Watching this play out here in Utah, I have some thoughts/questions:

If I was Huntsman and donated/created the Huntsman Cancer Institute, (w/my millions/billions of dollars donated..), I too, would want a BIG say in who ran it and who should be let go. If I too, was happy with how it was run w/Beckerle, then I would be pissed also.

The U. of. U. has stated that they can't comment on why someone is fired, which is standard for most companies....but why hasn't Beckerle come out and said why she was fired. (if she has, then I missed that). If she can't thru a NDA, then it sound like it was a settlement, not a termination.

Maybe...Beckerle is just collateral damage between a power play w/ the LDS leaders of the U. of U. and Huntsman.


Just some thoughts. Curious how this will play out.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Thanks for the info. What I don't see in the article is -why- she was fired, but here are some telling/interesting quotes:

""She's kind of the hands of the Huntsmans, the one who's helped to realize Jon Huntsman's vision for a top-ranked cancer center here in Utah,""

"He [Huntsman] said Pershing "was given misleading and inaccurate information from his underlings," and Huntsman singled out Lee, saying she hoped to "get control of the finances and the medical side and take over the cancer institute."

"He said he thinks the move to oust Beckerle was related to Lee seeking greater control of Huntsman Cancer Institute's cash reserves, including a budget surplus reportedly estimated at more than $30 million last year alone."


So she was Huntsman's right-hand man/person.. and Lee wanted more control over the money that Huntsman has donated to the HCI. Lee has been there only since 2011 and Huntsman has been donating large sums to the HCI and the U of U for many years now. Quite the pissing match.

Latest info. Dr. Lee at the U has resigned. The end of the article speculates as to why Beckerle was fired.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=44043827&nid=148

I write as someone who has had a lot of experience with boards and with academic institutions. My contention is that the University and even the state look really bad here.

First, it's easy to love a cancer warrior and hate a bureaucrat. It appears that Lee and Pershing fired Berkele in an impolite way and without having cleared the matter with Huntsman. Those are significant political mistakes. Maybe they were significant enough to warrant reconsideration of Pershing's and Lee's jobs.

That said, Lee was hired to reorganize the medical center. She was supposed to break down the barriers between different groups and eliminate redundancy in research, in particular, and also patient care. She has been doing that for about 5 years and is regarded nationally as having raised the U to the number one spot in terms of joint hospital-research centers. In that process she has fired a number of people via email, with Pershing's support, and hired about a dozen world-class research managers. She has implemented the university's policy more or less as the university wanted.

With that in mind what has happened at the U over the last couple of weeks is nothing short of a coup d'etat. The university was pursuing its stated policy, and Burton, the relevant subcommittee of the Trustees, and President Pershing all endorsed what Lee did before the fact. It was university policy both in general and in the specific Berkele case. The administration was unified.

Enter Huntsman. He denounces the Berkele discharge, calls the entire U leadership incompetent and corrupt, calls former-Presiding-Bishop Burton inept and irresponsible, calls Lee unethical, and demands wholesale change at the top. He then has the newspaper he owns, the Tribune, publish an editorial saying that the U needs new leadership.

Several of those statements are libelous, particularly the things he said about Lee and Pershing. If those two were not "public figures" under the law, they could sue Huntsman and earn big settlements for their career losses and emotional harm.

The next thing that happened was the announcement of a meeting on Tuesday. Huntsman apparently had assurances about the outcome of that meeting beforehand because he announced that Berekele was about to get her job back and the Lee problem would be resolved. Already he'd narrowed his attack to exclude Pershing, meaning that the personnel matter--Lee as scapegoat for Pershing and Burton--had been agreed before the Board of Trustees met. Huntsman's making this public statement meant that he didn't even respect the Trustees enough to make it appear that they were going to hold objective meetings on the issue. He was saying that he'd already arranged the outcome, that the Board was his instrument.

After that meeting, the cancer institute was taken out of medical center and made a direct report to the president, Pershing. Thus the coup. An outsider, Huntsman, had changed the University's organizational structure. Also, Lee, whose actions had already been approved by the Trustees, by Burton, and by Pershing, was fired and Berkele reinstated. Huntsman had, by himself, not only changed the governance structure but reversed Board personnel policy. There wasn't even a hearing on whether Lee had violated any university rules. In short, Huntsman showed that he is more powerful at the U than the president, the chairman of the board, and the board itself.

