At USC’s Marshall School, An Enraged Faculty Tries To Understand Their Dean’s Ouster - Poets&Quants

Faculty first heard of Dean Jim Ellis’ terminating at Hoffman Hall at Marshall

When the senior faculty of the Marshall School of Business were unexpectedly summoned to a Nov. 30th meeting in Hoffman Hall on the University of Southern California’s campus, they were not told why they were being gathered on a Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. The email from Nandini Rajagopalan, vice chair for faculty and academic affairs, acknowledged the unusual nature of the request. “We realize this is very short notice but it is crucial we brief you as soon as possible,” she wrote in an email a day earlier. “We want to share a recent development with significant implications for Marshall.”

And then, the 40 to 50 faculty members who shuffled into the meeting discovered to their dismay that the rumors swirling around the school turned out to be true. Jim Ellis, their highly popular 71-year-old dean in his third consecutive five-year term, had been sacked by Interim President Wanda Austin. The crestfallen dean told the faculty that he would be leaving at the end of the academic year, his term cut short by three years because of the termination. Ellis explained that he was unsure why he was being dismissed because he had done nothing inappropriate.

The dean said he was told there were a significant number of complaints filed with the university’s Office of Equity and Diversity (OED) during his deanship, but that only eight or nine were forwarded to him. Ellis made clear that none of the OED complaints were lodged against him, but rather faculty and students at Marshall and told the professors that he had handled them appropriately.

‘WE WERE DUMBFOUNDED. WHY DIDN’T THE UNIVERSITY SOLICIT OUR INPUT?’

Professor Choong W. Park

“People felt absolutely shocked,” says Choong W. Park, who has been a professor of marketing at Marshall for 21 years. “We just looked at each other and said, ‘What?’ We were dumbfounded. Why didn’t the university somehow solicit our own input when they made this decision? It was really surprising. The second emotion was puzzlement to say the least. And the third was disappointment and anger.”

Dean Ellis seemed hurt but dignified in trying to explain what happened to him, remembers Park and several other professors at the meeting. “He just relayed the facts, and he was very impartial,” remembers Park, who has nothing but high praise for the dean. “There was no attempt from his part to seek any help or support from us. He is a very fair minded, wonderful human being.”

As Ellis spoke, a sense of disbelief hung over the room. “Jim seemed genuinely confused,” recalls Peter Cardon, a Marshall professor and academic director for the MBA for professionals and managers. “The moment I sensed real sadness is when he said something to the effect that he wanted to be around for our 100th year anniversary in 2020. I’ve got to say if everything he said wasn’t true, you have to give that guy an Oscar. He looked absolutely perplexed. My perception of the meeting was that Jim was almost resigned to his fate. I don’t think he thought there was much he could do about it.”

A FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY: PETITIONS, PROTESTS, LETTERS, LOBBYING

In the four weeks that have followed, however, Marshall’s most loyal alumni have rallied to the dean’s support as the school’s faculty is painfully moving through all of the predictable stages of grief. First, there was utter and total shock. Then, the inevitable anger, along with trying to come to grips with what is widely viewed as an unfair and unwarranted decision by the university.

The new Interim President and Provost Michael Quick have been heavily criticized for their lack of transparency and failure to consult with faculty. Students have marched on campus in protest. The faculty, returning to school today for the start of the spring semester, are stunned and enraged. Many donors are cancelling or rethinking tens of millions of dollars of pledges to the school. And several board trustees are reportedly seeking to revisit the decision.

Nearly 3,500 people have signed a petition in support of Ellis, and hundreds more have sent letters, emails and phone calls to the university’s board of trustees opposing the university’s decision. Austin has not publicly disclosed the reason for the termination, only that the decision was made “after careful deliberation,” according to an email sent to alumni. “Because this is a personnel matter, we are limited in what we can share about this decision,” she added.

‘HOW IS THIS HAPPENING WHEN HE HAS DONE EVERYTHING RIGHT?’

