Dobranski Misrepresents ABA?
Tue, Sep11, 2007 - Category: School of
Law
Ave Maria School of Law Dean Bernard Dobranski has
been fishing for headlines the past two weeks. And,
boy, did it backfire.
On August 30, this puff piece was released by Monaghan neocon apologist Brent Bozell [1,2] on his "news" website - "Ave Maria School Weathers Critics, Moves Forward, Says Dean". The (self) interview included softballs like:
Q - "Tom Monaghan earned about $1 billion when he sold Domino's Pizza, and a large chunk of that went into the Ave Maria Foundation. Is it fair to say that the Ave Maria School of Law and all it provides - jobs for faculty and administration, scholarships for students, and a top-notch law education - would not exist were it not for Tom Monaghan?"
A - (Dobranski excerpt) "Oh, absolutely - first of all, it was his idea. It was his vision."
The notion that AMSL was Tom Monaghan's "idea" and "vision" contradicts Dobranski's own version of the founding of AMSL from Fall 2004 (University of Toledo Law Review, 36 U. Tol. L. Rev. 55): "In our first year, among those on the faculty were four of the original five founding faculty who suggested the creation of a new Catholic law school to Mr. Monaghan in 1998" and "Mr. Monaghan's interest in starting a law school at this time had been stimulated by a group of five faculty members from the University of Detroit Law School.."
In the puff piece, Dobranski also attempted to make the point that ABA accreditation standards support the current exclusion of faculty from institutional decision-making processes. He conveniently failed to cite the ABA Standard that says "Except in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty." [Recall that the AMSL faculty voted no-confidence in Dobranski's leadership.] The central issue is NOT whether the faculty should have been given a larger say in the Board's decision to move to Florida. The central issue is that one person, Tom Monaghan, used financial coercion to make the Board impotent, requiring that duty to his personal interests be placed above those of institutional interests; as such, the Board was never in an autonomous position to determine the institution's destiny. [see also Fumare]
The Bozell article was only part of the Dean's campaign for headlines. In mid-August, he started creating an air that all is well at AMSL with the exception of a few bitter power-grabbing faculty who simply don't want to move [1,2]. Later, on August 24, Dobranski sent this email to the AMSL community. In Dobranski's typical lawyerly fashion, he used carefully chosen words to paint the image of an ABA that is close to dropping its investigation of the school's sub-standard administration.. an ABA that only remains interested in a small technicality involving "undisclosed" faculty complainers. That email was later supported in public by Dobranski's Bozell article:
Q - "So, the ABA has essentially given you a fairly clean bill of health?"
A - [Dobranski] "Yes, there's one item - and when you throw enough mud, something likely will stick. And what stuck was this one thing about faculty leaving. I'm very confident we'll be able to respond to this one concern. We will have no trouble convincing them that we are able to recruit new faculty - that's not a difficulty. But what's very interesting is that there's nothing about governance, shared responsibility, or academic freedom, which were the thrust of the complaints."
No problemo? On Friday September 7, the Dean released a terse email to the AMSL community "in the interest of clarifying my August 24, 2007 statement regarding the ABA inquiry". Dobranski cut/pasted the verbatim request from the ABA to AMSL for "all relevant information necessary to demonstrate compliance" with an ABA Standard involving faculty.
Why would Ave Maria - an organization that has never felt obligated to inform its constituents of administrative matters - release such a verbatim "clarification" using quotes from the ABA? Did the ABA tell Dobranski to clear-up an air of misrepresentation?
Dobranski really stepped in it; his aforementioned "clarification" was a red flag to journalists (including AW). A lead news article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education reads "Ave Maria School of Law May Face Threat to Accreditation". Yesterday's Wall Street Journal Law Blog reads "More Trouble for Ave Maria School of Law". The story was also picked-up by Michigan Daily and Mirror of Justice.
