Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The "Investment Bankers" Strike Back: A Dissident is Thrown Off the Dartmouth Board

We have posted frequently on the governance and leadership of academic medical organizations. While one would think that health care organizations, and especially academic health care organizations ought to be held to a particularly high standard of governance, we have noted how their governance is often unrepresentative of key constituencies, opaque, unaccountable, unsupportive of the academic and health care mission, and not subject to codes of ethics. How the governance of organizations with such exemplary missions and sterling reputations got this way has been unclear.

We have often come back to the example of Dartmouth College, of which Dartmouth Medical School is a significant component. We most recently summarized here an ongoing dispute about the extent that the institution's board of trustees ought to represent the alumni at large, or instead, ought to be a self-elected body not clearly accountable to anyone else. When we first addressed the dispute, we noted that the self-elected, or "charter" members of the board were mostly leaders in finance, and when they succeeded increasing the proportion of self-elected members, the additions were again, mainly from finance.

The latest development at Dartmouth is that the board, whose majority is now self-elected, is going to boot off one of the few members who was elected by the alumni at large after being nominated by petition of alumni. As described in an editorial in the college newspaper, The Dartmouth,

We were dismayed to learn of the Board of Trustees’ decision not to reelect Trustee Todd Zywicki ‘88 for a second term ('Board votes not to reelect Zywicki ‘88,' April 7). Even in the wake of Zywicki’s open letter to the Dartmouth community on Tuesday ('Zywicki ‘88 criticizes Board in open letter,' April 15), the Board has yet to provide the Dartmouth community with a sufficient explanation for the removal.

Since 1990, when the power to reelect alumni trustees was transferred from alumni to the Board itself, reappointment to the Board for a second term has generally been routine; Zywicki is the first trustee in recent history to be denied reelection.

Zywicki said in his letter that comments he made during an address at the John William Pope Center in October 2007 'might have been' one of the reasons behind the Board’s decision. In the address, Zywicki made a series of controversial and inflammatory statements, including calling former College President James Freedman 'truly evil.'

Assuming that no egregious act remains undisclosed (and there has been no indication that this is the case), Zywicki’s removal disregards the will of the alumni who put him on the Board, and contradicts the democratic manner in which alumni elect trustees.

Dissenting opinions are essential to the operation of any governing body. While Zywicki may have behaved unprofessionally, the public reprimand issued by the Board was sufficient punishment. It is one thing to reprimand a trustee for making statements against the College in a public forum, but to remove dissenting opinions from the boardroom is to undermine the will of the alumni who voted in support of those very views.


Further news coverage in The Dartmouth suggested a flawed process was used to get rid of Zywicki,

Trustee T.J. Rodgers '70, who like Zywicki was nominated to be a candidate for the Board via petition and was successfully reelected at the April meeting, compared the reelection process to a 'witch-hunt trial' and said it was 'an affront to due process' in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.

'[Zywicki] was ejected by a secret vote — he was not allowed to know the vote count or even the reasons behind his ejection,' Rodgers said in the e-mail.

Rodgers added that he believes the decision not to reelect Zywicki was 'an embarrassment for the Board.'

'The effect of Todd’s ejection has been to warn me and any other trustee likely to speak his or her own mind to watch our step,' he said in the e-mail.


Finally, Mr Rogers wrote his own commentary in The Dartmouth,

'Hang one, warn a thousand' says the ancient Chinese proverb. In its April meeting, the Dartmouth Board of Trustees hanged Todd Zywicki '88, thus warning the petition trustees — and any others tempted to express independent views — not to cross the party line. The Board’s action was coldly deliberate. The legal machinery by which it was achieved took two years to construct.

Every 20 years or so, when a majority of the alumni body decides that the College is ignoring a critical problem, it elects petition trustees to promote change. That tradition, a healthy method of governance that sets Dartmouth apart, goes back to 1891, when alumni were formally granted one-half of Dartmouth’s Board seats in return for financing the College.

