More Mill, emphasis mine this time:

For, being cognizant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers - knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter - he has a right to think his judgement better than that of any other person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

UPDATE: Folks should also see Wil Wilkinson's neologism"pulling a Hopkins":

pull a Hopkins intr. v. 1. to become faint or nauseated upon hearing a statement contrary to one's ideology or dogma. 2. to leave the room, usually dramatically, because of such faintness or nausea. 3. to feign such faintness or nausea as part of a ploy to establish or reinforce a social convention about the limits of acceptable discourse.

Over at the new blog The Conservative Philosopher, my fellow Hayek scholar and frequent sparring partner Ed Feser raises some interesting questions about conservatives, libertarians, and the family.  Ed's a smart guy and has made some of the best cases I've seen for reading Hayek in a conservative way, although I think those cases ultimately fail.  I want to respond to some of Ed's argument here. Ed writes:

Still, since conservatives also tend to hold that there are natural ties between human beings far deeper and more important than the sort of contractual ties definitive of market society, they do not make a fetish of the market. This often distinguishes them from libertarians, who frequently exhibit a tendency to want to reduce all human relations to the contractual or economic sort.

Well, "frequently" and "tendency" fudge things a bit, but I'm not convinced this is as true as Ed thinks. 

Chief among these non-contractual ties are those definitive of the family, and the family is that institution that conservatives are most keen to conserve, for they not only regard it as a natural institution, but as the arena within which the fellowship human beings need for their well-being exists, or ought to exist, to the fullest extent.    ...  The family is the place where we learn, or ought to learn, that we have obligations that we did not choose and needs that cannot be satisfied if we insist on having things our own way. It is where we learn that there are greater things in the world than our own narrow interests and a greater good for us than the mere pursuit of those interests.

One can be a libertarian, including with respect to the family, and believe that people have bonds and obligations "deeper" than the sort that appear on the market.  One can, from a libertarian perspective, and specifically a Hayekian perspective, argue that families are, and should be, hotbeds of altruistic commitment in just the way Feser describes.  What Feser says here might be true of the sub-species libertarianus Randianus, but need not be of the species more broadly.  In fact, in a paper forthcoming in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, I compare Hayek's and Rand's views of the family.  An online excerpt can be found here. 

I think the problematic place Ed goes with this argument below is the weight he puts on the family being a "natural' institution.  For example:

This is why conservatives and libertarians are, I believe, increasingly going to part ways in coming years. If you believe that the family is an institution we did not create (either because it has a divine origin or, a la Hayek, a cultural evolutionary one) and have no right to tinker with; that our deepest obligations are those we do not choose to take on but are given to us by nature; and that a good and happy life requires a humble submitting of oneself to those obligations, then you are going to take a decidedly conservative attitude toward matters of public policy concerning the family.

Note several things here.  First, saying that family is an institution we did not create does not mean that it is a static institution.  The whole point of the Hayekian argument is that it's about cultural evolution.  The family, as we know it today, did not appear from nothing;  it evolved over time as well.  We would surely never make parallel arguments about other institutions we did not "create," e.g., money, law, the market.  Money as we know it today has evolved and changed in a variety of ways (and would have even if government had been absent).  The mere fact that we didn't "create" something doesn't mean that it is or should be static.  (What about the evolution of language?  Don't we expect that language will continue to evolve, just as perhaps the family has and might?)  And the use of the word "tinker" is interesting as well:  is any change "tinkering"?  After all, from a Hayekian perspective, these institutions are the result of human action but not human design.  Is Ed arguing that human action is ruled out of court, lest it change the institution?  Ed's static perspective here seems to equate even marginal evolutionary changes with social engineering. 

Second to note is the invocation of the "natural."  Is natural here meaning "part of any human society" or is it more literal, in the sense of our biology implies certain obligation and institutions?  Is the "natural" the raising of children inside a family unit (certainly all human societies need an institution to do that), or is it something more?  Is it that certain familial arrangements are "natural" because biology "made us that way?"

One way to frame this is that Ed is sliding here between function and form.  There is no doubt that the functions families serve need to be tackled by some institution in any human society.  In that sense, the family is a "natural" institution.  However, the question of whether any particular form of the family is uniquely suited to perform those functions is a very different question.  That question is even more interesting when linked to the historical fact that the family has evolved and changed over time.  Might those changes (which certainly have been affected by government policy) be changes in form that have resulted from social and economic changes that have affected the functions families can, or have to, perform?  That is, perhaps the changes in the form of the family we've seen are responses to changes in other institutions that "we did not create."  If so, why is it okay for those other institutions to change and evolve (be tinkered with?) while not the case for the family, especially if such changes are responses driven by the changes elsewhere?

My take on the functions of the family, from a Hayekian perspective, are in a paper forthcoming in the Cambridge Journal of Economics that can be found here.

Ed ends with:

And while it is true that conservatives and libertarians have much in common where the defense of the market and the critique of big government are concerned, it is also true that for conservatives, issues touching on the family and its well-being must necessarily always trump issues of tax policy, government spending, and even war and peace. Tax rates, government programs, wars, and the like come and go, and however long-lasting and significant are their effects, they simply cannot equal in their significance radical changes to the structure of the family. The family is forever, and far more basic to human well-being. For the conservative, if we don’t get that right, nothing else matters.

