Angry USC Faculty Calls for Probe Into Firing of Dean

USC President James H. Zumberge’s decision to fire Irwin C. Lieb, the highly respected dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, has provoked a strong attack by the university’s faculty against top administrators.

The rebellion, which has consumed the campus in the last two weeks, has included letters of protest to the USC Board of Trustees and an overwhelming vote by the Faculty Senate to investigate the affair. There have even been threats of a faculty vote of no confidence in Zumberge.

Some USC student leaders have joined the criticism with unusually sharp reports in the student newspaper and adoption of a resolution by the Student Senate demanding an explanation.

The complaints raise fundamental questions about Zumberge’s judgment in the matter and about the faculty’s right to be consulted on sensitive campus issues.

“This is a matter of grave concern to the faculty at USC,” said Gerald C. Davison, chairman of the psychology department. “We are not going to resign. We are not going to storm the administration building. All of us really like USC a great deal. . . . But this is no way to conduct business,” Davison said.

A few critics have gone so far as to cast the controversy as a battle between what one faculty member called “the old USC”--a university said to be preoccupied with football and its professional schools--and “the new USC”--a campus seeking to become a top-ranked undergraduate college and center for scholarship in the sciences and humanities.

Timothy Ferris, a professor of journalism, is an outspoken supporter of Lieb and has said many times that he, like many new faculty members, moved to USC largely because of the former dean’s influence.

“USC has always had a reputation as a country club school. When I was recruited, I was led to believe that was changing. As evidence of that, Chet Lieb was presented. He was a scholar of international repute. He symbolized a kind of commitment to excellence,” Ferris said.

Lieb, a 60-year-old philosopher and author of four books, is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a master’s degree from Cornell and a doctorate from Yale. He moved to USC in 1981 from the University of Texas at Austin.

The decision by Zumberge to immediately release Lieb from his five-year post as head of the largest academic unit on campus was made in a public announcement Oct. 8. It was made without prior consultation with the faculty and without public elaboration, except to note that the initial decision had been made more than a year ago.

Zumberge had agreed earlier to permit Lieb to remain on campus until June, the end of the academic year, and Lieb agreed to say he was resigning. The dismissal was moved up to Oct. 8, according to Lieb, because he decided he would “no longer endorse the deception” that he was leaving voluntarily to resume full-time teaching and research.

The controversy occurs at a particularly awkward time for the university. This spring USC is scheduled to announce a fund-raising campaign--the largest in the university’s 105-year history--that officials hope will yield more than half a billion dollars over five years.

In steadfastly refusing to give reasons for the dean’s dismissal, Zumberge and his top aides have argued that it is a personnel matter clearly within the purview of the administration.

What is more, Zumberge’s senior vice presidents and numerous other staff members have taken strong exception to the faculty criticism, offering a litany of examples of the president’s efforts to improve academic programs. In particular, they point to Zumberge’s effort to build the library into a major archive and research center and his longstanding commitment to improve the heart of the undergraduate program, the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. That commitment, they note, has been backed by a substantial increase in the college’s budget over the last three years.

The situation has been complicated by Zumberge’s recent unavoidable absence from campus. The 61-year-old geologist, who is in his own right an internationally known scientist, was operated on two weeks ago for cancer of the prostate.

In an interview last week at his home in San Marino, Zumberge responded to the faculty’s complaints, but he again refused to specify the reasons for firing Lieb.

“It is fully recognized by all deans, vice presidents and other administrators that they serve at the pleasure of the president,” Zumberge said. “The faculty has a role in almost every conceivable area of the university. . . . But not in this area.

“It was not a decision that was made lightly,” Zumberge continued. “It was made after many months of thought. I recognize that to them (some members of the faculty) the former dean had come to epitomize quality. . . . There is no question that this has deeply scarred their attitude about the future of the college. I knew this was a likely outcome when I made the decision, and that weighed heavily into my thinking.”

Yet, Zumberge said, there “is also no question” about his own commitment to academic excellence.

“From my very first word, when the announcement of my presidency was made in May of 1980, before I even arrived on campus, I stated my commitment to the humanities and liberal education. . . . The termination of Dr. Lieb should not be construed as a deviation from that commitment,” Zumberge said.

Search Under Way

Cornelius Pings, Zumberge’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, has been working the faculty lunch and tea circuit in recent days, seeking to deflect criticism by assuring the faculty that a search for a new dean is under way and should yield an excellent replacement for Lieb, perhaps from within the university.

