Faculty Concern Expressed About Limited Discipline for UC-Berkeley Administrator

Byuclafaculty

An earlier post on this blog noted that a UC-Berkeley administrator who granted large pay increases to a boyfriend/subordinate seemed to have received slap-on-the-wrist discipline for the action when it came to light.

The drama is apparently continuing:
A growing chorus of voices is calling for the firing of a UC Berkeley administrator who helped triple her secret sex partner’s pay over five years. Calling Diane Leite’s punishment “an affront” to the university, several UC Berkeley professors have asked the school’s provost to investigate how the matter was handled. They are aghast that, instead of firing her, the university reassigned Leite from her assistant vice chancellor post and will still pay her $175,000 a year. “It’s an outrage,” said engineering professor Samer Madanat, one of at least 13 professors who signed the letter to Provost George Breslauer. “That’s all I can say.” In addition to the letter from faculty members, about 150 people by Thursday afternoon had signed an online petition calling for Leite and her boyfriend, Jonathan Caniezo, to be fired. Although Leite’s boss, Vice Chancellor Graham Fleming, has defended his handling of Leite’s punishment, the university said Thursday that the matter was not over…
Full article at http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_20183348/uc-berkeley-professors-condemn-light-punishment-administrator

The faculty letter can be read at
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_20182013/document-uc-facultys-complaint-letter-provost

Or – to summarize its contents:

Similar Posts

  • | |

    USC Has a Bad Patch

    Byuclafaculty

    We posted yesterday about the news from UC-Berkeley that many earthquake-prone buildings are located in southern California – including in Westwood.  The Westwood-Century City Patch, in picking up the story from the LA Times, blamed USC instead of UC-B, at least in the headline.  See above.  Probably just as well.  Who wants to be the bearer of bad tidings?.

  • |

    UC-Berkeley Releases Its Earthquake Survey to the LA Times

    Byuclafaculty

    We have followed the LA Times‘ story of the concern about certain concrete buildings in the southern California area which might be at risk in a major earthquake.  The Times identified some buildings in an earlier story but noted that UC-Berkeley had a survey list of buildings.  Berkeley was reluctant to provide the list because its intent was to get an estimate of the number of such buildings based on public records rather than evaluate each building directly.  It has now provided the Times with the list, along with a legal disclaimer.  The Times now has an interactive map on…

  • | |

    Quake Response

    Byuclafaculty

    We noted in a prior post there would be increased attention to earthquake risks in LA around the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 27, 1994 Northridge quake.  One item that began to develop was an LA Times article indicating that various buildings were at risk in the LA area, even though they were thought safe when constructed.  One of the buildings in Westwood is owned by UCLA, which asserted that it had been upgraded.  It was also reported that a team of researchers at Berkeley had compiled a list of such buildings, but was not making the list available due…

  • | |

    Is the ball still in their court or has the train left the station?

    Byuclafaculty

    Hey! Let’s rebuild the old stadium! Sorry to mix metaphors.  But Inside Higher Ed today has a long story on Berkeley athletics which have recently been in the news for low graduation rates and problems in funding a stadium upgrade.  A white paper from the Berkeley Center for the Study of Higher Education suggests that the program is running as an autonomous and relatively uncontrolled business operation. It is written by a former vice chancellor – who can now tell all -and a Berkeley grad student. See http://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROPS.CSHE_.12.13.Cummins%26Hextrum.CalAthletics.1.6.2014.pdf and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/08/highlighting-berkeley-paper-explores-academic-damage-expanding-independent-athletics The issue is whether control can be retaken or whether…

  • | | | | | | | |

    Yesterday’s news

    Byuclafaculty

    Christmas day tends to be a slow news day.  However, for those who didn’t see it, the LA Times carried a front page story about UC’s online offerings which allow cross-campus credits.  You can find the article at: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-uc-online-20131222,0,6798231.story Blog readers will be familiar with these offerings.  We noted in a prior post that UCLA seems to be a taker rather than a giver in this endeavor.  That is, other campuses’ online courses are available to UCLA students.  But UCLA is not offering courses to the other campuses.  Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, and Riverside seem to be the offerers.   Now, how…

  • UC Berkeley prof says its future is as a ‘finishing school for the superrich of Asia’

    Byuclafaculty

    The headline for this posting is a direct quote from a headline to an article in the San Francisco Business Times which you can find at www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2013/12/16/uc-berkeley-finishing-school-asia-rich.html The (economics) professor in question is Brad DeLong.  For your information, below is the portion of his post on the Berkeley Blog that deals with the subject of that headline: …(Partially) a Finishing School for the Superrich of Asia The first priority of the chancellor is to successfully execute a strategy to keep Berkeley great–to reinforce the reasons that it is worthwhile keeping a university like Berkeley around at all.The days of Clark Kerr…