Subj: SC letter on Leopold Center coup
Date: 11/3/2005 12:33:29 PM Central Standard Time
From: [log in to unmask] (Jim Diamond)
Sender: [log in to unmask] (Biotech Forum)
Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]</A> (Biotech Forum)
To: [log in to unmask]
For information -- here's Sierra Club's letter to the President and the
Provost of Iowa State University responding to the sudden removal of Fred
Kirschenmann as Director of the Leopold Center.
Jim
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Benjamin J. Allen, Provost
Iowa State University
Office of the Provost
1550 Beardshear Hall
Ames, Iowa 50011-2021
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Gregory L. Geoffroy, President
Iowa State University
1750 Beardshear Hall
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Dear Sirs:
You might suppose that Sierra Club, America's largest grassroots conservation
organization, is taking an interest in the Aldo Leopold Center just because
it's named after one of our environmental heroes. Beyond this, though, we have
respected the Center's work and educational program; we have learned from it;
and we have admired its energetic and charismatic director Fred Kirschenmann.
Above all, we have felt that Sustainable Agriculture deserved capital letters
and that the concept of Sustainability in how people manage to feed themselves
and their children now and in the future deserves the high levels of
emotional and intellectual commitment which Dr. Kirschenmann and the Center brought to
it. We are very distressed that there appears to be a change of direction for
the worse, accompanied by an abuse of the process by which the Center should
be governed if it itself is to be a sustainable institution. We are distressed
to hear that Dr. Kirschenmann has been asked to step down on very short
notice.
Personnel changes are not something we would ordinarily comment on, even when
they involve our heroes. But an abuse of process which seems clearly intended
to rein in a commitment to Sustainable Agriculture does harm to our mission
as well as to the Center's so we beg you to reconsider, and then to follow a
more transparent process including consultation with the Board. Naming a
successor and asking the Director to resign on short notice seems more like a
military coup than an academic proceeding. An open process is what is called for and
what we ask for. Prior to this, Dr. Kirschenmann should be reinstated and the
"interim" appointment of Dr. DeWitt should be rescinded.
For Sierra Club,
Jon Harvey, Chair, Agriculture Committee
Clark Buchner III, Sustainable Planet Strategy Team (agriculture liaison)
Laurel Hopwood, Chair, Genetic Engineering Committee
Jim Diamond, M.D., Sustainable Planet Strategy Team (genetic engineering
liaison)
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