One side effect of the Lieb controversy is that it has focused criticism on Pings, whom some faculty members have accused of engineering the dismissal to remove a potential rival as Zumberge’s successor. Pings, 59, an engineer with previous administrative experience at Caltech, has denied that he is campaigning for the USC presidency and makes a point of reminding faculty that he nominated Lieb for the USC job.

What most offends those opposed to the firing is that Lieb claims that he does not know the reasons for his dismissal, a charge both Pings and Zumberge emphatically deny.

“He was given explanations and he was given reasons,” Pings said. “He may not have been fully accepting of them or fully understanding of them.” Zumberge added, “The reasons were discussed with him over the period of many months.”

Even to those who are loyal supporters, there is no question that Lieb was, in the words of one, “a live wire” for USC.

“Wherever he went, sparks flew,” one of his friends said.

Friends and foes alike describe him as an articulate, gregarious and outspoken personality who is just as capable of being devastingly impatient and insufferably haughty as he is of being seductively charming and impressively stimulating.

Although there are few who will speak against him now, Lieb’s detractors in the administration contend privately that he was more “show than substance” and that, rather than trying to be diplomatic and get his ideas adopted by his fellow administrators, he made a point of making his colleagues look foolish when they moved too slowly or cautiously on projects.

For his part, Lieb said in an interview shortly after his dismissal that he cares deeply about USC and is sorry to leave. He remains, however, openly critical of his bosses.

In recounting one of his conversations with Zumberge, for example, Lieb said, “There was always a lot of business about not being a ‘team player.’ ”

“We are told,” Lieb quoted Zumberge as saying, “you say we don’t know what we are doing.”

“That’s true. That’s true,” Lieb said. “But I never said anything behind their backs that I didn’t say to their faces.”

“I admit I made mistakes. Oh, I made plenty of them,” Lieb said. “There was something scrappy and abrasive about me that made Pings nervous. I was not always as congenial as I might have been.”

But, Lieb contended, he got things done for USC.

Faculty members credit Lieb with setting up programs to recruit better undergraduates, with getting an international journalism program off the ground, with creating popular seminars to bridge the gap between athletics and academics, with being a driving force behind an elaborate multimillion-dollar neurosciences project and with engendering good will in Los Angeles’ Jewish community, where USC never previously had much presence.

Mostly, though, the faculty credits Lieb with attracting first-rate scholars to USC.

“It certainly is true he made a remarkable number of good appointments in the humanities and social sciences,” said Sidney W. Benson, professor of chemistry.

Seventeen high-ranking professors have sent a letter protesting the Lieb firing to George Scharfenberger, chairman of the USC board of trustees.

In its resolution calling for an investigation, passed by a 2-1 margin, the Faculty Senate accused the administration of running USC more like a corporation than like a university.

In a guest editorial in the Daily Trojan, Joe Saltzman, chairman of broadcasting in the school of journalism, called the firing of Lieb a “grievous and unforgivable act.”

“Someone should remind the president and his provost just what a university is supposed to be,” Saltzman wrote. “It is not a corporation in which team players and yes-men control its resources and opinions. . . .

“The business of administrators is to accommodate the faculty and students in every possible way, to create an environment in which faculty and students together can flourish.”

The Faculty Senate cited guidelines by the American Assn. of University Professors that insist that faculty members be consulted about the hiring and firing of administrators, although the final decision may rest with the president.

Some faculty members at USC hope that the Washington-based association will initiate its own investigation. Although the association is not empowered to discipline universities, its public denouncements are invariably seen as black marks for institutions.

Whatever happens, however, the administration and even many faculty members would like to leave the impression that this controversy will not be the undoing of USC.

J. Wesley Robb, professor of religion, said that, although he is sorry that such a strong dean has been fired, he is not convinced that the presence--or absence--of any one person on campus can make or break an institution.

“I’ve been here 32 years,” Robb said. “I’ve been through five administrations, and one thing I’ve discovered is that institutions are amazingly resilient.”

Zumberge concluded that there is simply not much that can be done about the controversy except to wait for it to pass. “Any good sailor figures the best way to get through a storm is to ride it out. . . .

“I don’t ask for their forgiveness,” Zumberge said. “I simply hope that in the fullness of time, this will recede to its proper place in the history of the university and in the history of my administration.”