Remember old Sox skipper Jimy Williams, who would answer any questions of his perversely surreal managing with the brushoff, “Manager’s decision”?
Maybe he’s giving PR advice to UMass board chair Steven Tocco.
See, UMass President Jack Wilson is getting rid of popular and effective UMass Amherst chancellor John Lombardi, and decided to take his job in addition to keeping his own — President, Chancellor, and doubtless Lord High Executioner. Apparently he didn’t bother to ask the UMass board about the whole thing. Funny — he must’ve just forgotten to let them in on it, right?
And Tocco says hey, they didn’t really have to know, anyway:
Tocco said the combining of the two positions is a management change and does not need board approval. “I do know there is a clear consensus on the board (to)… see if this model can work.”
He said the board will review it afterward. “The board is going to be intimately involved all along.”
In case you don’t have your translator ring: Intimately involved means signing off on a fait accompli. Got that?
And it’s just so very interesting and conveeenient that Chancellor Lombardi can’t won’t comment to confirm that he, in fact, agreed to have his boss take his job. Imagine that!
“One university”, under Wilson, with transparency and truthfulness for … whom, exactly?
The “popular and effective” John Lombardi received a Phoenix Muzzle Award in 2003 for supporting an FBI investigation — aided and abetted by UMass police — into the views of a UMass professor who was both a native of Iraq and an opponent of the U.S.-led war. The professor was an opponent of Saddam Hussein, and many of his family members had been executed by the regime.
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You can read about it here.
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Lombardi may otherwise be doing a good job. But at least on that one occasion he demonstrated a stunning lack of regard for freedom of expression.
What is Tocco up to and at who’s behest? Whatever it is , it is to no one’s benefit other than Mr. Tocco et al.