Marshall Dean Ellis: No Anger, Just Sadness By A Firing He Considers Unjust

THE UNIVERSITY FINALLY ALLOWED THE DEAN TO SEE THE COMPLAINTS ONLY TWO MONTHS AGO

Little more than two months ago, the university finally agreed to let him see the OED complaints. Instead of 104 or 84 files that Blanton had told him existed, there were only 59 files besides seven other complaints which were not included, either because the OED said they were “unavailable or because they involve ongoing or highly sensitive matters.”

Instead of reviewing the files himself, Ellis asked three senior Marshall administrators, including a female tenured faculty member, to read them on his behalf. They conducted an intensive examination that spanned two sessions and more than six hours. What the review team found shocked them. Some of the 59 files consisted of little more than a few lines of handwritten notes. One had nothing to do with the Marshall School at all: the case file involved the university’s Keck School of Medicine. Two cases were duplicates and two others were so incomplete that it was impossible to determine whether any follow-up had occurred.

No less crucial, some 23 cases – or 39% – consisted of allegations made by staff or faculty members against each other. Dean Ellis was copied on eight of those cases. Six were determined to have violated university policy. The disposition of all of those cases was decided by the university’s central HR or legal departments.

Another 18 cases – or 31% – were inquiries that never led to investigations. These included a faculty member seeking advice about helping a student with a potential Title IX claim against another student, and a faculty member who emailed seeking a clarification on policy.

A REVIEW TEAM WAS STUCK BY THE INCONSISTENCY & DISORGANIZATION OF THE RECORDS

Thirteen other cases – or 22% – led to investigations of claims by students that a professor made them feel uncomfortable, harassed or discriminated against. Dean Ellis was copied on five of those cases. Two were found to have violated university policy but the disposition of those cases was decided by the university’s central HR or legal departments. During the 10-year period in question, OED reported up to the provost on complaints involving faculty members and to the senior vice present of administration on matters involving staff; OED did not report to the deans of the various schools at USC.

The review team was particularly struck by the inconsistency and disorganization of the OED records. Most lacked the investigative rigor expected from a university that professes to take gender and equity issues seriously. Missing altogether were any contextual or comparative data to determine how Marshall’s rate of complaints and alleged culture problem compares to other campus schools or to other business schools across the country.

The review team concluded that the files contradict USC’s characterization of a problematic culture at Marshall and that they do not provide any evidence that Ellis or his leadership team tolerated inappropriate behavior during his 12-year tenure as dean of the business school.

ASSAILS USC LEADERSHIP FOR A ‘FALSE NARRATIVE WOVEN TO JUSTIFY MY OUSTER’

The 59 cases represented an average of six complaints per year in USC’s largest school with nearly 6,000 students, 250 faculty members and 300 staffers. The review of case files found no indication that Dean Ellis was even notified of 78%, or 46 of the 59 cases. More telling is that even in those rare instances when Ellis was looped into the process, the outcome was largely determined by the university’s centralized legal or HR departments. Thus, the decision-making on discipline for the vast majority of cases was out of Ellis’ hands,

Neither the numbers nor the facts changed Ellis’ outcome. Incoming President Carol Folt, who begins her job on July 1, decided not to intervene and to allow Austin’s decision to stand. If Ellis wanted a chance to clear his name, he would have to do it himself, a conclusion that led to yesterday’s letter to the Marshall community in which he assails the administration for what he calls “the false narrative woven by USC’s administration to justify my ouster.” Without directly naming Austin, Quick, Amir or Caruso, Ellis accuses the university’s leadership of releasing ”fabrications” and “damning misinformation about me…The university’s administration painted a picture of Marshall that is both inaccurate and offensive… There was no pattern of harassment or discrimination at Marshall (see Marshall’s Ousted Dean Assails USC For ‘Fabrications.’)”

Ellis is still befuddled by a system that largely keeps complaints about harassment and discrimination hidden from the deans who, like him, may ultimately be held accountable for them. “If the dean is going to be held responsible, the dean has to be let in on these issues when they are reported,” he says. “If you want to take care of it, fine. If you want the dean to take care of it, fine. But the dean needs to know. You can’t hide these complaints until the end. I never had an option to do anything. Just about everything has been done outside my purview.”

IF THE DEAN DIDN’T MISHANDLE THE COMPLAINTS, WHY WAS HE FIRED?

