Last week, we wrote a detailed article about UPenn’s cancellation of the invitation to Honorable Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of the State of Gujarat and one of the leading political figures in India. That article titled Columbia & Lee Bollinger vs. UPenn & Amy Gutmann – The Modi Saga described our opinions about the decisions made by UPenn.
1. Our follow-up with UPenn
This week, in keeping with our tradition, we emailed our article Columbia & Lee Bollinger vs. UPenn & Amy Guttman – The Modi Saga to President Amy Gutmann of UPenn, the Provost of UPenn and to the Dean of The Wharton School of UPenn. Our short email ended with our conviction:
- “What
Lee Bollinger did at Columbia affirmed America’s unique greatness to
the world; what you did damages America’s standing and unfortunately
demonstrates that schools like Columbia are the exception. You might
want to think about that.”
We also emailed a copy of the article to the Vice President & Secretary of UPenn for transmittal to the Board of Trustees of UPenn. In this email, we wrote:
- “This
issue goes to the heart of the values that UPenn embodies and displays
to the world. Therefore, we believe it is imperative for the Trustees of
UPenn to review the issue, understand the difference between Columbia
University & UPenn and take a stand.”
To her credit, the Secretary did so. She also added the following in her note to us:
- “For
the record, your article contains some troubling inaccuracies. Most
importantly, you should know that President Gutmann was not involved in
the decision to invite Mr. Modi to the Forum, nor was she involved in
the decision to cancel his invitation. This was, from the beginning, a
student activity.”
The Secretary did not specify what “troubling inaccuracies” she meant. We wrote back:
- “Thank you very much for your response. We sincerely appreciate the courtesy. We also welcome the factual statements you made about President Gutmann’s involvement in this saga. As you know, we quoted from an article in Hindustan Times, one of the largest newspapers in India and provided a link to that article. That article specifically quoted a senior administrator from Wharton who said this was a UPenn decision at leadership levels and not a Wharton decision. But that does not mean that HT is always accurate. No newspaper is. So could we speak with you about what you wrote? We would like to get all the facts and you can really help us get those. Ideally, we could set up a time to speak at your convenience.”
We received a call from the Secretary’s office asking us to contact the Vice President for University Communications. We did so promptly and left a voice mail. We then received an email from this Vice President for Communications which essentially closed the discussion:
- “Sorry I missed your call…. The note you received from [the Secretary].. has all the information that I would be able to provide to you. The University administration was simply not involved in this conference or any of the decisions — it was a student activity. So I don’t really have any detail that I can provide beyond what was in [the Secretary’s] note to you…. I hope this helps.”
Clearly it didn’t help at all. So the next morning, we sent another email to President Amy Gutmann, with copies to the Secretary, the Provost & Dean of Wharton, in which we referenced the above correspondence with both the Secretary & VP for Communications and said:
- “Frankly, this is rather confusing and we would like to really understand what happened. We would like to speak with you, Dr. Gutmann, to understand how you perceive this important incident as well as with the student organizers of the Wharton India forum…..Would your office be able to set up a conversation with the student organizers and would you be willing to have a conversation with us? Our last such conversation with Wharton about the Lauder Institute article demonstrated that such conversations can be very helpful to all.”
A few hours later, we received an email expressing regret from Thomas Robertson, Dean of The Wharton School. We welcomed this email and wrote back. Soon, it was made clear that Dean Robertson was himself not aware of the email sent to us in his name from his email address. This was bizarre and suggests management chaos at UPenn-Wharton. And that is putting it charitably.
* None of the emails from UPenn-Wharton were marked “private” or “not for publication”. In fact, they were on the record as the Secretary of UPenn specifically stated in her email.
2. Hindustan Times said & UPenn said
We also received a comment from the UPenn which was published verbatim in the comments section of our article Columbia & Lee Bollinger vs. UPenn & Amy Gutmann – The Modi Saga. We reproduce the comment below:
- “This article, and others, incorrectly states that Penn President Amy Gutmann intervened in any way with the decision to cancel Mr. Modi’s appearance. Dr. Gutmann was not involved in the decision to invite Mr. Modi to the forum, nor was she involved in the decision to cancel his invitation. The student planners of the event made those decisions.”
This stand by UPenn is in direct conflict with the reporting in the Hindustan Times article we had referenced in our article of last week. The Hindustan Times article is titled Inside story: why Wharton cancelled Modi’s lecture. It was written by Charu Sudan Kasturi of the Hindustan Times.
In contrast to the above terse comment from UPenn, the HT article is detailed and reports information received from “multiple stakeholders” and “senior Wharton officials“. The HT article also makes it clear that it was the UPenn Administration led by Dr. Amy Gutmann that “pulled the plug” on Mr. Modi’s address. Below are key excerpts from this HT article:
- “So when the Gutmann-led Ivy League university decided to ask its famed business school, Wharton, to pull the plug on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled address….”