This does immense damage to the University. Large numbers of people were happy with what Huntsman did because Berkele is a highly regarded cancer warrior, but 15 senior department heads and others who were brought in by Lee and shared her (and Pershing's and Burton's) strategy for the University penned a protest letter explaining that they were deeply upset. Clearly some of those people are going to leave. Moreover the U is going to lose some number of world-class people whom it was recruiting because those scholars and administrators have seen that the U's promises are worthless. I would also expect the U Med Center to fall in the national rankings both because it has abandoned the quest for greater integration and because the quality of its faculty and administration will decline.

Let's give up the pretense. The Medical Center should be renamed the "Huntsman Medical Center" and the University should become Huntsman University. It is he who is calling the shots and he has no regard for the University's reputation and administrative structure. He humiliated the U, announcing policy changes before the board even met to consider those changes. The state looks terrible, too, since it is the body that ostensibly controls the University. The church also looks bad both because it has representatives on the Board, including Burton, whom Huntsman insulted and whose previous decisions Huntsman overturned.

The most important point is that charities and academic institutions must never let a single donor become so large and so important that he can bring the institution to its knees. The U made a major mistake in taking so much money from one source and in not writing contracts that prohibited the assertion of such brutal power. Huntsman should never have been allowed, for instance, to go public with this stuff nor to have attacked people with words like "corrupt" and "incompetent" and "unethical." The power struggle should have occurred behind closed doors and been conducted with a modicum of decorum.

More broadly, it may be time to rename the state as well. Huntsman has already bought the governorship once, and he has now humiliated a state-run university and the people in the state administration that oversee that university. The irony is that most of us were grateful when the Huntsmans displaced the church as buyer of effective control over the Tribune because we thought that would ensure that the paper remained an independent source of information and opinion. What we have now, however, is the Trib functioning in Citizen Kane fashion as the mouthpiece for a man so rich that he can reverse university and state policy.

As Mel Brooks so often said, "It's good to be king".

I'd care if cancer were an actual problem. I mean it is, in a political and cultural kind of way. Technology-wise, no problem.

http://www.sltrib.com/news/5239033-155/university-of-utah-president-stepping-down

I wonder where they will find a new university president. Perhaps one of Huntsman's nine children would consent to do the job--in the public interest of course.

>I wonder where they will find a new university president.


Any other GA's kids in academia besides Holland?

My daughter works for the University health Care system, tho' I won't divulge in which position/department. Her text message to me, following Dr. Lee's resignation:

"Crazy. We have like zero leadership left. No CEO, no COO, no VP, and lots of empty department director seats"

I'm sure Huntsman would be willing to pick people to fill those slots. . .

Seriously, the problem is he obviously doesn't care about the University other than his eponymous Huntsman Center. The Center may thrive, but the University has just taken a debilitating blow.

That's what I was wondering, the pissing contest between the U and Huntsman. I don't know who is right/wrong in this.

I still say that if I was donating the millions that Huntsman has donated over the years, you better be calling me if the organization w/my name on it, wanted to fire its leader.

Firing thru email- If true, then not professional at all.

Firing because of faulty info that someone tried to correct w/the U. leadership, but still use it- if true then, then completely unethical.

In the end, I haven't heard one bad word about Beckerle, from anyone else, other than Lee and Pershing (and they have been very evasive as to -why-). Many at the U., didn't seem to like Lee.

Where was the leadership from Pershing during this whole mess? He's basically become a lap dog for legislature to bully when he threw Athletic Director Chris Hill under the bus because Utah didn't want to play BYU in basketball. They scolded him like a five year old and stuck him with an audit as he withered under the pressure. He completely blew it by not calling Huntsman about the change now the Health Sciences at the U have been publically embarrassed. Lee is not administrative angel and has many enemies, but in the end she was also tossed to the wolves to save his job.

And 3 2 1......The University of Utah is searching for a new president.

This article is really worth reading. The DN is very careful not to accuse Huntsman of too much, but the story is remarkable and the implication--that Elder Huntsman and not Lee was the one attempting the coup--is inescapable. Also, the documentary evidence shows that his public statements even today are dishonest.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865679041/The-inside-story-Power-and-money-at-center-of-U-controversy.html

I've thought this stunk from day one. I had no idea.

Vivian Lee was hired to integrate the health services. She was doing that with the support of the president and the board.

