Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”
The result was widespread pandemonium and criticism across the Internet. In a hyper-connected age, the episode raises some good points.
(Note that I am not talking about the new issue regarding the Prius braking system; this particular episode revolved around the accelerator issues for other vehicles.)
Certainly, it’s reasonable advice to tell someone to quit driving their car, too, but did the head of transportation for the nation have to say that? Toyota has a valid argument that this unfairly kicks them while they are already down. Why not, they might respond, just tell folks to go to the dealer, and omit the whole get-it-off-the-road part? In fact, they responded Toyota responded with a straightforward “they are too safe.”
And, LaHood quickly retracted his statement and said it was an “obvious misstatement.” But I think he may be overreacting to his initial overreaction. LaHood faced an honest dilemma: what to say? There is no perfect answer. My colleague Rush Kidder would point out that he faced a right-vs.right ethical dilemma.
On the one hand, LaHood needs to take a measured stance, not provoke pandemonium, and weigh his words carefully. But, on the other hand, as the chief transportation safety officer of the country, LaHood has an equally strong obligation to place safety first and if that means a company is upset then so be it.
The fact that one clause in one sentence bounced around the Internet so quickly adds intensity to the fundamental dilemma that any leader faces when faced with the need to advise citizens on what to do in difficult times.
The Dilemma Of Evaluation
On a smaller scale, yet no less intense sometimes, foundation and nonprofit leaders face similar dilemmas. We live and work in a world where evaluation and impact measurements are the rage. Grant seekers are under pressure to show potential funders that their programs actually do what is hoped and that they have a decent bang for the buck.
Funders, at the same time, are under pressure from their boards and from economic forces to ensure that they are spending their money wisely.
What this means is that the independent sector has become evaluation-happy. And, this places philanthropic leaders at a crossroads. They are learning a great deal about what works — and what does not work. The question is: What to do with negative reports?
On the one hand, it’s important to share information about effectiveness so that people don’t waste their time and money. And, certainly in the case of absolute failures that’s a no-brainer. But most evaluations are more nuanced and it is not entirely clear if an initiative absolutely failed or whether it just didn’t work as well as it could have.
Given that, and on the other hand, what right does a foundation leader have to spread around such ambiguous information, when such evaluations might dissuade other funders from donating and so hurt the organization in question? So there is a strong moral argument behind not sharing evaluation information. But this leaves possibly ineffective initiatives potentially running indefinitely. Because new funders need to start at square one with their own studies.
Resistance to evaluation is as natural an urge as any — who wants to examine their own possible failures? But there is also the broader question about what use is made of evaluation data. There is no simple answer to this, and I am not about to offer one here.
I will suggest that one thing that is needed is for individual leaders to be more willing to face their own fears. It is not a calamity if a charitable effort is not very effective.
Once, some time ago, I was asked to perform a self-evaluation on a fairly large initiative. The results of the study would, in part, determine if our grant would be renewed. It turned out that the evidence suggested our hard work was tilting against too strong a headwind. It’s effectiveness was questionable, especially on the expansive level we were considering.
My report was met with consternation from my organization as well as from our funder. It threw a monkey wrench into things. We recalibrated and ended up doing something different (and arguably more effective, though that too had ambiguous results). Not the end of the world. But — in the moment — all of us involved had a great deal of fear. Our reputations, our livelihoods, our organizations were at stake.
Still, expressing honesty takes a culture that supports it. While easily said, this can be a hard thing in practice.
Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the torching of dozens of little homes as flocks of extras flee, wailing into the night.
A while back, in mid-September 2008, many in the media observed the slow collapse of the financial networks in terms of “shoe-dropping.” “When will the other shoe drop?” At that point, being overly reactionary to the circumstances rising up around our ankles seemed to be ill-conceived. Now, with so many institutions in the midst of being propped up, set to receive another round of money, the tax payer still does not know, really, what happened to the first round. Other folks who have traditionally received government funds, like non-profits, can testify that government money usually comes with reporting so complicated that it requires a staff just to manage and track the data the receipt of funds requires.