Asked if he were a woman or a minority, does Ellis think he would have lost his job? “No,” he says emphatically. “I’m an old white guy. I am the oldest and the whitest,” he laughs. “I don’t want to call it reverse discrimination. I don’t want to bring the race card in. I don’t even want to think that. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

So if Ellis did not mishandle the complaints that found their way into the university’s OED files, why would USC want him out? That is a question with no clear answer. Speculation is rife across campus. One possible rationale is that the university discovered that Wharton Dean Geoff Garrett was interested in returning to Los Angeles and wanted to come to USC. This theory suggests that Quick and Austin viewed luring a Wharton dean to USC as something of a coup. They just needed to create a vacancy at the Marshall School to make it happen.

Another school of thought is that President Austin was led astray by Provost Quick and General Counsel Amir who were trying to divert attention from themselves in the face of a series of increasingly damaging scandals over the prior 18 months and greatly underestimated the controversy Ellis’ removal would cause.  If Austin wanted to clean house at USC, some believe, she should have fired the provost who as chief operating officer of the university was as responsible for USC’s scandals as its president. It did not go unnoticed when last summer, a former vice dean of USC’s medical school testified that he had told Quick of his concern about the well-being of then med school dean, Carmen A. Puliafito, long before the scandal broke at the Keck School.

DEAN ELLIS’ SUPPORTERS WEIGH SEVERAL REASONS FOR HIS TERMINATION

The vice dean met with Quick about his suspicions after getting reports in early 2016 that Puliafito would return to his medical office to see patients within hours of using methamphetamine. He said he told Quick he was shocked that USC did not require Puliafito to seek treatment. USC did not report Puliafito to the medical board, allowing him to remain on the faculty and continue seeing patients for another 16 months. Quick would later say in a statement that the information from the vice dean led him to investigate Puliafito and to end his deanship. But Quick insisted that the vice dean did not share any information with him about drug use by the dean.  Whatever the case may be, both Quick and Amir left the university on June 30^th.

Finally, another hypothesis holds that Ellis was the victim of a long-simmering dispute between the Marshall School and the Sol Price School of Public Policy over which institution would house a future real estate school.  Removing the dean, and his opposition would leave a clear pathway for the real estate school to be located in the public policy school, which counts Rick Caruso as one of its longstanding supporters.  

All of these possible rationales have been floated because it makes no sense to Ellis’ supporters among Marshall’s faculty, staff, alumni, students and parents to remove him when Marshall under his leadership is just hitting its stride and because they believe he has done nothing wrong. Regardless, Ellis spent most of his final month in the job with the school’s donors, thanking them for their generosity and support while he was dean. “I didn’t want to walk out of here angry or vindictive because it wouldn’t do me any good,” he confides. “I think they are so wrong in the way they’ve treated me. I think they are wrong in not paying me for the rest of my contract. I’m more sad than anything else. I gave everything I had for 12 years and I’m sad that that has not been recognized to the point where I would be allowed to stay and do it for three more. But I have a lot of things I can do in my life. I’m sorry I have to leave my team and our students.”

‘TOO MANY TEARS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SHED’

Though he was to leave his office, already stripped of all belongings and memories, last Friday, he had quietly arranged to spend his last day on campus on Monday. He hadn’t told his team he would not be there on his last official day in office, preferring instead to fly to Chicago to meet with USC alumni. “Too many tears have already been shed,” he says. “I feel a loss, and leaving would be too emotional because I’ve put a lot into this. So I wanted to do this without tears being shed on either side. I’m really okay with it. Now I’m a tenured professor and I can still go back and teach.”

And yet even though he ditched all his USC clothes and quietly left his office without fanfare, his supporters want to throw a final celebration for him this fall. Greif, among Ellis’ most devoted advocates, believes the dean deserves a big thank you for his service to USC.  “Jim Ellis should not leave USC on a downbeat. Both he and his deanship should be celebrated. Jim is the most successful and honorable dean Marshall has had in the four decades I have been associated with the school,” Greif declares. 

Greif envisions a grand party for the dean at the 78,467-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, home of the university’s Trojans. Greif imagines that Ellis would stride from the Players’ Tunnel, his smiling visage displayed on the stadium’s Jumbotrons, to the 50-yard line where there would be a long table elegantly set for dinner under the evening lights. With friends, relatives and his many supporters, Ellis would then sit down and break bread, remembering only the good times and putting to rest what has been a long and sad nightmare, both for him and the school he loves.

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