[After Rogers' election,] Subsequently, the alumni elected three more petition trustees with views similar to mine: Peter Robinson ‘79, Todd Zywicki ‘88 and Stephen Smith ‘88. It was no accident that each of them was a university professor or scholar. The Board Majority, predominantly composed of investment bankers, could have benefitted greatly from the new trustees’ education-first viewpoint, but instead, we were treated as if we were attacking the College. We were actually called a 'radical cabal' trying to 'hijack' the College by the Board member whose seat I had taken. The petition trustees had successfully overcome the penny-ante counterattacks, such as denying us the ability to mail our petitions to alumni to request signatures, and raising the required number of petition signatures, so it came time for the Board Majority to fix the petition trustee 'problem' permanently.

First, the Majority Board members simply declared the right to double their number from eight to 16 without adding an equivalent number of alumni trustees, despite an Association of Alumni poll of 4,000 alumni, who responded in favor of alumni trustee parity, 92 percent to eight percent. Then, the Majority threw its weight and College funds into a campaign to remove the Association leaders who had sued the College for breaking the 1891 Agreement.

In the boardroom, the Majority rewrote the 50 year-old Trustee Oath into an oath of loyalty, which was designed, in part, to limit trustees’ ability to express dissenting viewpoints without the direct threat of being ejected from the Board. And finally — fatally for Todd Zywicki — the Majority installed a formal review process that judged trustees against the new oath on a line-by-line basis.

On the day of his trial, Zywicki was asked if he wanted to make a statement. He apologized again for his Pope Center speech and exited. In order to maintain the confidentiality of board proceedings, I cannot give details. However, I can say from personal knowledge that many of the statements made in that meeting about Todd Zywicki were factually incorrect, but Todd was not there to respond. In my opinion, all of the issues, including his speech, did not rise to the level of negating the votes of the alumni who elected Todd. Despite my objection, the vote — for the only time in my five years on the Board — was secret.

Todd Zywicki’s greatest achievement as a Dartmouth trustee may well be having the personal courage to force the Board Majority to take responsibility for a political lynching.


Since I started writing about the governance of health care organizations, I used the example of Dartmouth (again, really a university with a medical school as a major component) as an example of governance that was more representative and accountable than that of many other health care organizations. Most universities that contain medical schools, for example, do not allow alumni to vote on the membership of more than a few board seats, and most only allow them to vote for alumni candidates hand-picked by the administration, not nominated by alumni petitions. However, since I started writing about Dartmouth, it seems that the self-elected majority of its board has done its best to make the board less representative and less accountable. Furthermore, it seems that some of the board's self-elected members regard anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy of the institution. Thus, their attitude seems to be: "l'universite c'est moi."

However, the duties of boards of trustees include the duty to uphold the institution's mission, not the board members' personal whims.

When I first started writing about these issues, I was surprised to find that the majority of the Dartmouth's boards self-elected, that is, "charter" trustees were from the finance sector. Now, having seen poor, sometimes arrogant, greedy, or even corrupt leadership of that sector bring down the world economy, I ask again whether people brought up in that culture ought to be dominant among the leadership of higher education?

9 comments:

Peter Topperwien said...

Some very good points made in this article, though as always we should be careful not to over-simplify the issue. Thank you for your insights.

Peter Topperwien

Keith Sarpolis said...

Unfortunatly boards are populated by people who tend to be best at making money. In this day and age, that has mostly been folks in the financial services industry. Whether these individulas are brilliant or not is difficult to discern, especially in light of the current state of this industry and the economy in general. Having boards populated by other people with different views would certainly be preferable, but seems difficult to accomplish as your post demonstrates.

In most societies, those who have the most resources often have influence over many aspects of governance outside of their areas of expertise. This seems accentuated in our free market capitalist system with its emphasis on profit. It allows people with these acumulated resources to influence our goverment in ways that most would consider less than desireable and to sit on boards of major non profits, further dispensing their "wisdom" on these organizations. It all depends on whether you beleive that accumulated wealth is proportional to intelligence. Unfortunately, greed and ego often muck up this relationship.