"Alchemy - The Promised Cotton Candy" by Flickr user sflovestory
In this story, the American taxpayer is asked to observe a kind of moral largesse, a selfless humility these past few months. The taxpayer says nothing as his or her hard-earned money is handed out like giant pink puffs of cotton candy to an industry with a 24/7 sweet tooth. Most Americans want to do what is best, to work together, and want to help this new administration, under the direction of President Barack Obama, succeed. The taxpayer has by and large managed this feat even while trying to dog-paddle in the thrashing seas of bad news about the stormy economy. Is this picture changing, though? The high-drama tea bagging by conservatives aside, will centrist and democratic taxpayers continue this stiff-upper lipped silence? Or, are Americans, beginning to find their voice about morality, ethics, and the world of finance? Continue reading The Morality-Free Zone: Wall Street and the New American Dilemma
I used the occasion to make a broader point about being anonymous (which I have a bias against in most cases). But the underlying story — the battle between publius and Whelan — got a lot of blogosphere attention. By the end of the night, Whelan had apologized for disclosing publius’ identity:
I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.
I also got a note from the author of the amusingly-named Bloggasm, who got in touch with both Whelan and publius, (on the phone no less, how groovily old-skool) and filed a useful report here.
Because I enjoy publicizing the activities of my band, The West End, here’s our most popular YouTube video, in which we perform Husker Du’s “Sorry Somehow.” I thought it apt for the moment.
There’s a controversy right now over an exchange between two notable bloggers, each from opposite sides of the liberal/conservative divide.
An author at the “moderate” liberal Obsidian Wings blog who writes under the pseudonym “publius” has long criticized conservative Ed Whelan, who writes at the National Review’s Bench Memos and is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Whelan recently learned through what he terms a “reliable” source the true identity of publius. He asked for confirmation and received a brief email: I am not commenting on my identity. For a variety of private, family, and professional reasons, I write under a pseudonym (like many blogers). If I wanted to publicly disclose my name, I would do so. Thank you.”
It turns out that publius is a pre-tenure law professor at a Texas school. After being exposed, he wrote an article confirming his identity. He had attempted to remain anonymous, he writes, out of concern that blogging might damage him professionally, might upset some conservative people in his family, and might make conservative students who take his classes uncomfortable.
Now the controversy rages: Did Whelan do something wrong in exposing publius?
Most people agree that people who have compelling reasons to remain anonymous ought to have their identities protected. I happen to believe that publius’ reasons are not compelling. It is uncomfortable, but not dangerous that he is now exposed.
I’m not naming him here because I have no reason to do so. But the exchange illustrates an interesting point in digital public life.
I have long been opposed to anonymous blogging, and commenting on other blogs. At the local blog I run called Rockville Central, I’ve tried on occasion to disallow anonymous commenting, but the stream dried up whenever I did that. (In large part, I believe that is because people found it difficult to register.) Our current policy is to make a simple request of commenters: Think about whether you really need to be anonymous to make this comment and, if not, use your real name.
While I am not revealing publius’ name here, I don’t think Whelan did anything wring in revealing the identity of his critic. I likewise don’t think publius did anything wrong in writing under a pseudonym — but I wish he had not.
To write under a pseudonym simply because it is more comfortable diminishes the public value of anonymity, which is to protect those voices that need protection and need to be heard.
The Internet’s provisions of anonymity bring with them formidable powers to blow whistles and fight large powers from small platforms. But being anonymous can also untether writers from accountability — which is a key element in a healthy public square.
A town meeting can be a difficult place, as we argue and disagree. But because I can see your face, and you mine, we keep our remarks within the bounds of civility. Anonymous comments and blog postings remove this built-in control.
As many of my readers know, I write “issue guides” — discussions of difficult public issues designed to elicit small group dialogue. In my work on such guides, sometimes I develop fragments that are useful but just don’t fit into the ultimate publication.
I came across an old passage I wrote that outlines our nation’s difficult relationship with people who are “different.” For reasons of space, it is not going to make it into a publication I am now working on, so I thought I would share it. It’s a good reminder of where we’ve been — and how far we have to go.
An Uncomfortable History
America does not have a good record when it comes to the treatment of ethnic and cultural difference. Slavery of African Americans is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind in reviewing this history. It began as early as 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia, when Africans arrived at the first English settlement in the New World. At that time there was no law yet allowing for the ownership of people as slaves, so they were instead indentured servants. In 1808, importation of slaves was officially banned, but it continued unabated — the slave population in the United States rose to 4 million slaves in the 1860 U.S. Census. Slavery ended officially with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865.
Slavery, of course, is not the only marker along the path of our nation’s poor treatment of different cultures and ethnicities.
Almost from the outset of the colonization of America, killing of the Native American Indians began. An early example is the genocidal Pequot War of 1637. Hostilities lasted in various forms throughout the westward expansion and lasted until at least 1890 when the western frontier was closed. Thousands of people were killed and whole tribes were forced to relocate as America grew. Many argue that, though the wholesale violence may have ended in 1890, the taking of Native American land and water rights, which continued for years, was just as damaging.
