You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
As the new president of the University of Southern California takes the reins of the embattled institution today, she faces several challenges.
Carol Folt’s debut follows a very blunt and public assessment of USC’s “administrative culture” by the ousted dean of the business school, whose last official day in that role was Sunday. The dean, James Ellis, criticized the university’s controversial handling of his removal from the position and said it reflected a larger culture of “secrecy and cover-up” at the institution that has been beset by one controversy after another in recent years.
“USC clearly needs the kind of transparent and accountable reform that university leaders say they are pursuing,” Ellis wrote in an op-ed published Sunday in the Los Angeles Times. “But the facts and circumstances of my departure demonstrate that university administrators remain desperate to show public ‘progress,’ even as its administrative culture continues to default toward secrecy and cover-up.”
The article, headlined “Setting the record straight about my departure from USC,” was not Ellis’s only public salvo. Although he’d remained largely silent publicly since his departure was announced last December -- his surrogates and supporters were very vocal, however -- Ellis also released a three-page letter to the “Marshall Family” of current and former students, faculty and staff of USC's Marshall School of Business outlining the breach between him and the university’s leaders.