Professor Julia Plotts

However, unnamed university sources, in spinning the story to the Los Angeles Times, suggested that Ellis was ousted because he had allegedly mishandled gender and racial bias complaints at the school. Rick Caruso, chairman of the board of trustees, has been quoted in the newspaper saying that Ellis’ firing “is part of where the university is today in terms of acknowledging a proper culture that needs to be embraced and practiced on campus.”

Marshall faculty take strong issue with any suggestion that the school’s culture is toxic. “How is this happening when he has done everything right?,” asks Julia Plotts, an associate professor of finance and business economics. “We are at the top of our game in terms of the number of women of students and on the leadership staff. It’s frustrating. They say they want to fix the culture, but there is nothing wrong with the culture.”

Several professors, in fact, insist that the culture of the school under Ellis is uplifting and positive. “It is a culture of excellence, growth and inclusion, of supporting people,” says Patrick Henry, who teaches in the entrepreneurship program. “Jim Ellis cares about the school. He takes pride in what Marshall has done. Jim supports more students and alumni in important ways than any dean in America. The one thing about the school is that we help each other. There really is a Trojan family here, and Marshall is the heartbeat of it. We’ve unnecessarily damaged a great business school and that damage will linger on.”

FACULTY ANGERED BY THE DECISION BUT ALSO HOW IT WAS MADE

Faculty members are  still struggling to understand what exactly led to the action. So is Dean Ellis who was never allowed to see a report commissioned by Provost Michael Quick on racial and gender bias complaints during Ellis’ deanship at Marshall. But some trustees who have viewed the report by the law firm of Cooley LLC say that it did not recommend the ouster of the dean nor did it find a pervasive culture of discrimination or harassment at Marshall.

Many of the school’s most senior professors are not only angry about the decision but also how it was made. They say there was no input from the faculty, who would normally be consulted on everything from a dean’s hiring to his reappointment, and certainly no due process afforded Dean Ellis who is highly admired by faculty, staff, students and alumni. When Marshall faculty asked the president for a meeting, she never responded directly to the request and has yet to meet the faculty over the controversy..

“Deans serve at the pleasure of the president so theoretically there is no reason for the president to consult the faculty prior to asking the dean to step down,” says one senior female professor who declined to be quoted by name. “In this instance, however, the abruptness with which it was done, the lack of a compelling justification, and frankly the fact that Jim is arguably the most successful and beloved dean we have had suggests that there should have been more due diligence.

USC’s Marshall School of Business is the first major U.S. school to reach gender parity in its full-time MBA program

‘SHOCKED AND APPALLED BY THE ENTIRE PROCESS’

“If the case against him was that there is a culture of bias, exclusion and discrimination, that is a very serious allegation against the entire school,” the professor adds. “It crushes the core values we all hold dear. So if a decision was going to be based on that, she should have done more diligence and reached out to faculty and staff to find out what we think. That is why I am shocked and appalled by the entire process. The process was really non-transparent and did not inspire confidence. There was no reason for anyone to expect he would not be able to complete his third term.”

That view is universally shared among the faculty. “If you could have asked me about any inconceivable thing that could have happened that would have been right up there with an alien invasion or Trump being impeached,” says Greg Autry, a professor who teaches entrepreneurship at Marshall. “I couldn’t believe he would personally do anything wrong and it is obvious he didn’t. There can’t be any victims. The secret and bizzare way they handled the process implies that something else is going on.”

Many faculty are unwilling to speak publicly because they fear retaliation from Provost Quick who is regarded by some as a petty bureaucrat who bears at least some of the blame for the multiple scandals at USC that claimed his boss, President C.L. Max Nikias. Those headline-producing embarrassments included the administration’s handling of a campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing patients. “My general nature is to be fearless and speak my mind,” confides one of the school’s female professors. “But I am genuinely afraid of what could happen to me given the environment at USC right now.”