The Mexican-American War ended in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which held that Spanish and Mexican land grants were legitimate. But the immigration of anglo settlers brought about, according to historian Richard Vogel, “widespread oppression that sparked mass exile and repatriation. . . . Besieged refugees abandoned their farms and ranches.”
Later in the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrant labor built one of the key drivers of the settlement of the Western United States – the railroad system – but this influx of Chinese people was ended when the Chinese Exclusion Act placed a moratorium on immigration by any ethnic Chinese in 1882. This act was in force until its repeal in 1943 – at which time an annual quota of 105 was put in place. This quota was not lifted until 1965.
Anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews – has also been a part of our nation’s history. In 1915, it was the lynching by prominent area citizens of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia that led to the creation of today’s Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats anti-Semitism.
And, during World War Two, Japanese Americans on the west coast were forced to relocate in 1942. Those who did not make their own way out — approximately 110,000 – were placed in a number of internment camps. Only in 1976 was the order establishing the camps – Executive Order 9066 – rescinded, though the camps themselves were terminated in 1946. This particular episode was viewed as so shameful that the United States made official reparations in 1988 to all who had been relocated or placed in camps.
All these share in common the taking of what may begin as a simple mistrust of difference – and, over time, turning it into a set of policies and attitudes that together work a grave injustice on one or another culture. Certainly, many newcomers to America or people who were otherwise seen as marginal had a difficult time of it. But, in some cases, this poor treatment became more than that and instead became racism.
The national story of race, then, continues. Many point with pride to the significant strides made in the Civil Rights era and to the praiseworthy expansion of opportunity over the last few decades to include more and more Americans. But others say that this issue of ethnicity and culture continues to be difficult for America — that the same trends that have played out over history are at work today.
Today, in the twenty-first century, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, against the backdrop of a citizenry that is on track to become one in which no ethnicity holds a majority, America remains a nation that has difficulty addressing racial and ethnic tensions.
The night of my 21st birthday, so many years ago, I was with friends in the Big City near my college. One of us had borrowed a car to get the group into town. Around 1:30 am, as we were about to go home, it conked out. The handful of us were standing around, wondering what to do, in a daze, while our responsible friend handled the tow and whatnot. It was taking a long time, it seemed to me in my addled state.
I knew what was wrong. “Listen,” I announced emphatically. “The problem is I want to be home, and I am not home. Get me home.” I am told they obliged in some fashion. Eventually, I woke up the next morning in my own bed, with some calls of apology to make.
Reading the wiretap transcripts from dead-duck Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, I recalled that episode. You can see that same ego run riot in his rants about how “f-ing valuable” his ability to appoint a new U.S. senator was and how he wanted more than just “appreciation” in return for it.
I guess lots of us have a little tiny bit of that lurking within us.
Reading over those transcripts, I also realized that over the decades I had been hearing various versions of the same thing from many organizations I have worked with. They were rarely as brazen as Blagojevich has been, but were clear nonetheless. There was the boss who informed me that a particular top-level staffer was the boss’s “personal slave.” There was the boss who walked away from millions of dollars in needed investment over a perceived slight.
No, they weren’t all corrupt and venal. Just . . . driven.
What’s going on here?
I think in order to rise to the top, you’ve got to have a very healthy sense of self worth. It’s a prerequisite; otherwise you’d be happy with some other rank. Most of us are able to tamp down some of the uglier manifestations of this trait.
But sometimes we get into situations where those restraints are short circuited. (Recall my 21st birthday evening, when all restraint had floated away.) I believe that, as one rises and gains power, at some point it’s easy to lose one of the built-in restraints that most of us go through our daily lives with: the disapproval of others.
At some point, the power that people have accumulated forces those around them to, mostly, just tell them what they want to hear and enable them in their pursuits. This can happen in small organizations, large corporations, with celebrities, and in political offices. It does not happen on purpose – I think it is built into how people interact with those who hold power over them.
Regardless, the outcome is sad: When you stop worrying what those close to you will say, it’s a short hop from there to believing that just because I want something, it must be right.
Something to think about, as we climb various ladders of rank.
[UPDATED to fix some grammatical problems and for clarity.]
My friend Christina told me about the One Dollar Diet Project. No, it is not really a diet program. It is a couple (Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard) who decided to spend one month eating on one dollar a day each. About 15% of the world’s population, or 1 billion people, subsists on this amount.
