Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy... But Not Here!
When one reviews the corruption pervading the American academic intellectual world in the 1990s with regards teaching and research, the political corruption, the personal corruption, the institutional financial corruption-it is difficult not to believe in a destructive force at work, a fatal hubris. The one thread that seems to link all these corruptions is the intellectual arrogance of the players, their sense of being superior, their tendency to view others with disdain. That thread is a shameless breaking of the ordinary rules of society, as if, somehow, the breakers of the rules were earthly gods, incapable of being called to account...
           —Martin Anderson, Imposters In The Temple

The American Dissident was created as a direct result of corruption experienced first hand at Fitchburg State College, the "Leadership College."  The following is the account of that corruption.  The local, state, and student newspapers were (and still are) entirely indifferent to it and refused to report it, despite the editor's constant efforts to interest them.  If you would like to contact the editor, send an email to todslone@yahoo.com.  By the way, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education accords Fitchburg State College a RED light rating for censoring student speech (see www.thefire.org/index.php/codes/734).  That is the worst rating it accords. 

This is what the editor wrote Michael Pyshnov, a Toronto University professor who contacted me because he blew the whistle: "You mention in your article that professors were silenced.  You are wrong.  Professors aren't silenced:  They willingly shut their mouths for money and careerism.  Corruption in academe is perhaps widespread.  Fight it tooth and nail... for it will fight you tooth and nail as soon as you buck the system.  But also open your eyes widely:  Grow from the fight. Extrapolate!" 

For a rare instance of honesty from the mouth of a college president, read the following article from Review Journal (Las Vegas).  It clearly evokes Fitchburg State College and what I witnessed as full-time professor.  Oddly, the Chronicle of Higher Education refused to cover that story and mine.  

Nepotism, or What Makes Massachusetts, Massachusetts.

Salem State College corruption. This newspaper account of a sexual harassment scandal at Salem State College in Massachusetts helps illustrate how public-college faculty and administrators operate.

Scanned documents and essays.  These documents form a precise case study.  The faculty evaluation documents alone should prove fascinating to anybody interested in academic corruption. They illustrate how arbitrarily and capriciously professors are and can be evaluated by corrupt-minded administrators. The sole criteria of "collegiality" (a devious and highly subjective personnel-management tool which essentially designates the degree of ones obedience and subservience to power, as well as ones willingness to remain silent in the face of colleague corruption) can often make or break a professor irrespective of his or her teaching ability and accomplishments. In my case, egregious omission of achievements and false statements (lies) constituted the modus operandi of my two successive chairperson evaluators, Drs. Harry Semerjian and Richard DeCesare, both designated professor emeriti. Vice President of Academic Affairs Franz Nowotny and presidents Vinny Mara and Michael Riccards, in evident disregard for the truth and justice, willingly and happily backed the fraudulent evaluations. With the exception of one professor, the entire Fitchburg State College tenured faculty, obsessed with monetary issues and apathetic to intellectual ones, also proved wholly indifferent to truth and justice.

The corruption examined on this website, which essentially destroyed my career and livelihood, was generally of a retaliatory nature and began with my decision, after three months of being pursued by my department chairperson in the beginning of my first year, no longer to call or visit his home on weekends as he'd continuously requested. The consequent sexual harassment complaint I filed against him because of his negative evaluation evidently angered administrators. Points of corruption illustrated by my case include due-process violation, fraudulent faculty evaluations, fraudulent sexual harassment complaint procedures, nepotism, cronyism, prevarication, secrecy, as well as “kept” student newspaper editors.

No doubt, corruption will continue thriving in public higher education in Massachusetts due largely to the bulk of indifferent and contented professors. It will also continue thriving because of institutionalized secrecy. It will surface sporadically in the media. Unfortunately, no ombudsperson exists to deal with it. The American Dissident would like to assume that responsibility. Just the same, it has been next to impossible getting the journal on the shelves of the nation's business-as-usual college and university libraries. Even Northeastern University (MA) and Middlebury College (VT), from which I hold degrees, refuse to subscribe. Only the University of Buffalo and University of Wisconsin have subscribed. I've offered Fitchburg State College a free subscription, but its library refuses to respond.

It has been impossible for me, a mere citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to determine the extent of corruption in the public colleges because the Massachusetts State College Association faculty union, thanks to its Faustian contracts, will not permit public access to its public college records, including arbitration hearings and grievance complaints.