Bottom line, we need a better process for selection of board representaion other than the current notion that our captains of industry are the only ones well suited to guide non profit organizations. Most, are probably on these boards due to their ability to donate more than anyhting else.

ask a nurse said...

@Peter, I agree with you. but i guess some topic are out of relevant insights.. it elaborate further inside the circle.

Anonymous 2nd said...

Dr. Poses, I continue to be surprised at your willingness to ignore the facts in favor of a limited and highly biased view of Dartmouth's governance.

To repeat: There are two trustees ex officio on the board. All the others are "self-elected" by the board as a whole. This is the nature of self-perpetuating boards. The nominees for the elected seats come from two sources: alumni and the board. Those in the first category, once elected by the board, are called Alumni Trustees. Those in the second are called Charter Trustees.

By even a sloppy definition of "finance," a minority of the board was made up of leaders in that industry prior to the recent expansion. After the expansion by the election of five new members, the proportion of financial leaders is even smaller. The proportion can be expected to shrink yet again when the final three new members are elected in the near future. Note also that no board can be expected to have an obligation to pick its members from any particular industry or avoid any particular industry. Boards are obligated to act in the interest of their institutions. Dartmouth's board elected particular individuals whose election it believed would serve the College. What's most notable about their biographies is that every single one of them is a Dartmouth graduate.

The student paper's conclusion, which you highlighted, that "to remove dissenting opinions from the boardroom is to undermine the will of the alumni who voted in support of those very views" is both silly and obvious. It is obvious that Zywicki's loss could undermine the will of those alumni who secretly funded his campaign, as well as those who still support him legitimately, if there are any such people. It is silly to say that Zywicki was "removed" from the boardroom or that his election loss reflects nothing more than his boardroom expression of a "dissenting opinion." Everyone knows why he lost. He gave the voters ample reason on many occasions not to vote for him.

You are way off the mark when you write that "Further news coverage in The Dartmouth suggested a flawed process was used to get rid of Zywicki." T.J. Rodgers is well-known for his fiery and wild off-the-cuff remarks, and he is completely unreliable as a source of anything to do with the board's rules or processes. For example, his reference to due process is completely baseless. No legal process was owed to Zywicki whatsoever, if a private corporation were even capable of delivering it. His reference to "ejection" is baseless, since he knows as well as everyone else that Zywicki was not ejected. He and Rodgers both came to the end of their four-year terms, and only one of them won reelection. His reference to "speaking his or her own mind" is baseless, because he knows that Zywicki did not lose the vote because he spoke his own mind in the boardroom. He violated his sworn obligations to Dartmouth on multiple occasions.

Rodgers's own commentary is so fancifully inaccurate as to be worthless as a source of information in this controversy, and you would have been wise not to quote it. His statement about the purpose of the Trustees' Oath is false.

You write that you "used the example of Dartmouth ... as an example of governance that was more representative and accountable than that of many other health care organizations." I am not sure why you did this. It is like saying more fish ride Schwinn bicycles than any other brand. And even if you think it is relevant, it is obvious that public schools whose boards are appointed by the legislature are far more representative and accountable than DMS.

"since I started writing about Dartmouth, it seems that the self-elected majority of its board ...". There you go again. The entire board, save two, is self-elected. It is easy to see why plaintiffs' lawyers and alumni seeking influence would want to perpetuate the myth that they bought some seats from the board, but I cannot figure out what you have to gain by perpetuating this myth.

Saying that the board "has done its best to make the board less representative and less accountable," of course, implies that the board ever was or should want to be representative (of what, alumni? How about Paulson and Geithner?) and that it ever was or should want to be accountable (to whom, the people of New Hampshire? That's why the Governor is on the board and the AG is allowed to investigate any nonprofit).

"it seems that some of the board's ... members regard anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy of the institution." I am not sure how you reach that conclusion, when the board has repeatedly elected those who disagree with it. The board elected Zywicki, Robinson (twice), Rodgers (twice), and Smith. And for that matter, Zywicki has made it clear that he is an enemy of the institution. In an admittedly vague and sloppy fashion, he asked potential donors to divert their gifts from established institutions such as Dartmouth to outside institutions such as his own employer. He formally supported a lawsuit meant to overturn a legitimate board vote in the short term and unjustly take away a part of the board's state-granted authority in the long term.