FACULTY SPECULATION IS THAT ELLIS WAS FIRED TO DIVERT ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE PROVOST

USC Interim President Wanda Austin

Speculation is rife about the motivation for the decision. Several professors believe that President Austin was led astray by Quick who was trying to divert attention from himself. If Austin wanted to clean house at USC, they believe, she should have fired the provost who as chief operating officer of the university was as responsible for USC’s scandals as its president. It did not go unnoticed when earlier this summer, a former vice dean of USC’s medical school testified that he had told Quick of his concern about the well-being of then med school dean, Carmen A. Puliafito.

The vice dean met with Quick about his suspicions after getting reports in early 2016 that Puliafito was taking drugs and partying in hotels with people of “questionable reputation.” He said he told Quick he was shocked that USC did not require Puliafito to seek treatment. USC did not report Puliafito to the medical board, allowing him to remain on the faculty and continue seeing patients for another 16 months. Quick would later say in a statement that the information from the vice dean led him to investigate Puliafito and to end his deanship. But Quick insisted that the vice dean did not share any information with him about drug use.

Among the school’s faculty and staff, the anger directed at Austin, Quick and Caruso runs deep. Many believe all three of them should be fired. “Wanda has zero experience running a university and she didn’t have a great track record before,” says one female official at the school, referring to her time as CEO of a nonprofit which went from a surplus to a loss. “I had dozens of people tell me that Jim should have been the interim president. But for someone who comes in and doesn’t know anything about a university and fires the most respected dean on campus is crazy. A lot of my co-workers don’t want to stay here, and I personally don’t want to stay either.”

THE OFFICE OF EQUITY & DIVERSITY COMPLAINTS

As far as anyone can tell, he university appears to be blaming Ellis for what would appear to be a large number of complaints lodged by either students or faculty with the university’s Office of Equity and Diversity (OED). During his 11 and one-half years as dean, sources say, there have been roughly 70 written complaints against the school’s faculty and staff. The lawyers who authored the Cooley study did not benchmarking of the volume of the complaints, either to other USC schools or major business schools.

The complaints ranged from a female student who called the university hot line after having an argument with a boyfriend to a female teacher who was demoted after a poor performance evaluation and another faculty member who was terminated after failing to meet the terms of his job, says trustee Ming Hsieh, who looked at the full file of OED reports. 

Of the nine complaints that came to the dean’s attention, sources add, Ellis found three to have merit requiring remedial action. Those were dealt with promptly and efficiently by Ellis, according to the dean’s supporters. Ellis decided that five of the complaints were without merit, while one was deemed to be inconclusive.

THE OED IS VIEWED AS SECRETIVE, NON-RESPONSIVE & NOT ACCOUNTABLE TO ANYONE

Some faculty, however, view the university’s OED office as a secretive and non-responsive, unaccountable to anyone. “Professors generally think it’s a place where students lodge complaints when they don’t receive good grades,” adds one professor who has been at the school for nearly eight years. “Everyone has personal experiences or knows someone with personal experiences that are negative.”

The professor recounts an example in which one of his colleagues,  an Indian-American woman, caught a student, a woman of color, in plagiarism. “It was clearly major plagiarism,” he says. “My department chair reviewed the case and agreed. The student lodged a discrimination complaint through OED. The case dragged on for nearly a year, and my colleague received all types of messages from OED with frightening statements such as, ‘If there is merit in the the case, you may need to received sensitivity training or may even be terminated.’

“In the end, the case was deemed without merit, but it created significant stress for my colleague. With Jim being dismissed, one reason people are so common to say variations of the statement ‘If they can do this to Jim, they can do it to anyone’ is they don’t trust the OED.”

‘THE CULTURE AT MARSHALL IS SOMETHING WORTH PROTECTING’

Cardon adds that it is “nerve racking for many” to be outspoken. “But I genuinely believe that the culture at Marshall is something worth protecting,” he says. “I believe we’re on a positive path, and I believe Dean Ellis is the solution not the problem. I’m really nervous that the dismissal of Dean Ellis–especially in this way–will hurt us tremendously. People will certainly feel less safe saying what they really think. I also see what looks like a huge injustice to a man who has given so much to Marshall. Jim is a man of integrity, and I hate to see his reputation suffer.”

