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Grant Smith, who wrote the brilliant essay challenging University of St. Thomas president Dennis Dease to embrace the values it taught in its now defunct Master of International Management program, dropped me a note stating that he received a reply from the school:

I am beginning to agree with your blog posting: University of St. Thomas needs a new president

Dease returned my diploma (intact with the “return to sender” stamp) and a letter with his official statement, but no comment on whether the whistle blowing hero of this saga will be reinstated.

I am really, truly beginning to believe this guy “just doesn’t get it”, which unfortunately, is a sign of the times.

Outrageous.

Click here to view a copy of Dease’s letter and click here to view Grant’s response.

Grant’s right. UST “continues to lack the leadership values America so desperately needs.” The school desperately needs new leadership. Seeing that the school’s board of trustees includes a candidate for U.S. Senate, can we expect to see any leadership on the issue from Mike Ciresi?

Ciresi’s campaign slogan is: “Many promise change. Mike delivers.”

Mike, when will you deliver?

I’m still in Ecuador, using a public terminal with a slow connection. So, quickly…

Today’s Minnesota Daily posted a commentary by Thomas Sullivan, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Minnesota, on universities as places and spaces for imagination. He writes:

I believe we must invite more of our students to directly participate in the imaginative process of problem-solving, including testing and evaluating potential solutions, as our University’s new student learning outcomes require. Such efforts take experience, passion, dedication, resources and uninterrupted periods of time and reflection. But this is the important imaginative space that only great universities can offer and sustain - spaces to optimize diverse, persistent, critical thought.

Although his message was focused on protecting tenure, it looks like he’s been reading about leapfrogging…!

A little side commentary on the University of St. Thomas, where I got my Master of International Management degree. In recent years, the school has made decisions to bring in radical extremist speakers such as Ann Coulter (and physically silence any students with challenging questions) and ban more-progressive speakers such as Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu from speaking. Fellow MIM alum, Grant F. Smith, wrote an outstanding piece on the issue. A highlight:

When President Dennis Dease denied Archbishop Desmond Tutu an opportunity to speak on the University of St. Thomas campus, he was quietly responding to the opaque pressures of a dangerous national trend. None of the names of the many great and sometimes controversial speakers and professors who grappled with and educated me appears on my diploma. However, the name “Dennis Dease” does.

I believe that the reputation and comportment of a university follow degree recipients long after they’ve graduated. This is why I mailed my diploma back to Dease, stamped “return to sender.”

Brilliant.

The spotlight needs to be placed on President Dennis Dease. Let us not forget Dease’s comments on Coulter. where he cited support for the Board of Trustee’s statement on controversial speakers:

…St. Thomas values “the diversity of viewpoints reflective of a larger society” and “also recognizes and accepts its responsibility to respond to the dynamic tension that exists between the challenges of contemporary living and educating within the living Catholic tradition.”

“The university exists as an environment which not only allows, but encourages, members of its community to ask questions and openly explore challenging ideas in their personal search for truth,” the statement continues. “Open forums through which controversial issues may be addressed in a responsible and educative manner will be available. More important, the university will ensure that these dialogues occur in an arena free of reproach or reprisal…

Hypocrisy, anyone?