Anatomy Of A Rebellion: Inside The Revolt Against Stanford GSB Dean Garth Saloner

Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy                 – Stanford photo by Linda A. Cicero

A third testimonial outlines a staff placement, for which a woman was being considered, in a role that required working closely with Saloner. The hiring manager asked the woman to take the role, but then Saloner overruled the decision. “She had been told by Garth that he had enough people with strong opinions surrounding him, and he really just wanted a ‘yes man’ for the role who ‘did what he was told,’” according to the testimonial. The university declined to comment on the specifics of these allegations.   

INVESTIGATION SAID TO BE CONFINED ONLY TO LIABILITY WINDOW

Etchemendy, at the meeting with the Group of 46 representatives, had promised an external investigation. Leaders of the delegation, who waited six months for the probe to be concluded, describe it as a whitewash. Most telling, they suggest, was that the investigation largely covered incidents occurring within the previous three years, the period in which the school could be legally liable under the California statute of limitations for claims against employers. The investigation found no evidence of a hostile workplace or discrimination on the basis of age or gender. While Benjamin had felt during the meeting with the provost that he was realizing that real problems existed, the probe he ordered failed to address them, she says. “The investigation was clearly only about the liability,” Benjamin asserts. 

When the delegates later learned that Etchemendy had come into the meeting with them after having let Saloner stay involved in decisions about Phills, the provost’s behavior in the meeting appeared to make more sense, Benjamin says. “That was probably why he was so on edge at the beginning,” she says.

As for her former dean’s behavior, Benjamin believes it’s rooted in narcissism. “When I’m talking narcissist, I’m not talking about the healthy narcissistic leader that you read about in (the Harvard Business Review), I’m talking about the clinical definition of a maladaptive narcissist – self-absorbed, arrogant, demeaning, unremorseful, with a total lack of empathy.”

PICTURE PAINTED OF MASTER MANIPULATOR

She describes her former superior as an expert and merciless manipulator. “You start playing people off one another. Somebody’s your absolute favorite, you hold them up, you break the rules so they can have more funding, you appoint them to different things,” Benjamin says. “He’s very strategic and political, and he knows who the power holders are and how to give them things that will keep them happy and quiet. He’s a master at . . . keeping the natives happy – just keep them well fed and they won’t say anything.”

Underlings differ with Saloner at their peril, she says. “He cuts you down in front of other people if you disagree with him, so people become less and less likely to disagree.”

All it takes is one or two disagreements – perhaps as mild as saying, “I don’t think this is the best idea” – and a staffer falls out of the dean’s graces, she says. “You lose your funding. You’re pushed out of positions. He talks about you to others in a very negative way. It was like being in a boys’ locker room – rolling of the eyes, little jokes, it was just embarrassing.”

Even faculty were not immune, Benjamin claims. Those perceived as on-side with Saloner were showered with funding, and given light teaching loads and other perks, setting an example that those who went along with the dean would reap rewards. Faculty who pushed back on anything “became marginalized very, very quickly,” Benjamin says. “He’d remove an appointment. He wouldn’t give them the time of day. Once you’re tenured there’s nothing that really matters more than status. Saloner knows how to play the status card and he plays the game ruthlessly.”