And here, Ed gets to the heart of the matter by talking of "radical changes to the structure of the family."  Two points to make in response.  First, at least now we know what we're talking about.  It's all about structure.  Note that Ed doesn't say that he's concerned about changes in the functions that families perform, or, directly, how well or how poorly they work.  Rather he is concerned about "radical" changes to the "structure," which seem to be equivalent in his mind to a loss of functionality.  If we radically change the form of families, they will function less well. But why identify form with function?  What's missing here is the argument that says that changes in the structure will reduce functionality.  To me, that argument is non-obvious.  It's a case to be made and Ed doesn't make it, at least not here.  The implicit premise that the (current? recent? how recent?) structure of the family is the most/only functional one is unargued for.

Second, what radical change is he talking about here?  Again, it's not named, but it seems clear it's same-sex marriage, though perhaps other things as well.  The use of "natural," the notion that marriage/family is all about self-interest and contract, and the use of the word "radical" are all evidence of that view, especially given that the stereotype of the selfish, libertine homosexual is as old as the hills.  I feel no need to rehash arguments on these questions that have been raised in other places by many others. However, I do find it interesting that, if same-sex marriage is the real driving issue here, Ed has hitched libertarianism to that star.  The underlying suggestion is that libertarianism is ultimately a form of libertinism, and because same-sex couples are really only interested in their own pleasure not the obligations of a family, the common cause between libertarianism and the advocacy of same-sex marriage is, shall we say, "natural."  In a cynical reading, it's an attempt to smear libertarians in the eyes of conservatives by painting us with the same caricature of self-interested libertines that has been used by conservatives use for gays and lesbians.  I don't necessarily think that was Ed's intention, but it is not an implausible reading of the text.

Of course, why we should care about what conservatives think about libertarians in general, and especially if they are accepting of the insulting view of gays and lesbians that this argument rests on, is a whole other question.

Among the few things that can break through the media silence that now surrounds the University of Southern Mississippi is a good old-fashioned vote of no confidence.

Yesterday the USM Faculty Senate began considering a motion of no confidence in President Shelby F. Thames. If it passes, it will be the second in less than 12 months.

The meeting ended without a vote on the resolution. So the matter will be taken up again at a further special meeting on Wednesday February 2nd.

According to the story with a welcome byline that appeared in today's Hattiesburg American, Faculty Senator Bill Scarborough has laid out 19 different indicators of Thamesian mismanagement from the last year alone. So debate on the resolution and possible amendments could take a while.

This year's edition of the USM Faculty Senate got off to a horrible start back in June, when it let itself be buffaloed into declaring that Vice President for Research Angie Dvorak had not actually misrepresented herself on her vita. A Faculty Senate committee declared that she had just followed"professional resume" practices instead of"academic resume" practices. (I doubt that most professionals, or most potential employers of professionals, would appreciate the implications.) Fortunately, Angie Dvorak was pushed out of the Vice-Presidential position shortly afterward, finally making her exit from the USM payroll at the end of the year. (In the aforelinked post, I incorrectly concluded that the Faculty Senate leadership had agreed to the compromise in return for an understanding that Angie Dvorak would be leaving USM. Some months later, a knowledgeable source told me that there was no such deal. The best that can be said about the entire mess: the Senate leadership was being incredibly naive about the nature and character of the Thames regime and its top administrators.)

From that point until well into Fall 2004, most of the public challenges to Thames and his immediate underlings came from a few representatives on the President's Council, not from the Faculty Senate. But the Senate redeemed itself with a hard-hitting response to the"Gulf Coast Incident" of October 12, in which Thames' chief enforcer, Ken Malone, invaded a class on the Gulf Park campus to interrogate students about their professor's comments concerning Malone's own plans to convert Gulf Park into a center for online courses. The Faculty Senate has also come up with a coherent policy on post-tenure review, which for several years has been a bone of contention between the state universities in Mississippi and the IHL Board.

Let's hope, then, that the USM Faculty Senate has the fortitude to issue a cogent resolution of no confidence in Shelby Thames. And that the Senate will follow up, in a timely fashion, with resolutions of no confidence in his key remaining underlings, Ken Malone and Gregg Lassen, and his most vocal backer on the IHL Board, Roy Klumb. Whatever the IHL Board's motives for putting Thames in office, flagrant mismanagement does not matter to a majority of the Board members. Even being lied to, on matters related to accreditation, has not motivated 7 or more of the trustees to remove him from office. Only if Thames becomes too hot to handle because of unending adverse publicity will the Board ever drop him.

The Hattiesburg American story gives us another priceless quotation from the man whose verbal productivity never ceases:

Asked what might be at the core of faculty members' criticisms, Thames said he didn't know. Instead he urged faculty members to consider if they are better off now - if they make more money - than before he was named president in April 2002.

"If they would just ask those questions then I think they're going to find out they're better off than they were three years ago," Thames said.