- But when three Indian-origin professors ….. at UPenn wrote a strong letter to Wharton last Thursday, the university leadership felt it could not be ignored.
- So, when the matter reached Gutmann’s office, the university leadership stepped in to diffuse what it saw as a potentially explosive situation, the sources said
- “Make no mistake, the move to not have Modi was a result of UPenn, not Wharton,” a senior Wharton official said .
What about UPenn’s claim that “the student planners of the event made those decisions“? The HT article paints a different picture:
- “A complex mix of political calculations, hard economics and the university’s future plans in India provided the subtext for hectic lobbying and intense debates among alumni, students and the university faculty, eventually leading to the decision to withdraw Modi’s name……”
The difference between HT’s reporting and UPenn’s comment is so wide that we sought to speak with UPenn President Amy Gutmann, Wharton Dean Robertson & the Chairs of the Wharton India conference. None of them were willing to speak either on the record or off the record.
So we leave it to our Readers to decide whether they find the HT article or UPenn comment more credible.
The HT article also suggests a struggle between UPenn & its business school Wh
arton. This we found ourselves in our conversations last year with non-Wharton UPenn faculty and Wharton people.
Wharton is a much more elite brand than UPenn. Wharton is in the first tier of business schools in America while UPenn ranks in the 2nd tier of American universities & below Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford & Yale, just to name a few. Wharton faculty make much more money, have many more consulting opportunities than liberal arts UPenn faculty.
We were also told this week that Wharton has its own communications group and the VP of University Communications of UPenn cannot speak for Wharton. In this context, note that the above terse comment from UPenn doesn’t absolve Wharton Dean Robertson. It only states that UPenn President Amy Gutmann was not “involved”.
Had they spoken with us, we would have probed in detail whether this rivalry & conflict between UPenn & Wharton led to the fiasco at the Wharton India Forum. No wonder they chose to remain quiet.
3. The Mantle of Leadership – Where Amy Gutmann & Thomas Robertson failed!
Frankly, we don’t care about any rivalry between UPenn and Wharton. To us, Dr. Amy Gutmann is the President of the University of Pennsylvania. The sordid saga of first inviting Chief Minister Modi and then canceling that invitation happened on her watch. So President Gutmann is 100% responsible for this fiasco, in our opinion.
The American tradition of leadership demands public acceptance of responsibility from Chief Executives for acts committed by their institutions on their watch. Not only did Dr. Amy Gutmann fail in this key test of leadership, she went the other way by publicly trying to wash her hands off the fiasco. President Gutmann & UPenn should be deeply ashamed, in our opinion.
Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson also failed, in our judgement. The Wharton India Economic Forum bears the Wharton brand. So both its success and failure gets attributed to Dean Robertson. If Dean Robertson supported UPenn’s decision, then he bears as much of the blame for the fiasco. If Dean Robertson was opposed to UPenn’s decision to cancel the invitation to Mr. Modi, then he must be blamed even more vigorously. Why?
The HT article makes it clear that the Wharton faculty & students were opposed to canceling the invitation to Mr. Modi. But Dean Robertson chose to bend to his President’s wishes than fight for what his school wanted. He torpedoed the reputation of his own school and the dignity of his own University just to toe the line. This is as great a failure of leadership as that of President Gutmann.
What about scores of Indian-origin faculty at Wharton? They remained timidly quiet despite their vaunted education and despite the accolades they have earned for their academic work. So next time you hear of a Wharton seminar on corporate leadership, next time you read a Wharton article on Business Ethics, you know it is just a spiel to make some more money.
4. Our Recommendation to President Amy Gutmann & Dean Thomas Robertson
All is not lost yet. Both UPenn & Wharton have suffered body blows, all self-inflicted. But they can still come out of this mess with some semblance of fairness and dignity.
UPenn President Gutmann & Wharton Dean Robertson should both apologize to all for this fiasco. They should
publicly admit that this year’s Wharton India Economic Forum was very
badly managed and that core principles of free exchange of views &
intellectual diversity were trampled.
After this admission, they should announce the cancellation of the 2013 Wharton India Economic Forum. This should be accompanied by a solemn promise that next year’s Wharton India Economic Forum will be better than ever, with better standards for free intellectual debate and with far better policies & systems. The two leaders should:
Be humbly remorseful about this year’s fiasco and promise to deliver a much better conference for next year and beyond.
This is what every great American leader has done and this is what President Gutmann & Dean Robertson should do, in our opinion. But this requires a reservoir of moral courage. Do these two leaders have such courage?
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