has:

“Just like in 1989 when she failed to “hook” Bill Reeves to UBC, Klawe has not succeeded with Hollywood since September 11, 2001, presumably because Hollywood hasn’t decided to get people “quit smoking” the way she wanted.

But the globally influential Fortune magazine has taken Klawe as one of its World’s 50 Greatest Leaders, as in Part 1, on March 20, 2014 – a leading business magazine that would like to see people try using marijuana, and quit smoking.

Regardless, the notion of changing the Dilbert nerdy image also confirms my analysis of Klawe’s hierarchical view of computer graphics, i.e., image versus animation versus games, each above the previous: Dilbert had been a newspaper comic strip since April 1989; during 1999-2000 it was also an animated TV series; but neither was up to the level of “well-rounded lives” in Klawe’s electronic games for girls.”

More recently in October 2014, Klawe revealed that she had a long history of “Impostor Syndrome”, i.e., feeling like a fraud even though others thought of her as successful:

“As discussed in Part 1, in October 2014 when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared with Klawe at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, the former rebuffed the idea that female employees should ask for a pay raise, saying:

“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise”.

…

But perhaps Nadella already knew – given Klawe’s Microsoft board directorship since 2009 – that Klawe had the trait of praising an important job opportunity when given it and later complaining about low pay, and so he had “karma” in mind about her:

“To back up her dissent, Klawe quickly pulled anecdotes from her own career, citing the time she neglected to negotiate salary before accepting the position of dean of engineering at Princeton, a mistake she estimates set her back about $50,000 per year. She remarked that she did it again when staying mum on the salary offer for her current presidentship, even though she felt as though it was low. “Don’t be as stupid as I was,” Klawe told the audience.”

That was blunt, the leader of ground-breaking electronic game projects for girls, Counting on Frank, Phoenix Quest, and Virtual Family, calling herself “stupid” at a leading technology conference for women – in doing so she also exposed certain stinginess on the part of the world renowned Princeton University and the elite Harvey Mudd College she has been leading!

This “goddess of tech” then acknowledged that she had had “impostor syndrome” for decades:

“Klawe also notes, “One of the things I am very deliberate about is talking about my own failures.” Indeed she spoke to us candidly about her decades-long battle with impostor syndrome and her strategies to stop feeling like a fraud. This is extremely important, says Klawe, because, “I am generally regarded as being successful and people think we don’t make mistakes.””

So there were things wrong, at least psychologically, with Maria Klawe all these decades, that when others regarded her as successful, she privately felt like “a fraud”; she attributed it to Impostor Syndrome…”

But there may indeed have been fraud on Klawe’s part, like with Berlowitz:

“One instance discovered by my review of press coverage is her continuing to brand herself as “theoretical computer science researcher” even after she had stopped publishing in that field and instead concentrated on electronic games.

…

And there was at least one instance when a prestigious but non-existent University of Toronto Ph.D. of Klawe’s was reported in the major press.

In early 1995 after she had become UBC vice president, a The Vancouver Sun story featuring 10 members of “B.C.’s emerging professional establishment” touted Klawe by stating, “You’d be hard-pressed to find a more likely candidate for the future presidency of UBC or some other Canadian university than this high-achiever”, and included a false “PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto”. …

…

So by 1995 not only that issues raised by me of her management style had been swept under the carpet by UBC, but that Klawe emerged in the major press with a falsely claimed Ph.D. from Canada’s top university, and with the potential to be the No. 1 boss in the future.

…

Compared to Leslie Berlowitz’s resume fudging scandal, Maria Klawe didn’t even ‘keep a low profile’ about it – so to speak – with her unique front page A1 feature and photo, while the other 9 emerging establishment professionals were on page B2, in this February 27, 1995 The Vancouver Sun article; also, ahead of her profile was an introduction of 2 ‘old guards’ of the B.C. professional establishment, Peter Butler and Richard Henriquez:

…

Peter Butler’s law firm, Farris Vaughan Wills and Murphy, happened to represent UBC as a defendant in my civil lawsuit filed in October 1992 over the UBC dispute…

…

It seemed quite clear that Klawe was confident her newspaper front-page falsification of academic pedigree would not cause her problems given her profile as an emerging professional establishment figure in British Columbia to succeed someone like lawyer Peter Butler. Persons who knew the real facts would not contradict her, or could not express themselves freely like my under oppression…

…

It certainly appeared that intellectual dishonesty and fraud became a part of leadership and justice.