The hastily called meeting on Nov. 30th occurred only three days after Ellis was told he was being terminated in a terse ten-minute meeting with President Austin and the university’s general counsel, Carol Mauch Amir. During the session, Ellis was given written notice that he was being terminated as dean, effective June 30th of next year, and would be allowed to remain on the faculty. Austin told the dean that the university would pay out his salary for the remaining three years of his term.

After the dean’s brief comments to faculty, Vice Dean Nandini Rajagopalan took over the meeting. “For an hour,” recalls Cardon, “everyone talked about the issues of faculty governance and due process. The immediate decision was that the faculty council should request a meeting with the president and the provost. We wanted to understand what was happening.”

‘INSTEAD OF ENGAGING WITH THE FACULTY, THE PRESIDENT TALKED TO THE LA TIMES’

USC Provost Michael Quick

Within two hours of the meeting, the faculty sent a email to the president. “We wanted to understand the reasoning behind the decision and asked the president not to make any public announcement,” says Cardon. “Not only did she ignore the email. She then sent an announcement out. And instead of engaging with the faculty, she talked to the Los Angeles Times.”

President Austin, moreover, never acknowledged the email or responded to it, according to several Marshall faculty. “As a matter of courtesy we wanted to know more about why he was dismissed especially because there was the insinuation that it had to do with diversity and inclusive issues,” adds Cardon. “People have seen him as an advocate for those issues. I bet 20% of every speech he has given in the past five years is about diversity.”

Provost Quick would ultimately agree to a meeting on Dec. 3. In anticipation of that session, the school’s Faculty Council dispatched an email survey to the school’s 296 active full- and part-time professors to get an overall sense of the faculty’s perspective. More than 200 responded in less than two days. The survey found that many faculty feel “concerned,” “shocked,” “troubled,” “disturbed,” “fearful,” “dismayed,” “upset,” and “outraged” about the process and outcome. Many perceived a lack of due process and transparency and support Ellis as fair, unbiased, and supportive of a positive culture. The mean scores for the four quantitative measures used to solicit perspectives regarding faculty desire for more input, faculty interest in more information, and faculty assessment of the dean’s performance ranged between 4.5 and 4.8 out of 5.0.

Students’ Bridge at USC Marshall

PROVOST QUICK VIEWED THE SITUATION LEADING TO THE DECISION AS ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ 

They conveyed those results in their Dec. 3rd meeting with Provost Quick who told the group that the president was not available to meet with us because she was traveling. Quick told the council that he viewed the situation as “extraordinary” and not indicative of the administration’s longer term commitment to transparency and shared governance. But he declined to share any details because, Quick claimed, “private personnel matters drove the decision.”

The university’s Academic Senate would unanimously pass on Dec. 10th a resolution declaring its agreement “with the Marshall School faculty that the decision concerning Dean Ellis lacked shared governance and transparency as to the process.”

“We are genuinely perplexed,” says Cardon. “Most people assume it’s not something egregious because Jim would have dismissed immediately and not allowed to stay for six months. It’s very concerning. We are in an environment where some of the recent scandals make people expect openness more than ever before. When people see something that is so closed and opaque, it makes them more distrustful.”

At a holiday party, faculty and staff waned their pictures taken with Dean Jim Ellis

‘EVERYONE WAS GOING UP AND HUGGING THE DEAN AND CRYING’

On Dec. 15, just after the university closed for winter recess two days earlier, some 200 faculty and staff showed up for an already scheduled holiday party at Marshall. “When Jim came to the podium, he could not stop the people from giving him an ovation,” recalls Henry. “These were people who were deeply hurt by this decision.”

Julia Plotts, a professor who had been on the faculty committee for Ellis’ reappointment which she called a “slam dunk,” was astounded by the reception the dean received. “It was unbelievable, the number of people who showed up,” says Plotts. “We usually have okay attendance for something a party. This was packed. He received three standing ovations. Everyone was going up and hugging him and crying. He gave a very inspiring motivational speech. You can tell he loves Marshall and USC and doesn’t quite know what is going on. You’ve got to give him credit. He is still being a leader.”