The raises that those professors who remain at USM have received over the last two and a half years are not enough, in most cases, to put them ahead after deducting inflation and the cost of health insurance. And even if the professors were taking home more money--would it compensate for administrative arbitrariness, plummeting academic reputation, threatened loss of accreditation, crumbling infrastructure, departmental supply budgets dwindling to $0, and a library that can no longer afford to buy a single new book?

As it happens, the first op-ed since January 9th on a USM-related subject has appeared in today's Clarion-Ledger. Written by Bill Gunther, a USM Professor of Economics, it reads like a standard pitch for higher education as a bringer of economic benefits to the state of Mississippi, published at a time when the state legislature is about to cut appropriations to state universities another 5 to 10%. As such, it makes predictable arguments, which readers of this blog will not be astonished to learn have a few holes in them.

But Gunther does seem to have a second, covert message, which can be inferred from his title ("Higher education is economic development") and from his central example: students who have graduated with USM degrees in Business. Would the op-ed have been printed if the editorial page editor had detected the implied slam at Shelby Thames and Ken Malone's Economic Development program? In any event, what was lost on the editorial page editor will surely sail past 99.9% of the paper's general readership.

Stay tuned.

1. I tend to call myself a "radical libertarian" as well. I prefer that to "anarchist" or "market anarchist" or even "anarcho-capitalist" for two reasons. One has to do with the rhetorical problems the anarchist label raises, but the other is that whether or not I'm an anarchist depends upon my mood that day. More seriously, I don't think the case for anarchism is completely convincing. My disposition is to accept it but I'm not completely convinced enough to use that label (rhetorical problems aside). Understand, of course, that I think the set of issues where government might be justified is pretty small, hence my comfort with "radical libertarian." The fact that I see myself as a person of the left who happens to believe that markets and other voluntary institutions are the best means to the left's ends also makes me comfortable with the "radical" label. (Having been called a "PC libertarian" and a "neo-conservative," not to mention a fraud and a liar, in the last 48 hours, labels are kind of fun these days.)

2. In my "Comparative Economic Institutions" course, I spend part of a very early class day explaining why I will NOT use the terms "capitalism" and "socialism" in that class (a promise I keep to a large degree). My reasoning is Hayek's - the terms were both invented by those sympathetic to socialism. Moreover, the very terms bias the debate. To add some more meat to Chris's argument, look at the words themselves. "Capitalism" suggests a "belief in capital" and it puts capital as the central organizing principle around which the system is built, or at least around which "the goods are delivered." By contrast, "socialism" suggest a "belief in society as a whole" and puts society as the central organizing principle or recipient of the benefits in that system. I would suggest that both implications are incorrect (i.e., capitalism [truly free markets] doesn't primarily benefit capitalists, and socialism benefits the few at the expense of the many).

More important, though, is that neither term speaks to the institutional arrangements that each system requires. Thus, I prefer the language of "markets" and "planning" to "capitalism" and "socialism." Although these are not without their problems, they have the advantage of allowing us to talk about how social coordination will take place in each system and what varieties of arrangements those fundamental coordination processes might produce. For example, we can talk about markets in which there is worker ownership or not. And with planning, we can talk about the differences between, and challenges facing, democratic planning institutions versus more centralized, autocratic ones. This dichotomy forces us to ask questions about how social coordination takes place and what sorts of institutions forward it. It should lead us to ask "how do/would markets work?" and "how does/would planning work?"

It also gives us room to talk about real world systems as being neither purely markets nor purely planning, and to explore whether the coordination processes can be combined, or whether one will tend to crowd out the other (or at least cause unintended undesirable consequences) when they are significantly mixed. It provides an institutional analytic framework for doing applied work, including exploring economic history.

In any case, Chris's post is right on, both as a question of how to talk to the Left and as a really serious question of how libertarians understand our own worldview.

Shelby Thames, the President of the University of Southern Mississippi, may still believe that he can get away with absolutely anything. In the full article on his reaction to Wednesday's Faculty Senate motion against him, Thames claims to be having fun:

"Why would I retire? I'm having more fun than I've ever had in my life. I feel good. I enjoy coming to work," said Thames, who will turn 69 in August.

He explains that he won't read the Faculty Senate's resolution against him because:

"If I were distracted every time something from the external forces came about, then I would never get anything accomplished," Thames said."We're going to move forward and make Southern Miss that world class university we talked about."

In other words, the faculty at USM is an"external force," just like the accrediting agencies. Just like everyone besides Shelby Freland Thames, from his narcissistic standpoint.

Or maybe, despite his bravado, Thames at last senses that his time in power is about to be over--so before he has to go he wants to take down as much of the university as he can.

One of the foregoing has to be true. Otherwise there is no way to make sense of the move he has just made--while USM has been put under a microscope by its accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools; while a SACS consultant is on campus every working day advising USM how to get off the probation that SACS recently put it on; while professors are taking on massive committee assignments to help bring their departments and colleges into compliance with SACS; and while the College of Business may already be in danger of losing its accreditation with the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, because of the graduate programs in Economic Development run by Thames' chief remaining henchman, Ken Malone.

Yesterday afternoon, faculty members in USM's College of Business were summoned to a college meeting at which their Dean, Harold Doty, read to them portions of a letter he had received from the Provost, Jay Grimes.