…”

The notion of “goddess” also signalled a lack of accountability about Klawe:

“As discussed in Part 1, when members of an academic institution had other concerns or agendas, they could well choose covering up over opening up a certain issue about the management, have the faculty organization leader – UBC faculty association president William Bruneau in my case – explain it away by collectivism – incorrectly branding my case as of “publish or perish” mentality or syndrome – and even falsely blame it on violence.

In such a mindset, it would be convenient for them if an ambitious and power-driven boss was elevated to a “goddess” status at the expense of scientific integrity and intellectual honesty – and of course it wouldn’t hurt to receive a $25,000 special bonus courtesy of the “goddess”.”

In conclusion, I see similarities between Leslie Berlowitz and Maria Klawe in their lacking integrity, and in their management styles and priorities:

“…

4) there were strong similarities between the falsification of academic credentials on the part of Berlowitz, which led to her 2013 resignation, and untruthful claims of academic credentials at various times by Klawe;

5) serious issues existed with Klawe’s management style, although hers tended to be deceptive management tactics to make things worse for persons she targeted, in comparison to the open nastiness Berlowitz often displayed toward others below her; and

6) there are strong similarities between Klawe’s management priorities and Berlowitz’s management priorities, with their considerations often pro-money, pro-management, and pro-external factors; in addition, I have found a concrete link, with further controversies, surrounding the induction of Klawe into the Academy under Berlowitz in 2009.”

I also review a part of my political dispute with Klawe, an employment aspect in 1990 when department head Klawe and senior colleague David Kirkpatrick dealt with me untruthfully and I lost the job prospect:

“In 1990 while on my fixed-term assistant professor position, I applied for a tenure-track one within the UBC computer science department, and that position was later offered to Jack Snoeyink because of his research connection to computer graphics…

…

Kirkpatrick had assured me of his support, telling me that my chance was good and there should be no problem, but then brought in Snoeyink for an interview that Kirkpatrick claimed was for a postdoctoral position, and did not even notify me when the tenure-track faculty position was offered to Snoeyink…

…

For that early-1990 application for a tenure-track position, I requested 5 references from various senior professors in the academia, but only 3 arrived; though 3 met the need, department head Klawe did not bother to let me know some letters of reference did not arrive, even when a missing one was from her friend, Berkeley professor Richard “Dick” Karp:

…

In the summer of 1990 I intended to keep my tenure-track job application active for 1991, but Klawe subtly pressured me to withdraw it:

…

As illustrated, there was a degree of intellectual dishonesty and probably fraud, with Klawe the department head representing UBC management in handling my application for a tenure-track position in 1990; also, in 1990 Kirkpatrick’s wife Pamela was a B.C. Supreme Court Master, as I recalled in my March 2012 blog post:

“When I came to UBC in 1988, Pamela Kirkpatrick was a practicing lawyer with the law firm McCarthy & McCarthy, and in 1989 was appointed a Master of B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, dealing with routine chamber matters.””

Now with more information about the role of Alain Fournier’s wife Adrienne Drobnies, a fellow UC Berkeley alumnus, in Fournier’s career moves, I can see Fournier had a pre-existent plan for UBC computer graphics:

“As quoted earlier from Fournier’s biography for the 1994 CHCCS Achievement Award, it was Drobnies accepting a job at Children’s Hospital in Vancouver in 1989 that brought Fournier to UBC; prior to that in 1985-1987, it was Drobnies in the San Francisco Bay Area that led Fournier, then a University of Toronto faculty member, to spend time at Stanford, UC Santa Cruz and Xerox PARC, and do collaborative work with Bill Reeves at George Lucas’s Lucasfilm – by the time Reeves visited UBC in 1988-1989 that animation unit had become Steve Jobs’s Pixar.

…

… now with the knowledge about Fournier’s prior stay at Stanford, it becomes apparent that the UBC computer graphics group’s intent to hire Snoeyink had likely been in place earlier, i.e., before my applying for the position.

Snoeyink was a new Stanford Ph.D. in 1990…”

I notice traces of links between Fournier’s academic background and Drobnies’s and her family’s:

“Fournier and Drobnies had Texas and chemistry in common in their pasts.

Growing up in Texas and California, Adrienne Drobnies had received her Berkeley chemistry Ph.D. in 1979 – 9 years ahead of my mathematics Ph.D.

…

Born in Lyon, France, and trained to be a chemical engineer, Alain Fournier moved to Montreal, Canada, studied chemistry and became a chemistry instructor. Then by the mid-late 1970s, he was at UT Dallas studying for a computer science Ph.D.

…

There was an additional facet in the union of Alain Fournier and Adrienne Drobnies, that was likely a factor in the events. Drobnies’s late father, Saul Drobnies, was also a mathematician who did research in computational methods.