"However, the duties of boards of trustees include the duty to uphold the institution's mission, not the board members' personal whims." If you believed this, you would be condemning Zywicki and criticizing the board for failing to eject him during his term. The board's duty is to act in the institution's interest at the expense of all other interests, whether those are "whims" or the supposed interests of individual trustees in aggrandizing themselves, reducing the authority of the board, empowering outside organizations at the board's expense, or shirking their duties.

"I was surprised to find that the majority of the Dartmouth's boards self-elected, that is, "charter" trustees were from the finance sector." I still do not see why it would be surprising that a minority of an Ivy League board is from the finance sector. You might want to read the basic description of the board above. The whole board may be characterized generally as "self-perpetuating." Two of its members are permanent. The other 21 are democratically elected by the whole board to terms of four years apiece. I'm not sure anyone cares whether a subcategory of the 23-member board, distinguished by nothing more than the method of nomination, is mostly drawn from finance. The board is, you might know, required to raise and donate money to Dartmouth.

Who cares "whether people brought up in that culture" ought or ought not "to be dominant among the leadership of higher education" when they are not dominant on the board you are trying to comment on? Dartmouth had a reasonable number of respected financiers on its board before the expansion. They made up a minority of the board. Now, after the expansion, the proportion of financiers is even smaller, and it seems likely to drop further in the near future when the other three seats are filled. Your incredible T.J. Rodgers is a leader in finance, but you don't criticize him; even Chairman Haldeman won praise for his honesty and leadership in the reelection episode, from none other than Todd Zywicki himself. My first reaction to your comments is to wonder why you are biased against Dartmouth and financiers, but my second reaction is to ask whether your comments are capable of supporting any point at all. The fact that Zywicki complains a lot about losing a vote does not lead to any logical conclusion about Dartmouth governance, let alone a conclusion based on the individual backgrounds of a minority of Dartmouth's board members.

If you do have a point, please start supporting it with verifiable facts about Dartmouth's board instead of myth and fancy.

Roy M. Poses MD said...

"Anonymous 2nd," on a previous comment appended to a different post
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/04/hedge-fund-u-version-2.html
you declined to shed your anonymity because you said you would "prefer not to be insulted by name."

However, in your most recent comment above, you insult a few people by name.

The Dartmouth Editorial Board you called "silly."
You wrote T J Rogers is "known for fiery and wild off-the-cuff remarks," and is "completely unreliable" as an authority on the board on which he sits. You further called his commentary "fancifully inaccurate," "worthless," and finally, "incredible."

Why should we credit any of these opinions, since we don't know who you are?

Furthermore, you continue to make multiple factual assertions without supporting them with any specific evidence.

For example, you repeatedly asserted that the alumni members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees are not elected by alumni, which seems to go against much about what has appeared in the press about Dartmouth governance. You have not, in my recollection, provided any specific evidence in support of this contention. So why should anyone credit this assertion?

Other unsubstantiated assertions include:
"The proportion [of finance leaders on the board] can be expected to shrink...."
"Zywicki's loss could undermine the will of those alumni who secretly funded his campaign."
"Zywicki did not lose the vote because he spoke his own mind in the boardroom."
"His statement about the purpose of the Trustee's Oath was false."
"Zywicki has made it clear that he is an enemy of the institution."
"Your incredible T J Rogers is a leader in finance." [His official board biography says he is the CEO of semiconductor company, and sits on the boards of other high-technology companies, but not obviously on any finance companies.]

Since we do not know who you are, why should we believe any assertion that you cannot specifically justify with clear evidence?

Roy M. Poses MD said...