Here is an eyewitness account, by"Shaken and Stirred" on the AAUP-USM message board:

Two passages (out of seven) were read to faculty verbatim, according to both the dean and associate dean.

Passage 1 indicated that the COB [College of Business] would offer an executive-type MBA by fall 2005 OR ELSE one would be offered elsewhere on campus. The letter specified that the program would compete for students with [William] Carey [College] and [the University of] Phoenix (both [referred to] by name). Apparently, this is an extension of an earlier discussion between the dean and provost, where the dean told the provost that having an MBA program not under the COB's control would forfeit AACSB [accreditation], and the provost's reply was"I don't care."

Passage 2 stated that COB faculty were spending too much time on"basic research" and that, since the COB does not grant a Ph.D., the faculty should cease"basic research" and focus on"applied research" that would directly benefit local business and industry. Also, no new hires will be allowed unless they have relevant industry experience and can do the type of research the provost previously identified as appropriate.

The eyewitness adds that Dean Doty mentioned"terse" language in the letter that was"not suitable for publication." That would imply a reference to firing the Dean, at the very least. Time for a Mississippi Public Records Act request.

The Executive MBA program that Provost Grimes is insisting on is another gleam in the eye of Thames and Malone. It has already led to trouble over the past six weeks. Malone had a secret plan to take over the third floor of the library on the Gulf Park campus, get rid of the books housed there, and convert it into a conference center for use in an online Executive MBA program. Provost Grimes initially ordered the two faculty members who revealed the plan, Will Watson and James Pat Smith, not to talk about it. Later he backed off and apologized, and Shelby Thames"assured" everyone that the the third floor of the library would not be taken over right away. Oh, and that it would not be reserved exclusively for the use of the Executive MBA program.

Beyond that, it is clearly payback time for Dean Doty and the Business faculty, for insisting that the Economic Development programs either be brought up to AACSB standards or moved out of their college.

At this point, the Business faculty at USM must wish that the recent rumors were true, and they were going to be spun off and merged with the College of Business and Industry at Mississippi State. For surely no one at MSU would order Business professors to open an Executive MBA program staffed with instructors whose qualifications resembled Ken Malone's--or to stop doing basic research.

By issuing these orders to the College of Business, Thames and his crew are kissing AACSB accreditation goodbye. It doesn't look a whole lot better for them under the SACS Principles of Accreditation, specifically

3.4.1 The institution demonstrates that each educational program for which academic credit is awarded (a) is approved by the faculty and the administration, and (b) establishes and evaluates program and learning outcomes.

and

3.4.12 The institution places primary responsibility for the content, quality, and effectiveness of its curriculum with its faculty.

What's more, USM's SACS consultant, Margaret Sullivan, has been telling administrators that it"would be inadvisable" to start any new academic programs while on probation."It would be inadvisable," in SACS language, translates into"Your funeral!" in the vernacular.

While the Provost, Jay Grimes, will take the fall for issuing this Diktat--and he deserves to--he was following orders. Ken Malone and Shelby Thames told him what to say, as they have done on so many other occasions.

Shelby Thames is now broadcasting his contemptuous disregard for the accrediting agencies. The regional news blackout, which protected his interests for all of 3 weeks, is emphatically over, and the Faculty Senate did not even have to vote 39-2 against him to break it. Black Friday would have ended the blackout all by itself. And unless the Mississippi IHL Board truly wants USM deaccredited, it will have to remove him from office immediately.

Two letters to the editor calling for Thames' immediate removal appeared in today's Hattiesburg American. One openly asks whether Roy Klumb and the rest of the Board have USM's best interests at heart. I am told that the other--which makes a suggestion that might already be familiar to readers of this blog--was accompanied in the print edition by a photo of Richard Crofts, the interim IHL Commissioner. The Board can replace Thames with Crofts in short order, if it wants to.

It's only been a week since Dean Harold Doty read out portions of a memo from Provost Jay Grimes to a meeting of the College of Business at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Black Friday memo is having so many repercussions that it's hard to keep up with them all.

On Wednesday, at the monthly meeting of his President's Council, faculty representatives asked USM President Shelby F. Thames about the possible threats that the Black Friday memo posed to the university's accreditation. (The memo ordered the College of Business to implement a partly-online MBA program by next August, without a go-ahead from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools when USM is under probation. And it commanded the Business professors to lay off all"theoretical/basic research" in favor of contract work for businesses connected with the Thames administration.) Thames hypocritically insisted that he is 100% supportive of the College of Business retaining its accreditation with the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Yesterday, Dean Doty's vigorous response to Provost Grimes was made available to readers of the Hattiesburg American along with a further article on the Doty-Grimes dispute. And a second memo from Grimes to Doty was publicized, concerning a faculty position in Finance that the College of Business had not been allowed to fill, because allegedly none of the candidates had the required"private-sector experience" (actually, some of them did, but none had the requisite connections to Thames or to his chief enforcer, Ken Malone, who hopes to displace the College of Business in favor of a new operation centered around his Department of Economic Development). The College is now being"reluctantly" allowed to fill the position, but so late in the academic hiring cycle that the desirable candidates are unlikely to be available any longer.