At minimum, Dobranski's September 7 "clarifying" shows that his statements - and the conclusions that he extrapolates from the statements of others like the ABA - cannot be trusted. Likewise, we should reconsider Dobranski's ability to accurately draw conclusions from statements that he read in the Safranek and Fr. William Thomas incidents.
h/t Fumare
On August 30, this puff piece was released by Monaghan neocon apologist Brent Bozell [1,2] on his "news" website - "Ave Maria School Weathers Critics, Moves Forward, Says Dean". The (self) interview included softballs like:
Q - "Tom Monaghan earned about $1 billion when he sold Domino's Pizza, and a large chunk of that went into the Ave Maria Foundation. Is it fair to say that the Ave Maria School of Law and all it provides - jobs for faculty and administration, scholarships for students, and a top-notch law education - would not exist were it not for Tom Monaghan?"
A - (Dobranski excerpt) "Oh, absolutely - first of all, it was his idea. It was his vision."
The notion that AMSL was Tom Monaghan's "idea" and "vision" contradicts Dobranski's own version of the founding of AMSL from Fall 2004 (University of Toledo Law Review, 36 U. Tol. L. Rev. 55): "In our first year, among those on the faculty were four of the original five founding faculty who suggested the creation of a new Catholic law school to Mr. Monaghan in 1998" and "Mr. Monaghan's interest in starting a law school at this time had been stimulated by a group of five faculty members from the University of Detroit Law School.."
In the puff piece, Dobranski also attempted to make the point that ABA accreditation standards support the current exclusion of faculty from institutional decision-making processes. He conveniently failed to cite the ABA Standard that says "Except in circumstances demonstrating good cause, a dean should not be appointed or reappointed to a new term over the stated objection of a substantial majority of the faculty." [Recall that the AMSL faculty voted no-confidence in Dobranski's leadership.] The central issue is NOT whether the faculty should have been given a larger say in the Board's decision to move to Florida. The central issue is that one person, Tom Monaghan, used financial coercion to make the Board impotent, requiring that duty to his personal interests be placed above those of institutional interests; as such, the Board was never in an autonomous position to determine the institution's destiny. [see also Fumare]
The Bozell article was only part of the Dean's campaign for headlines. In mid-August, he started creating an air that all is well at AMSL with the exception of a few bitter power-grabbing faculty who simply don't want to move [1,2]. Later, on August 24, Dobranski sent this email to the AMSL community. In Dobranski's typical lawyerly fashion, he used carefully chosen words to paint the image of an ABA that is close to dropping its investigation of the school's sub-standard administration.. an ABA that only remains interested in a small technicality involving "undisclosed" faculty complainers. That email was later supported in public by Dobranski's Bozell article:
Q - "So, the ABA has essentially given you a fairly clean bill of health?"
A - [Dobranski] "Yes, there's one item - and when you throw enough mud, something likely will stick. And what stuck was this one thing about faculty leaving. I'm very confident we'll be able to respond to this one concern. We will have no trouble convincing them that we are able to recruit new faculty - that's not a difficulty. But what's very interesting is that there's nothing about governance, shared responsibility, or academic freedom, which were the thrust of the complaints."
No problemo? On Friday September 7, the Dean released a terse email to the AMSL community "in the interest of clarifying my August 24, 2007 statement regarding the ABA inquiry". Dobranski cut/pasted the verbatim request from the ABA to AMSL for "all relevant information necessary to demonstrate compliance" with an ABA Standard involving faculty.
Why would Ave Maria - an organization that has never felt obligated to inform its constituents of administrative matters - release such a verbatim "clarification" using quotes from the ABA? Did the ABA tell Dobranski to clear-up an air of misrepresentation?
Dobranski really stepped in it; his aforementioned "clarification" was a red flag to journalists (including AW). A lead news article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education reads "Ave Maria School of Law May Face Threat to Accreditation". Yesterday's Wall Street Journal Law Blog reads "More Trouble for Ave Maria School of Law". The story was also picked-up by Michigan Daily and Mirror of Justice.
At minimum, Dobranski's September 7 "clarifying" shows that his statements - and the conclusions that he extrapolates from the statements of others like the ABA - cannot be trusted. Likewise, we should reconsider Dobranski's ability to accurately draw conclusions from statements that he read in the Safranek and Fr. William Thomas incidents.
h/t Fumare