Since "Anonymous 2nd" seems to have many concerns about the summary of the case from FIRE, I thought I would provide an alternative summary, this one from Harvey Silverglate (who is also Vice President of FIRE). His full posting on his candidacy for the Harvard Board of Overseers is here:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2009/04/in_theory_email_should_make.html

His relevant comments on the Dartmouth case are here, with links:
===
For a couple of years, I have had the honor and pleasure to represent Thurman J. "T.J." Rodgers, a prominent and successful businessman (and libertarian) who undertook a run as an alumni-nominated petition candidate [http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/?id=110010549 ] for Dartmouth's Board of Trustees. I will not recount here the full, sad saga of the war that the entrenched Dartmouth administration and majority of its Board of Trustees have waged - largely successfully so far - against the presence, on Dartmouth's Board, of independent-minded [http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/5400.html ] "alumni petition trustees". But, briefly stated: For over a century, there had been in place a contractual agreement guaranteeing Dartmouth's alumni the power to elect half of the college's Board of Trustees. But through a series of deft maneuvers [http://thedartmouth.com/2007/06/10/news/board/ ], that agreement has recently been severely undermined [http://thedartmouth.com/2008/09/06/news/boardupdated/ ], and the administration, along with the pro-administration group of "charter trustees" (a self-perpetuating body, not nominated by the alumni), has wrested complete, unfettered control over the college. The majority's dismissal [http://thedartmouth.com/2009/04/07/news/zywicki/ ] in early April of an alumni-elected member of the Board, Professor Todd J. Zywicki, was recently recounted [http://thedartmouth.com/2009/04/22/opinion/rodgers/ ] by Rodgers, who remains on the Board as one of that body's dwindling contingent of independent voices of the alumni. (Caveat: I speak for myself in this article, not for my client Rodgers.)
===

Roy M. Poses MD said...

By the way, there is a letter in The Dartmouth, published today, 29 April, 2009, by John Engleman, Dartmouth '68, a member of the Dartmouth Association of Alumni Executive Board, which has some content and stylistic similarities to the posts by "Anonymous 2nd."

http://thedartmouth.com/2009/04/29/opinion/voces/

"Anonymous 2nd," are you John Engleman?

Anonymous 2nd said...

"Why should we credit any of these opinions, since we don't know who you are?" Because I support them with facts, unlike Harvey Silvergate, who not only omits the facts but appears to present his manifestly uninformed opinions as facts themselves in the quotations you have provided. Feel free to ignore my adjectives if you find them opinionated.

"You have not, in my recollection, provided any specific evidence in support of this contention" that "the alumni members of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees are not elected by alumni."

Again, I don't need to support that "contention" with evidence. It is a fact, it is reality. If you want to propose an alternate reality, as you have, then you are the one who needs to find evidence of that alternate reality, as you have not. I am still waiting. Since you are trying to contradict the clear written resolutions, official statements, and charter of the board, you will need to do better than quoting from bloggers.

Nevertheless I will, again, provide the evidence to prove indisputably that the Board of Trustees of Dartmouth College is obligated to elect and does elect all of its members, except the governor and president, and that it is required to do so by democratic majority vote, and that no one else, including an outside alumni club, is permitted to do so in its stead regarding any number or proportion of the board.

And also that the said trustees and their successors, or the major part of any seven or more of them, which shall convene for that purpose, as is above directed, as often as one or more of said trustees shall die, or by removal or otherwise shall, according to their judgment, become unfit or incapable to serve the interests of said college, do ... elect and appoint such trustee or trustees as
shall supply the place of him or them.
The Charter.

Notwithstanding the distinction between Charter Trustees and Alumni Trustees, the Charter of Dartmouth College makes it clear that the Board is responsible for the appointment of "Successors" (other than the Governor) upon the occurrence of a Trustee vacancy. The Charter also makes clear -- and has always been interpreted to mean -- that all Trustees other than the Governor are elected by the Board. The process referred to in this report as the Alumni Trustee "nomination " or "selection " process is a process by which nominees for Alumni Trustee seats are identified and presented to the Board. The Board is legally empowered to elect those nominees but it is not required to do so. In fact, as a matter of its authority under the Charter, the Board may elect another nominee if it determines in the exercise of its judgment that doing so would be in the best interests of the College. The Governance Report.