Public Citizen has been publishing a list of questionable doctors. In vain, I've requested that it also publish a list of dubious professors and college administrators. After all, public higher education shapes the very soul of the nation. At Fitchburg State College, a list of those apathetic to truth and justice ought be topped by presidents Riccards and Mara, Dean Shirley Wagner, Emeriti Semerjian and DeCesare, Director of Personnel Mary Scott, Director of Academic Advising Joan Niehaus, Dean of Continuing Education Michele Zide (who had been evaluating, as far as I know, her teaching husband, a local judge), Professors Nan Wiegersmeier, Charlie Hetzel, Jane Fiske (current Humanities chairperson), Louis Lorenzen, Robert Champlin, Robin Dinda, Carol Sickul, James Colbert, Walter Jeffco, Richard Glidewell, and Maria Jaramillo. The list ought also include the lawyers and administrators of the MSCA professors' union (part of the all-powerful Massachusetts Teachers Association, which is part of the National Education Association), The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Sentinel, The Concord Journal, The Worcester Telegram, Thought & Action, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Adjunct Advocate, Lingua Franca, Academe, College English, as well as former Poet Laureate of the US Congress Robert Pinsky and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, both Fitchburg State College graduation speakers who would much rather collect big bucks for speaking engagements at corrupt institutions than examine the corrupt hand feeding them. They evidently chose not to respond to my letters.

Secrecy of all public college and university records and absence of state freedom of information and whistleblower legislation have resulted, indubitably, in unabated behind-the-scenes corruption in all public Massachusetts colleges and universities. Intellectual and moral corruption, known euphemistically, that is comfortably amongst the corrupt, as politics, mismanagement, or in-fighting, plagues public institutions of higher education throughout the country and, especially, in Massachusetts. It is rampant, unchecked, and encouraged by senior administrators, faculty and politicians, and most of all appears to be well-accepted by the media. It has been fostering the growth of a corporate-functionary mindset of self-censorship, happy-face positivism, and absolute obedience to authority amongst the citizenry, to the grave detriment of hardcore critical thinking, which is imperative for a democracy to thrive.

In his introduction to The Iron Heal, H. Bruce Franklin notes how Jack London foresaw, amongst other things, “the deliberate economic subversion of public education in order to spread illiteracy and ignorance” and “the government conspiring in witch hunts aimed at dissident labor leaders, professors, and authors." My case serves to illustrate the subversion of public higher education in Massachusetts, where ignorance of or indifference to the current system of injustice, prevarication, cronyism, nepotism, self-censorship, and general diminished free speech and expression. It underscores the conspiracy of silence and inaction on the part of the state government, media, the Massachusetts State College Association (MSCA-MTA) faculty union and the Council of College Presidents.

Blind institutional patriots such as the large majority of college professors will evidently not be convinced of any assertions made on this website. Unfortunately, academics generally tend to prefer silence to action when corruption is in their midst, no matter how egregious. Try to find just one faculty member or administrator at Fitchburg State College who would be willing to rebut this web site. Good luck. The lame excuses will be plentiful, including total denial, rationalization, lack of time, or simply, "Fuck you, Tod." That's what Professor Walter Jeffco had said to me, and he is sadly a specialist in ethics. Social psychologist C. Tarvis wrote: "To those in power, all whistle-blowers, dissenters and boat-rockers are obnoxious, at least while they remain lone rebels... The ideas that rebels expound tend not to be attacked by those in power. The latter are inclined rather to kill the messenger by character assassination. For example, one rebel was said to be a womanizer... bitter... disloyal... and even, in the words of one accuser, dangerously mentally ill."

Finally, periodic reminders of Lionel Lewis' Scaling the Ivory Tower (1975), Charles J. Sykes' Profscam (1988) and Martin Anderson's Imposters in the Temple (1992) are desperately needed, for it is essential that the corrupt be reminded that some of us do not fear them and continue to bark implacably at their iron heel of iniquity. Let this web site serve as one of those reminders and let the author/editor be, as Sykes termed it, one of those “voices crying in the wilderness” from hence change may eventually occur. “Help is on the way” was Sykes' closing statement. But over a decade later, I don't see help anywhere...

ALL MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHT ©G. Tod Slone, 2007, The American Dissident (www.theamericandissident.org), a 501c3 nonprofit