I took a quick glance at the website and quickly became engrossed. I had thought I would find it a bit nutty, a little down-with-the-IMF-protest-y. But it was reasonable. And compelling.
Of course, most popular media didn’t quite know what to make of it when they were doing this. (The couple did their experiment in September.) Inside Edition, for instance, asked: “Is it healthy?” in part because one person lost 14 pounds during the effort.
That, of course, is not the point. People should not have to live on $1 per day — that’s the point.
But, faced with the knowledge of global poverty, what do we do about it? I do work with a foundation that started life as a straightforward research foundation. You know, test tubes and such. Early in the foundation’s existence, they set about to try to eradicate hunger in the world by looking at better ways to grow food. They eventually realized that creating food is actually not the main problem. Getting the food where people are hungry is th issue. Hunger, in other words, is a political problem. Now this foundation studies how democracy can be made to work better.
Some may ask what one couple eating on a dollar a day can do, and ask if it is perhaps a little condescending. But I would say that shedding light on problems like this is the only real way, long term, to remove them. Short term, direct aid is important and needed. But long term change is what is also needed, and this effort can be a catalyst for something like that.
The Josephson survey is always good for some alarmist fare, and rightly so. Perhaps the most striking — and persistent — finding is that most young people see themselves as ethical yet also, by large majorities, report engaging in unethical behavior like cheating.
Most articles that cover the Josephson report dutifully trot out educators who say that students are “stressed out” and “busy” and so they cut corners. Then there is a paragraph outlining all the new seminars on plagiarism at this or that school.
What’s always bugged me about this approach is that it gets two things wrong.
First, it excuses wrong behavior by implying that tough times somehow justify (or mitigate) cheating.
Second, it falls into the “not enough knowledge” trap: that is, it assumes that wrong behavior is arising out of a lack of knowledge, that kids just don’t know what plagiarism is and so if only they knew more about it they would stop.
And so, I would like to draw your attention to this article by “Smintheus” at Unbossed. Written by a professor, it is an excellent discussion of the landscape adults who actually oppose cheating (and who oppose enabling cheaters) face. It touches on a number of other points, too, so I recommend reading the whole thing.
It’s not so easy, it turns out, to fight the good fight. So many places in public life, we get messages to let things slide, don’t get involved, don’t upset the apple cart.
So what can we do about this, besides mouth platitudes?
Competition between colleges is as tough as it ever was and will definitely get tougher. But this seems ridiculous. My friends at Ethics Newsline brought to my attention that turns out that Baylor University has been paying students who are already admitted and attending the school — to retake the SAT. Just sitting for the exam can win $300 textbook credit and raising your score by 50 points wins you $1,000 in scholarship money. Considering that SAT scores can easily vary by 50 points from sitting to sitting, this is a good bet for any incoming student.
Why would Baylor want its already-admitted kids to retake the SAT? Easy: The SAT is a major part of the US News & World Report’s college ranking system. Baylor’s got a strategic plan called Baylor 2012 that evidently includes a cornerstone goal that it will do better on the US News rankings. They’re on their way, according to The Lariat, the student newspaper. Baylor’s average score SAT went from 1,200 to 1,210.
Baylor’s vice president for marketing, John Barry, first told The New York Times that there’s no problem because any other college could have done it too: “Every university wants to have great SAT scores. Every university wants to be perceived as having a high-quality class. We all wanted that. Were we happy our SAT scores went up? Yes. Did our students earn their scores? Yes they did.”
Some critics of standardized testing in general are pouncing on this because they say it reveals how evil they are. I don’t see it that way. The SAT is just a tool. So are the US News rankings. Baylor was misusing one tool to game the other – that doesn’t make the tools wrong, it makes Baylor wrong. Indeed, according to the influential Inside Higher Ed, Robert Morse (the US News “ranking czar”) made clear that the magazine “disapproves of any educational policy designed solely to manipulate the ranking.”
This episode shows how careful leaders have to be when they set goals — because staff throughout the organization might think that reaching the goal is the most important thing, not how you get there. In some areas, that can work. Schools? Not so much.
This is also a great example of gaming a system without breaking the rules. In other words, it’s a great example of the difference between what’s legal and what’s right.
While Baylor’s Barry at first said the university was “very happy with the way [the program] turned out,” they must not have been too happy about being caught. They’ve promised to cut the program, saying it was a “goof.”