Instead of defending your claims, you pick at some of my ancillary critiques of your argument. Fine.

"The proportion [of finance leaders on the board] can be expected to shrink...." Why would you even care about this assertion? It is pointless, just as is your claim that the proportion of finance leaders is somehow important. That assertion is substantiated by the fact that the proportion has dropped since the last election, which I stated, and by the fact that the report quoted above expresses the goal of bringing in more people with graduate degrees and possibly non-alumni.

"Zywicki's loss could undermine the will of those alumni who secretly funded his campaign." This is a reasonable speculation.

"Zywicki did not lose the vote because he spoke his own mind in the boardroom." True, we cannot know why each individual voted against him, but that undermines your claim that he was removed from office.

"His statement about the purpose of the Trustee's Oath was false." This is obvious and subject to a reasonable assumption, but since neither of us was in the meeting when the oath was adopted you can't expect much evidence either way. Again, this was a critique of a proposition, not a novel proposition in itself, and I am not going to refrain from pointing out Rodgers's misstatements because they involve private meetings.

"Zywicki has made it clear that he is an enemy of the institution." This I supported with the reference to the amicus brief he filed in support of a lawsuit against the institution.

If Rodgers, who is the CEO of semiconductor company, and sits on the boards of other high-technology companies, is not in the general field of "finance," then why would an advertising executive be?

Roy M. Poses MD said...

Anonymous 2nd -

You have repeated, again and again, two rather technical points about the governance of Dartmouth, and especially about the contrast between alumni and charter trustees. The first point seems to be that even alumni trustee candidates who got sufficient votes to win what to all other observers would appear to be an election must be approved by the existing board before becoming members of that board. Thus you contend that such candidates are elected by the board, not by the alumni, even if they are presented to the board after an alumni election. You have now provided evidence in support of this contention, for which I thank you. As far as I can tell, the existing board has not chosen to reject any candidate presented after an alumni election. So, simplistically, it does seem that the alumni board members were elected by alumni. If you would prefer to say that they were selected by an alumni election, and seated only with the approval of the existing board, that is fine with me.

The second point is that the alumni trustees never made up 50% of all trustees, even though they used to be equally numerous as the charter trustees. The reason that they did not make up half of the board is that the board also traditionally included two ex-officio members, the president of the university, and the governor of the state.

After conceding these points to the extent I just did above, however, it is still true that the alumni used to have elections to select alumni trustees who were just as numerous as the charter trustees, but now, after changes made by the board majority, there are more charter trustees than alumni trustees.

Please note that again, none of this really relevant to my conclusions in the post above. In particular, increasing the number of charter trustees without increasing the number of alumni trustees makes the board less representative and less accountable, regardless of whether alumni trustees can be seated without the approval of the full board.

Your comments above indicate confusion between loyalty to Dartmouth College, and loyalty to the current leadership of Dartmouth College. Prof Zywicki may have vigorously disagreed with the majority of the board of trustees. This would make him an enemy of the institution only if one believes in the divine right and infallibility of majorities of boards of trustees. Is that what you are proposing? If the board, however, is simply a group of fallible humans, then it is not impossible that some of their actions and words may not be good for the institution. It may be possible to disagree with them while supporting the institution. In that case, Prof Zywicki’s disagreement with the board majority may indicate loyalty to rather than enmity for the institution.

Finally, you have claimed repeatedly that all your arguments are supported by facts. However, you ended by mixing up some straightforward facts. Semiconductor manufacturing companies are not finance companies. Neither are advertising companies. I suspect, however, that your allusion to the latter has to do with the former, repeat former occupation of one charter trustee, Karen C Francis. However, as described in her official board biography (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~trustees/biographies/francis.html ), Ms Francis is no longer with an advertising company. Instead, “currently Ms. Francis is CEO of KCF Ventures, consulting to private equity, luxury real estate, and technology companies.” Private equity firms are in the field of finance. Consulting primarily to private equity is at least highly related to finance, and much more so than running a semiconductor company.