Huntsman launched a bid to takeover the bits of the university that that did cancer research that were outside of his center. The power grab was thus Huntsman's, not the university's.

Berkele was fired for creating new positions and hiring new people without the approval of the university. In effect, she and Huntsman were already acting as if they were independent. THAT was the coup.

President Pershing and the board supported Lee's (and Pershing's) firing of Berkele because she was making personnel decisions without the university's permission. She was acting well beyond her authority. The university leadership was united in agreeing that Huntsman's power grab had to be stopped.

The university's decision in these circumstances to reverse its position and reinstate Berkele is a complete capitulation. The University of Utah is now a subsidiary of Huntsman's ego.

I separate this out because it is more speculative, perhaps even a conspiracy theory.

I'm struck by the fact that the Tribune supported Huntsman in this and the Deseret News took him on. After all, Huntsman is a GA emeritus and the DN does nothing but praise power. This new reporting seems unusual.

Could it be that the DN or even the church is upset that the Tribune humiliated BYU about the sexual violence stuff? The fact that the DN has done a major investigation and concluded that Huntsman is a liar seems remarkable to me. Has it ever done such aggressive reporting before? I wonder if perhaps we are seeing an indirect war between the church and the Huntsman empire.

That may be reaching too far. . .

The Desert News might be circling the wagons around David Burton who Huntsman threw under the bus.

This stuff is astounding.

The Tribune has now replied to the Deseret News article. I never thought I'd say that the DN has done better reporting on an issue than the Trib or that the Trib was the paper doing the "spinning." But such are the facts.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5244197-155/huntsman-cancer-institute-backers-want-more

This article pretty much admits that it was Huntsman who was trying to grab power. The two sides had a contract governing their relations from 2014 to 2024 and it was Huntsman who wanted to trash that document in favor of a new contract making the cancer center a direct report to the university president, giving it more money, and other concessions. The Trib reports that the Huntsmans had signed an "agreement" embodying those principles but the university had not. Obviously, it was not an agreement.

The Trib tries to spin Huntsman's document as binding but it does so in transparent fashion. It reports that "Berckele's powers "and the other points were under discussion." Again, "under discussion" is far from a mutual agreement let alone a contract.

Now Huntsman has won on all points and both Lee and Pershing have resigned. They were thrown under the bus by a university that had let a single donor become far too powerful. There is nothing in either the DN or the Trib reports that substantiates Huntsman's public claims that Lee and Pershing were corrupt and Lee was unethical. The questionable behavior is almost entirely on Huntsman's side.

The other point, again, is that the church must surely have signed off on the DN article. That paper is a wholly owned subsidiary of the church and it was attacking a former General Authority (Huntsman). I can't see how the DN could have done that without the approval of the COB. If that is true, then Huntsman and the church are at war.

Who would have thought that the DN would have such lucid reporting of this shitstorm? The DN article probably gave us the most details we're going to get. Dollars to donuts, our Legislature will be doing the fandango with the Huntsman clan for their impending audit. All's well in Zion; yeah, Zion prospereth.

Huntsman is an emeritus GA, probably the richest man in Utah and has contributed untold $$$ in tithing and donations to the church.

Does anyone here think it possible that Huntsman has NOT received the second anointing?

Assuming he has, there is not much at all (if anything) that the church can do to discipline him any longer. Once you have been irrevocably confirmed a god, normal church rules no longer apply. All the COB can do now is snipe via the DN.

Wonder if this episode may make them rethink their whole 2A concept.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

Thank you Lord Acton.

A surprise to me as well as our esteemed Boner, the Deseret News is still pumping out useful material on this subject.

www.deseretnews.com/article/865679106/Lawmaker-wants-more-clarity-on-U-relationship-with-Huntsman-Cancer-Institute.html

The best observations are buried in this article. What struck me are

1. "Huntsman told the Deseret News that the U. would have missed out on a major donation from the Huntsman Cancer Foundation if it were not for that reversal." There you have the reason that Lee and Pershing were cut loose.

2. The Board of Regents' spokeswoman said, "We do have a policy about donations to universities. . . We will be looking at our policies, including that one, to see if it needs to be updated." Too little, too late. Most big institutions use policies to prevent any single donor from becoming too big, not to curtail a donor's influence once he has achieved that stature.

3. The Speaker of the House says, "You can’t put the Huntsman family in the donor category. They are a unique family."

So if the Huntsmans are not donors to the university, what are they? Owners?