Autry, a serial entrepreneur before coming to Marshall to teach in 2013, says that “People of all colors and genders were cheering for that man for five minutes. It was a wholehearted embrace of him. That doesn’t happen in a lot of organizations.”

‘JIM IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE EXCELLENCE OF OUR ACADEMIC MISSION’

USC Marshall Dean James G. Ellis

The depth of the faculty’s reaction has even surprised some of the most skeptical professors. “At every university, faculty are really loyal to the academic mission,” explains one senior female professor. “I love him and I respect him enormously, but our first and final loyalty is to our scholarship, our research and our students. Loyalty to any dean is secondary. The reason there is such strong loyalty to Jim is because he identified with the excellence of our academic mission. Scholarship is recognized and rewarded. People are given room for experimentation. The loyalty extends to Jim because of his leadership. The success of Marshall is very closely identified with him. If he had not done what he did, faculty would not be up in arms and willing to fight for him.”

Ellis, faculty and staff say, has made many of them feel part of a family at Marshall. “I know his family,” says professor Plotts. “I’ve taught his son. Everyone loves him and this is going to be a big blow to us. There are a lot of alums now who are ashamed to be Trojans. There is a term we use inside Marshall and it’s called FOJ (Friend of Jim). If you get an email from a friend of Jim’s, you are going to act because he will do whatever he can to help others.“

Business school deans, of course, come and go. Few last as long as Ellis at Marshall, and fewer still have had his kind of impact on an institution or its people. But the ensuing controversy over the President’s decision has many professors deeply worried about the future of the school. “We all feel a sense of uncertainty,” says one female professor. “Faculty are beginning to ask the question, ’Is this a place we want to spend the rest of our careers’? It is distracting. It angers me because the price that will be paid by Marshall is enormous. Over the years we have recruited and retained some of the best faculty in the world.”

Sighs Professor Park, “It’s not clear to me whether we can bring back the momentum we used to have and that really breaks my heart.”

‘IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT? COME CLEAN?’

Cardon believes the “worst case scenario is that people will see that no one listened to anyone in this situation which has amounted to thousands of people and no one ever wants to speak out again. We were in such a positive trajectory. So many of our programs are doing better. Rankings are one reflection of that. This certainly takes away from that positive momentum. I have had several classes with MBA students and they are concerned that this will detract from our public reputation. There is concern about stability in leadership. “

Some of the school’s professors, still struggling to understand the decision, have gently confronted the dean, who has consistently declined to be interviewed for this or any other story. They’ve pointedly asked him if there is something they don’t know about that could justify the president’s decision. They’ve asked him about his previous performance reviews. They’ve questioned him about what he knows about the bias complaints.

“Many of us asked him several times,” says one female professor, ‘Is there anything else we should know about? Come clean. Tell us what is going on?” He said, ‘I don’t know what is going on. There is nothing out there.’ He was never told there were problems,” says one professor. “The only feedback he got in his last review was to focus on the rankings. If there was this negative culture of bias at Marshall, why was the dean not given any feedback for 12 years before he was fired? That tells me the provost has either no clue about what is going on or he knew exactly what he was doing and did it.”

How it will end is anyone’s guess. Ellis’ supporters say he would agree to make the Cooley report public for all to see because he vehemently believes he has done nothing wrong. “(Board Chair) Rick Caruso has made it pretty clear that he and Austin have dug a hole they can’t get out of,” says Professor Autry. ” There are only two outcomes: one is the present outcome or they (Caruso and President Austin) leave. She failed to do her reseatch on this gentlemen and made a decision prematurely and put herself in a very unfortunate hole.” 

DON’T MISS: DEAN’S DISMISSAL MAY COST USC UP TO $40 MILLION or COMMENTARY: HOW USC’S PRESIDENT AND BOARD CHAIR FLUNKED THEIR FIRST LEADERSHIP TEST

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