The story first broke in Baylor’s student paper, The Lariat. It didn’t die with that one piece, either. In a recent editorial, The Lariat points out that:
Ultimately, the decision about SAT scores is really just a symptom of a larger problem. As Baylor progresses towards its 2012 goal, it’s seems more and more intent on fulfilling as many of the imperatives [in the strategic plan] as possible. There is a serious problem with this mentality, though. We seem so anxious to reach these goals that we aren’t considering whether we’re actually improving as a university. In this case, we’re trying to improve the appearance of our student’s scores without actually attracting higher-scoring students.
Many business schools now make ethics courses a central requirement to get that MBA, in an effort to improve things. According to Fox News religion correspondent, Lauren Green:
In the wake of the Enron collapse there’s been a bumper crop of ethics courses added to the business curriculum. The nation’s number one business school, Harvard began its much heralded and mandatory Leadership and Corporate Accountability course five years ago. . . . And Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School was established last year . . . for the express purpose of turning out business school graduates who’ll work to the corporate culture of greed to a culture favoring more socially responsible leadership.
But this assumes the problem is that people somehow need more knowledge in order to make ethical decisions. No: they need a moral compass coupled with some backbone. The Lariat’s insightful analysis shows it doesn’t take smarts and a degree to make the right decisions — it takes guts.
Someone, somewhere along the line, should have been able to stand up and say, “Um, boss? This SAT plan is wrong.” Maybe a memo to that effect will come to light, which would restore my faith in humanity.
Meanwhile, seemingly the last line of defense for Baylor’s reputation, the student editors of the paper hold out hope that should also be coming from the halls of the administrative offices: “With any luck, the damage done is not irreversible, and we can reaffirm our university as fair and ethical.”
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Baylor: A Mulligan For New Students
Competition between colleges is as tough as it ever was and will definitely get tougher. But this seems ridiculous. My friends at Ethics Newsline brought to my attention that turns out that Baylor University has been paying students who are already admitted and attending the school — to retake the SAT. Just sitting for the exam can win $300 textbook credit and raising your score by 50 points wins you $1,000 in scholarship money. Considering that SAT scores can easily vary by 50 points from sitting to sitting, this is a good bet for any incoming student.
Why would Baylor want its already-admitted kids to retake the SAT? Easy: The SAT is a major part of the US News & World Report’s college ranking system. Baylor’s got a strategic plan called Baylor 2012 that evidently includes a cornerstone goal that it will do better on the US News rankings. They’re on their way, according to The Lariat, the student newspaper. Baylor’s average score SAT went from 1,200 to 1,210.
Baylor’s vice president for marketing, John Barry, first told The New York Times that there’s no problem because any other college could have done it too: “Every university wants to have great SAT scores. Every university wants to be perceived as having a high-quality class. We all wanted that. Were we happy our SAT scores went up? Yes. Did our students earn their scores? Yes they did.”
Some critics of standardized testing in general are pouncing on this because they say it reveals how evil they are. I don’t see it that way. The SAT is just a tool. So are the US News rankings. Baylor was misusing one tool to game the other – that doesn’t make the tools wrong, it makes Baylor wrong. Indeed, according to the influential Inside Higher Ed, Robert Morse (the US News “ranking czar”) made clear that the magazine “disapproves of any educational policy designed solely to manipulate the ranking.”
This episode shows how careful leaders have to be when they set goals — because staff throughout the organization might think that reaching the goal is the most important thing, not how you get there. In some areas, that can work. Schools? Not so much.
This is also a great example of gaming a system without breaking the rules. In other words, it’s a great example of the difference between what’s legal and what’s right.
While Baylor’s Barry at first said the university was “very happy with the way [the program] turned out,” they must not have been too happy about being caught. They’ve promised to cut the program, saying it was a “goof.”
The story first broke in Baylor’s student paper, The Lariat. It didn’t die with that one piece, either. In a recent editorial, The Lariat points out that:
Many business schools now make ethics courses a central requirement to get that MBA, in an effort to improve things. According to Fox News religion correspondent, Lauren Green:
But this assumes the problem is that people somehow need more knowledge in order to make ethical decisions. No: they need a moral compass coupled with some backbone. The Lariat’s insightful analysis shows it doesn’t take smarts and a degree to make the right decisions — it takes guts.
Someone, somewhere along the line, should have been able to stand up and say, “Um, boss? This SAT plan is wrong.” Maybe a memo to that effect will come to light, which would restore my faith in humanity.
Meanwhile, seemingly the last line of defense for Baylor’s reputation, the student editors of the paper hold out hope that should also be coming from the halls of the administrative offices: “With any luck, the damage done is not irreversible, and we can reaffirm our university as fair and ethical.”