Saul Drobnies’s obituary indicated that he grew up in Dallas, received his mathematics Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, and worked for General Dynamics in Fort Worth – near Dallas – before moving to teach at San Diego State University:

…”

In 1988 before going to UBC, Klawe had also received two department headship offers from U.S. universities, related but superior to the academic backgrounds of Fournier’s and his father-in-law’s in school rankings:

“The Ph.D. academic backgrounds of Alain Fournier and Saul Drobnies remind me that back in 1988 before taking up the UBC computer science headship, Maria Klawe had entertained headship offers from 3 universities: UT Austin, UC San Diego and UBC, quoted earlier.

Saul Drobnies’s alma mater UT Austin was a top U.S. public university ranked No, 12 nationally – for convenience I use recent university ranking data – that is considerably higher than Alain Fournier’s alma mater UT Dallas at No. 46 …

…

The same 2015 rankings rated UC San Diego at No. 14, considerably higher than Saul Drobnies’s former institution San Diego State University at No. 60.

…

Compared to Fournier, Kellogg Booth who came a year later in 1990 and became UBC’s overall computer graphics field leader as MAGIC director, had a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, ranked No. 5 in the same 2015 U.S. public university rankings – yet another notch higher than either UT Austin or UC San Diego.

So from this perspective of an academic hierarchy in accordance with university rankings, if Klawe’s goal for UBC was to turn it into the like of UT Austin and UC San Diego, could she not have some additional doubts when Alain Fournier’s alma mater was quite below those that had offered her the computer science department headship?”

Not long after Fournier’s death, information in 2001 indicated Drobnies was already employed at Simon Fraser University in the Vancouver region, and treated well:

“As a chemist, Adrienne Drobnies has worked in clinical and research labs, most recently at B.C. Cancer Agency, and earlier at Children’s Hospital.

Then, less than a year after her husband’s passing as a UBC professor she was in the SFU science faulty as the Grant Facilitator, which would give her the opportunities to liaison with the various SFU science departments as well as external science agencies and organizations.

Still later, when Drobnies really felt the bite of her interest in poetry, she had the opportunity to attend and graduate from SFU’s The Writers’ Studio.

So the difference between the two universities for the Fournier family quite likely had been felt before Fournier’s death.

The love for literary expression can probably be described as ‘in their genes’, as Fournier had written a book of poetry, co-edited with his wife, who survived him and has also become a poet, and a writer, and their daughter Ariel has become a journalist. As quoted in Part 2, Peter Cahoon also published a book of his poems, in 1993.

With his intellectual interest, Fournier would have loved to get press publicity for his research. This is very relevant because it corroborates my earlier comments on Fournier’s May 1999 letter to The Vancouver Sun after 10 years at UBC without press coverage, that he appeared to have a personal axe to grind at that point.”

SFU likely would have been better for Fournier also; and it would have been better for me, as in 1988 I had a better job offer from SFU but opted for UBC’s competitive prestige:

“But the UBC-SFU difference regarding Alain Fournier was most likely not only of personal attitudes but also of competitive prestige, as my review has shown about Klawe’s management priorities.

…

… in the fall of 1987 I visited U of T’s computer science department and received the offer of a post-doctoral research position; then in the spring of 1988 I was formally interviewed by UBC computer science department and offered a fixed-term assistant professorship – it could have been a tenure-track one had Maria Klawe and Nick Pippenger chosen not to go to UBC as discussed earlier – before another interview in late spring by SFU’s school of computing science and the offer of a tenure-track assistant professorship.

In addition to UBC’s higher sense of competitive prestige was a repute of social academic snobbery, pointed out by a 2013 The Globe and Mail article comparing Canadian universities:

…

SFU would have been better for my job prospect, and has worked out well for Adrienne Drobnies after her husband’s death. So I would think it would have been a more comfortable experience for Alain Fournier himself.

I can certainly sympathize with Fournier’s feelings, reading the major press coverage on Maria Klawe’s games projects for children and the exultation of her as a “goddess of tech”, and contrasting it to my fruitless efforts to get Canadian media exposure about political scandals, including about Klawe’s management style. What a pity!

Who knows. Alain had had a bout with cancer before going to Vancouver, but with a psychologically more positive experience there he might avoid a relapse.”

But now I stop to ponder, what if I had gone to SFU and then Fournier had arrived with his hiring plan:

“But wait. Had I chosen SFU in 1988, and then Alain gone there in 1989, wouldn’t he have recruited Jack to that school, whose receiving a UBC tenure-track job offer in 1990 practically ended my future prospect there?

…”

 

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