Today, the American reported that the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees will be taking up the mano-a-mano between Doty and Grimes at its monthly meeting next week. The public bluster from Thames' most vocal backer, Board President Roy Klumb, was notably subdued. When last heard from, Klumb was insisting that the Board would not even discuss the USM Faculty Senate's recent resolution asking the Board not to extend Thames' term in office. Now he is admitting that Thames' conduct in office will have to be the Board's chief concern. And the interim IHL Commissioner, Richard Crofts, made clear that the threat to accreditation is being taken very seriously indeed.

Today, Shelby Thames issued a memo to Dean Doty claiming that no improper pressure was being applied to the College of Business over the"hybrid" MBA program, and the College should do nothing that would threaten its accreditation. Informed sources say that Thames went around the College earlier this week, on an unsuccessful search for faculty members he could bribe or bamboozle into dropping their support for Dean Doty's stand. When he could find none, and it became clear that the Board was going to intervene, he issued the memo.

Today, the USM Faculty Senate holds its regular monthly meeting. There is plenty to occupy the Senate, most notably some last-minute administrative tampering with USM's proposed policy on post-tenure review. One can only hope that resolutions condemning Provost Grimes and Multiple Officeholder Malone will be taken up.

Now that he has been left to twist in the wind, Jay Grimes' departure from the Provost's office could be announced any minute now. What will happen to Ken Malone--who was the real force behind the Black Friday memo--and to Shelby Thames remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Thames' press secretary, Lisa Mader, is no longer being quoted in the news stories. Could she be planning to abandon ship?

Stay tuned.

One year ago, on March 5, 2004, Shelby Thames, the president of the University of Southern Mississippi, called Frank Glamser, a tenured professor of Sociology, and Gary Stringer, a tenured professor of English, into his office and told them that they were fired. While Thames was berating them, locksmiths, under escort from the campus police, came and changed the locks on their office doors.

Because March 5 is on a weekend this year, the sad event won't be commemorated on campus until Monday.

USM is still reeling from the loss of two major contributors on the faculty. But Thames wanted much more than that. He imagined that the firings would terrify every potential critic into silence and guarantee him control over USM so long as he was still"having fun." Instead, Thames brought the scope and intensity of media attention to USM that is the worst enemy of bullying, incompetent micomanagers. And his subsequent acts of viciousness and recklessness have insured that though the media attention might waver, it would keep returning, in more and more concentrated forms.

Frank Glamser is now teaching at Tulane's satellite campus on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and enjoying his return to the classroom. Gary Stringer and his Donne Variorum Project were welcomed by Texas A&M; the annual John Donne conference, which he had hosted at USM for 19 years, was recently held at LSU in Baton Rouge. Under the terms of the settlement that the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board imposed last April 28, Glamser and Stringer will continue to draw their USM salaries as" consultants" for another year. Meanwhile, the administrator whose honor Thames claimed to be defending against two professors who dared to point out a misrepresentation on her vita is no longer at USM; once widely viewed as Thames' heir apparent, Angie Dvorak departed from the university payroll on January 1.

After a solid year of viciousness and recklessness, which has been thoroughly documented here at Liberty and Power, the Thames regime finally looks to be on the ropes.

On Wednesday of this week, a USM staff meeting was held to rally support for Thames and find ways to improve his irreversibly tarnished public image. Of course Thames' press secretary, Lisa Mader, was in the room. (Though persistent but still unconfirmed rumors have her about to leave USM for a new job in Jackson.) What will stick in the mind of everyone who attended was a statement by Thames' chief enforcer and man of many administrative titles, Ken Malone:

Before this is all over I want to see Kevin Walters in a public lynching.

More than one person who attended the meeting has reported the above quotation, but Malone has apparently not yet been confronted by a reporter from the print media and asked to verify it. It is to be hoped that journalists from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and the Hattiesburg American will not leave him in peace until he owns up to his remark or issues a convincing denial. For it may be the single event that draws concentrated attention to the events at USM from newspapers all across the United States.

What has Kevin Walters of the Hattiesburg American done, to elicit such venom? Walters has merely done what reporters are supposed to do--he has kept asking questions and stayed on the story. His coverage of events at USM has at no point been slanted against the administration. In fact, the American has a policy of never using anonymous sources (how far would Woodward and Bernstein have gotten, if that had been the house rule at the Washington Post?). Consequently, the average Walters article about USM quotes more proponents than detractors of the Thames administration. (It's because Thames and his supporters keep indicting themselves with their own words that most of Walters' articles have hurt the administration.)

What's more, Thames and crew are up to far more mischief than a lone reporter could ever expose. For instance, American has yet to cover the decline and fall of USM's Nursing program. Under Thames, a program that long trained a substantial share of the nurses in Mississippi has lost most of its senior professors, and the percentage of its recent graduates who passed the national board exam has dipped below 75%; another year of that, and the program will have to be stripped of its accreditation by, of all agencies, the Mississippi IHL Board. In this particular case, it appears that no story has run because the remaining nursing professors are too fearful of Thamesian reprisals to allow themselves to be quoted. But then again, the story could have been held off because so many other things are collapsing at USM, and there are only so many column inches to put the stories in.

Malone allegedly called for Walters' lynching at a moment when his own power still seemed to be expanding. At the end of last week, after being handed control of USM's Continuing Education office, he made a surprise announcement that he was closing it, and reassigning the staff people who had worked there. It could be that other institutional arrangements would serve online courses and independent studies as well as the central CE office did, even better. But it is a major stretch to assume that Ken Malone is interested in seeing that these institutional needs are efficently served. And any reorganization should have been carried out over the summer. Instead, the ever"impatient" Malone has thrown every academic department that relies on the CE office into turmoil and chaos.

But Malone is being thwarted in his efforts to demolish the entire USM College of Business and replace it with an entity centered on his Department of Economic Development. Dean Harold Doty, the recipient of the Black Friday memo, has made clear that he is just beginning to fight him. The College of Business just received a $1 million pledge from Mississippi businessman Max Draughn to support a pharmaceutical marketing program. It is too bad that Malone's comments about that event were not made in front of a public meeting. And how about Shelby Thames, who cannot fire Doty after interim IHL Commissioner Richard Crofts intervened on Doty's side and ordered Thames to retract the Black Friday memo? Thames did not attend the ceremony announcing the gift; neither did anyone else from his upper administration. On-campus sources say that Thames wants to reassign the college's chief fundraiser, in the hope of preventing future donations. Previously, on Wednesday, Doty publicly announced a Center for Economic Education in his college; Malone could not have been pleased with that move either, as he had been claiming economic education as his own turf.

If Malone really said what he is reported to have said, he is not merely a bad administrator, an unqualified professor, and a sycophant of one of the worst university presidents in American history. He is a thug without portfolio. And national media attention to a Mississippi university administrator who calls for lynching a reporter will set the state's image back at least half a century.

Under President Dave Beckett the USM Faculty Senate has consistently refused to take any action against Malone. But at yesterday's monthly meeting (it's hard to keep track, after all the emergency get-togethers), the Senate ordered an evaluation by the faculty of Malone performance as Chief Operating Officer at USM's Gulf Park satellite campus. Though very mild under the circumstances, this is a welcome step. (In fact, Malone was scheduled to appear before the Senate to address questions about his decision to close the Continuing Education office--and ducked out. Could this have been because Kevin Walters attends every Senate meeting?)

USM's Graduate Council, which reviews the credentials of graduate faculty members, has also announced a new policy of rechecking the credentials of faculty members who move to new programs or to different colleges. Since Malone has steered his Economic Development program out of the College of Business into the Colleges of Science and Technology and Arts and Letters, he will be due for review right away. And this time the Graduate Council will not believe false statements from deans or from the Provost about Malone's faculty status or his qualifications to teach Finance courses.

A further mark of desperation on the Thamesian side is a convocation that his supporters in the Hattiesburg business community have called for Thursday March 10, at the local Coca-Cola bottling plant. According to Hattiesburg's scrappy weekly, the Independent, which broke the story, the hosts will be

• Brad Brian (Hattiesburg Coca-Cola)
• Bobby Dews (Dews Foundry)
• Bonnie Drews (Republican party activist)
• Richard Drews (Dentist)
• Gwen James (Coldwell Banker Don Nace Realty)
• Richard Jones (Hattiesburg Area Development Partnership)
• Jan Lacy (Copy Cats Printing)
• Bob Mixon (Courtesy Ford)
• Carl Nicholson (Nicholson & Company, Accountants; former member of the IHL Board)
• Doug Rouse (Southern Bone & Joint Clinic Specialists)
• Lawrence Warren (Warren Paving)

The Independent (unfortunately not available online) noted that"The invitation to Drews to host the meeting was extended by Lisa Mader ..." which means that it was orchestrated from within the USM administration. The"... true purpose of the meeting is to support extension of Dr. Thames' contract when it comes up for renewal in 2006."

And here is the new rallying point for those who move and shake, wheel and deal, and want to keep Thames in power."The issue, she [Bonnie Drews] continued, is whether USM will continue as a primarily liberal arts university or whether it will focus on technology."

Since the Mississippi state university system is utterly incapable of making another MIT or Caltech, even it threw its entire annual state appropriation behind a single institution, the only university in the system with a substantial Engineering presence is called Mississippi State, and the IHL Board is about to shut down USM's small Masters program in physics, despite the grants that the department pulls in, what this call really amounts to is dropping USM down to a big trade school, or even a pumped-up community college.

It is not clear how many of Thames' backers in the Hattiesburg-area establishment understand what the press to"focus on technology" truly means. One who probably does is Carl Nicholson, a graduate of Mississippi State who was instrumental in putting Thames on the throne when he served on the IHL Board. Those affiliated with the Area Development Partnership (whose current President happens to be named Angie Dvorak) might at least have a vague idea.

The convocation of local Thames supporters, now expected to draw at least 250 people, was a major topic of discussion at yesterday's monthly meeting of the USM Faculty Senate. Kevin Walters' article is worth reading just for the heated dialogue that it captures, about the Thames administration's role in organizing the convocation. Despite denials that Thames plans to attend the meeting, his fingerprints are all over it.

Because of that body's near-absolute power over USM, the question, as always, is: what is the IHL Board going to do? Probably everyone on the list of organizers has exerted influence with the Board on Thames' behalf, if only to secure his coronation in 2002. But in the past the wires were pulled quietly, without eliciting attention from the media. This time around, the convocation itself will be closed to reporters, but the newspapers will be monitoring events closely. Not only are members of the Hattiesburg establishment openly seeking to manipulate the Board, under circumstances that will lead to media inquiries into their financial dealings with USM under the Thames administration. But one of the most rabid members of the Board's pro-Thames faction, Scott Ross, was directly implicated in the convocation plans by the Independent. Such overt political involvement, in an effort to keep Thames in power, can only wreak further damage on the Board's reputation. And the Board has already been badly hurt by the repeated failures of the Thames regime and the foot-in-mouth proclivities of its current president (and Thames cheerleader) Roy Klumb.

Now, the Board could end up spliting the difference, in a way that would leave Thames devastated, but would satisfy the true agenda of more than one of his supporters. It could give Thames his walking papers, and thank him for being a useful idiot, while ratifying the dirty work that he has done, by announcing that USM will no longer be permitted to be a reasearch-oriented university. Citing Thames' depredations as a fait accompli that cannot be repaired under present state budget constraints, the Board could officially define USM as a trade school or a pumped-up community college. But the infighting has grown so fierce that the Board seems unlikely to reach such a nastily judicious outcome.

The likely alternatives boil down to two.

The Board may expand the authority of the IHL Commissioner, who would demand regular reports on accreditation, would review university presidents annually, and would get the power to fire them. (At a recent retreat, the Board heard from Richard Crofts' counterpart in the Georgia state system, who has such powers and was recommending that the Board emulate the Georgia model.) The faction that wants a stronger commissioner is inclined to be anti-Thames, if only because of the extra burdens that his misrule has piled on the Board. So a strengthening of the Commissioner's position would almost certainly be accompanied by Thames' immediate removal, or the nonrenewal of his contract past May 2006.

Not terribly coincidentally, the most recent subject of the Clarion- Ledger's regular Sunday interview series was Richard Crofts.

Crofts speaks in the usual carefully measured words of an executive, which means that much of his interview is made up out of customary platitudes. Nonetheless, several passages stand out amongst the low-bandwidth communication.

First, he refers to his background as a professor--something that Thames, who encourages his followers to run down professors as a class, rarely does.

I am especially grateful for the 11 years I spent as a faculty member before I went into administration. That experience has ensured that as an administrator I will never forget what the life of a professor was like. I hope that has kept me honest and true to the needs of higher education.

Second, he has not let up on his public criticism of Thames:

The difficulties between faculty and administration at the University of Southern Mississippi are unfortunate. I believe that the university is on track to deal with the serious accreditation issues it has faced. Everyone knows that you achieve more working together than in opposition, but sometimes it seems hard to act on that knowledge.

Indeed, USM may escape loss of accreditation because of Crofts' prompt intervention, ordering Thames to disavow the Black Friday memo. The outcome would have been very different had Thames and Malone continued unimpeded with their scheme to establish an Executive MBA while the university was under probation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

"We have told Dr. Thames that we don't want any new programs started or changed until this probation is over," Klumb said.

There is no reason to believe that Klumb is sincere--and plenty of reason to believe that a majority of the Board no longer supports him on this issue.

Finally:

The Mississippi university system is a growing and flourishing enterprise, but it flourishes despite the declining state resources that are invested in it. We take an annual investment from the Legislature of about $560 million and turn it into an enterprise whose annual expenditures exceed $2 billion. Enrollment continues to grow, including large numbers of students who come into Mississippi for higher education and bring their dollars with them. The extra dollars from student tuition, research grants, and private donations make the difference in quality for the moment, but we are not sure that reliance on those sources of funding can continue to make up for the limited economic resources in Mississippi made available for public higher education. The board of trustees tries to manage so that competition among the universities does not become a part of the problem, and the board is currently considering important changes that will lead it to speak more for the needs of the entire state.

This last passage could portend an official demotion of USM in the state system, but it more likely is a discreet plug for giving the commissioner more authority to run the day-to-day affairs of the state system, including the authority over accreditation matters that Crofts previously asked the Board for in January.

The Board's other likely course of action? It can rally behind Thames, refuse to expand the commissioner's authority, and get rid of Crofts because he dared to rein Thames in. But the cost of propping up the Thames regime gets heavier every day.

It's far from certain that the chain of events that Thames set in motion, when he tried to fire Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer, will lead to his downfall. But the probability is growing by the day. The probability that USM will emerge with its functionality intact is, unfortunately, smaller. But anything that might speed Thames' exit will give the university a fighting chance of recovering from what he has done to it.

The official statements are in from last night's meeting of Hattiesburg-area businesspeople. The Coca-Cola Cabal (the original location was to be the local Coca-Cola bottler) or Paving Company Putsch was organized to drum up support for Shelby Thames, the President of the University of Southern Mississippi whose hold on power is slipping.

The attendance at Warren Paving Company was a little less than advertised: 185 of those on the invitation list passed through the security check at the door and listened to a series of speakers exhorting them to contact the Mississippi IHL Board and express their unwavering support for Thames.

The Coca-Cola communiqué is purposely uninteresting; what it conceals is far more important than what it reveals. Participants in the meeting were given a long happy-talk list of positive accomplishments at the University of Southern Mississippi. Some were trivial; many pertained to building projects or fundraising that were primarily the work of Thames' predecessors; a few (like the purported redirection of $2 million from administration to the classroom after Thames fired 9 deans and replaced them with five) were demonstrably bogus. And all have been amply promoted by Lisa Mader and her publicity apparatus, so there was little need for a community meeting just to get them out.

The organizers chose as their spokeman Bob Mixon, a car dealer who played a major role in installing Shelby Thames as USM's president in 2002--and in turn received Thames' support for a position on the Mississippi IHL Board (which he didn't get). His public utterances can be seen in today's Hattiesburg American:

Mixon suggested the state College Board should provide greater guidance - to president Shelby Thames and the faculty - on the issues facing the university."I think there has to be a meeting where decisions are made that are binding and the only ones to do that are the College Board," Mixon said."I would hope that they will clarify their position on what they think the role of a president is, that they would clarify their position on the faculty's dissension with the administration."

But Mixon dismissed the faculty's votes against Thames - first a no-confidence vote by nearly all the faculty last year and then a call this year by the Faculty Senate to find a new president."I think it's the College Board's job to set directives and policies for universities," Mixon said."I think it's their job to hire presidents. If they don't like the job the president's doing, they can make a change. But whether a president stays or goes should be the decision of the Board of Trustees of (State) Institutions of Higher Learning, not the Faculty Senate. The people who are going to be affected by the change simply cannot be the ones that decide whether he stays or goes."

Hmm, well, Mixon and his allies are also people who are going to be affected by the change. And they are trying very hard to be"the ones that decide."

He also said the meeting was not held to"bash professors" although Mixon criticized some comments posted anonymously on the American Association of University Professors Web site calling for violence against meeting organizers.

I'm thoroughly familiar with the AAUP-USM message board--on which most posters are anonymous and many are not USM faculty members--and I've seen no such calls for violence. There have been calls for boycotts against businesses that participate in the Paving Company Putsch (and some objections to boycotting the businesses); that's all.

The Sun Herald article on the meeting combines more of Mixon's official statements with a few telling details about the way it was conducted.

In any event, the real purpose of the meeting at Warren Paving comes through in frank comments from people who attended it. This item is part of a series of posts"From Someone Who Was There":

The tone of the meeting was clearly a pro-[Shelby F. Thames] rally. It is important to note that all there were not buying the bill of goods being presented, but it was apparent that those responsible for organizing the meeting were there for the purpose of throwing their support behind SFT. That was a very clear message. The following are some points that were made during the meeting:

It was strongly suggested that only a few faculty are"inciting" the masses. [Former Provost and Faculty Senate President} Myron [Henry] was mentioned specifically as in,"That Myron Henry should have never been brought here!"

Stated that the no confidence votes that have happened in the past were coerced; that is, for fear of reprisal, non-tenured faculty voted along with the masses (for those of you reading this, all votes were by secret ballot!!!)

Those who get tenure, go on to be nonproductive faculty

The Hattiesburg American is biased against Dr. Thames and can't be trusted to print articles or statements correctly; one suggested boycotting the American by cancelling subscriptions or not buying advertising space

Those organizing the meeting that happened tonight have been threatened with bodily harm and boycotting; one participant proclaimed to have a pistol under the seat of his car and stated,"I'm not afraid of some faculty member."

If [Shelby F. Thames] leaves the University, it will not survive; who would want to come to a university in such turmoil?

All were urged to contact the IHL in support of SFT

Everyone was urged to visit the AAUP[-USM] web site [and message board}

There was no mention of SACS probation, the fall from Tier 3 to Tier 4 [in the US News rankings], the College of Business, Nursing, or any academic program for that matter--or the library

Shelby knows how to talk and work the legislature and that helps the university

Teaching faculty are jealous of the Athletic Department.

Okay folks, the tone of the meeting was exactly what one could expect based on the preceding articles in the paper [i.e., the Independent, which ran two more articles on the pro-Thames politicking yesterday]. It is clear to me that their motives were transparent. Love of the University was the least of them!!!!

The organizers' assumption was that"the invited business leaders" were not bright enough to realize this was a pro-Thames meeting. As each one began their presentation, it began with"this is not a pro-Thames meeting." The ending was always the same: I personally support Shelby and urge you to contact IHL and let them know you support Shelby and the changes he is making.

The implication that our local economy and personal businesses would suffer if Shelby left, because"they fear what the results would be."

The implication that the faculty was entirely to blame for the conflict. No mention was made of the SACS [accreditation] problems, the situation with the College of Business, the embarrassment over the enrollment mistake [when enrollment numbers were deliberately inflated in the Fall of 2003], or the lack of support for academic programs.

Responses to the Coca-Cola Cabal continue to be vigorous. USM's AAUP chapter adopted a resolution at a meeting yesterday afternoon and sent it off to the Mississippi IHL Board. It presents a 15-count indictment of Shelby Thames' role in imperiling the university's accreditation and impeding efforts to get USM off probation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. (I will link to it once it appears on the main AAUP-USM website.)

Obviously...to be continued.