First Installment

THUG The Book - Over 150,000 Reads

PREFACE

What and Why

This is a story about academia.

I take that back. 

It's a story about academia gone sour.  A story about personal betrayal, and lies, and treachery, and, of course, money and power, the twin roots of all the rest.

For all those reasons, it's a suspenseful tale.

It shouldn't have been.  It should have been a bore.  It should have been about the routine, the expected, the default. 

It should have been thumbs up and kudos and fanfares to fantastic students being guided by brilliant gurus throwing wide the doors to knowledge and opportunity.

Well, the students are fantastic, that's true. 

It's the grown-ups who are the letdowns in this tale.

Shame on them.

Nonetheless, I'm not one to write cliches, and "the academy" is nothing if not cliche, a byzantine anachronism, a strange world within a world, and an old white men's club.

So my eleven years in academia were going to be consigned to anecdotes and memories, bases for wisdom and other tales of other things, as I got back to my "former" career as a writer.

And then, very recently, things changed.  After I blew the whistle on university mismanagement and immorality, I'd been the victim of immense retaliation which, of course, the school denied. 

Still, all cliches.  We've all seen that movie.

But, then, in December 2012, a key university officer sat me down, admitted everything, fingered the person primarily responsible, and sought a way to settle claims with me so that I would make some final contributions to school curriculum and then take my pension and move on.

Now that was an unexpected plot twist.

But, for me personally, it was all the closure I needed, so I made that settlement and dropped my claims. 

Only to be blindsided by the school breaching both the settlement agreement and the law by going to the press and telling new lies about me.

And that was truly shocking.  I'd let the school off the hook by settling, but then they decided to wriggle back on, to bite down and impale themselves and beg to be reeled in and gutted, to spill the truth for all to see.

And, since the press seems to think this is a story, then it's time I told it.

This will be published in regular installments, which I will post here.  The form will be third person narrative, so it will read like a novel -- but it is not fiction.  Let's call it creative non-fiction; and, to prove up the non-fiction, I am including actual documents and other courtroom-type evidence.

You are encouraged not merely to comment, but to ask questions and request additional documents, which I will then post.  The story will not change, because truth is truth, but the interactivity of the internet and installment publication will allow you to be involved so that you will be convinced.  I encourage you to be critical.  I encourage you to be demanding. 

I have compiled over 100,000 pages of relevant documents -- I am an information hoarder who has never deleted an e-mail -- but I am only attaching the few I would find most telling, so please ask for more.  Put me through my paces. 

Be a juror in this on-line trial.

The consequence of all this is vast.  Once you believe my story, then the administration of a multi-billion dollar state university system will have to be replaced.  Heads will roll, criminal charges may attach, and tax dollars will finally be directed toward teaching the incredible kids of California rather than padding the pockets of the corrupt.

I grew up reading the works of fabled muckrakers who changed American institutions and industry for the better simply by writing the truth that was otherwise going unseen.  It never occurred to me that I might be following in those eminent footsteps.  My goal in teaching has always been the one-on-one pleasure of helping to hurry along the process of becoming, to support someone in achieving everything they were meant to be.  That's what teachers do.  That's all they do.  But, anything different is something less.  And, as I discovered, I am just one of those people who cannot abide other people failing our kids, and I am just one of those people who is emotionally unable to walk away from a righteous fight.  Also, I know no fear because I believe that, for us all, only the truth shall set us free.

Finally, yes, in this book I name names.  University administrators are public figures.  People, including reporters, who voluntarily put themselves in the news by making public comment and offering opinions or otherwise coming forward in public forums -- they're public figures too.  People don't get to tell nasty lies behind other people's backs and then duck being called out for it.  This is America and we have laws, even though the folks running California State University Long Beach think they get to make their own.  The only names I will change will be to protect the innocent who are not public figures, and others on a case-by-case basis who request it, and those characters will be notated and identified generically so the reader will not be confused.

With all that said, please enjoy THUG, and please interact with it.

Oh, and by the way, this book comes with a very special warranty.  Last week my lawyer and I officially challenged the university to a polygraph fight as to the key claim of whistleblower retaliation.  Clean, easy, simple.  I would submit to a polygraph if Provost Para and President Alexander would.  They declined.  What does that tell you?

THE STAIRWAY TO NOWHERE

At the epicenter of campus is a red brick staircase which warms with the morning sun and grows short with shadows by noon.  Students and teachers pass this staircase every day and never notice it.  Administrators avoid it.  No one takes it.

The staircase goes up exactly fifteen steps, rising about ten feet from the parking lot in back of Brotman Hall.  The steps themselves are cement, each with a thin white stripe painted on its leading edge, painted there in order to be ADA-compliant and to make Risk Management happy.  Not that Risk Management has much to worry about since no one takes these stairs.   Brick surrounds the steps and extends to the fence beyond.  A blue wheelchair access sign is on the brick facade at the bottom of the stairs, with an arrow pointing to the stairs, although you'd have to strap your wheelchair to your back and climb in order to follow the arrow.  The brick facade grows up to a brick planter with a green palm-like plant, and brick cocoons the staircase all around.

And, at the top of the stairs is a brick wall.  If you go up these stairs you run smack into a wall.  A wall at the end of an uphill tunnel.  A brick wall in front of you, bricks on each side, a ceiling overhead.  That's why no one takes these stairs, looking up you can see clearly that it's a dead end.

This handsome staircase buttressing the administration building is a stairway to nowhere.

But, if you should happen to be unsighted and find yourself up there, having followed the fingertouch of the ADA sign, your option once you get stopped by the wall at the top is to squiggle behind the planter to the left and over to another set of stairs, a parallel set which also began in the parking lot, or to turn around and go back the way you came.

Apparently, this was once a stairway to somewhere, but then something happened.

What happened was that bad guys realized it's a lot easier to steal money from public education and public funding and the public trust than to actually go into the marketplace and earn a living.

Of course the students get let down by that equation, because their success or failure is impossible to quantify while the school's profit or loss is easy to define.  So the irony comes full circle.  Build an institution in order to teach students, then spend more money on administration than teaching.  And pray for a recession, because then it costs more to administer less.

What's that, you say, are we talking jabberwocky here?

Not hardly.  In 2009, two professors at CSULB, guys named Lane and Pounds, accused the school of fiscal mismanagement.  In response, the school said and did many naughty things, which will fill many chapters of this tale, but the school's Vice President for Administration and Finance -- the school's head financial officer, Mary Stephens -- answered the matter in words, however succinct and bizarre and surreal they may sound:  "When we have financial cutbacks due to recession, we have to hire more administrators to figure out how to handle it."

Yup, she said it.  Worse, she meant it.

So, the staircase to nowhere is no accident, it's not the result of a drunken architect or workers playing a practical joke or brilliant teachers posing an awe-inspiring monument to conundrum, it's just an emblem for arrogance and greed, all at your expense.

More on that later.

PARA AND ALEXANDER AND REED

Don Para was rushing across the bailey toward Brotman hall, bastion of those who run CSULB.   Beneath him, unseen and inaccessible from here was the staircase to nowhere.  Para was puffing, sweating, and struggling on knees determined to remind him of all that high school and college football four decades ago.  He was not a man who arrived places late, and he was not a man who liked rushing, he liked to get to meetings with plenty of time to freshen up and get his head straight.  Speaking was not his strong suit, being impromptu about anything but sports was to be avoided, being called on the carpet by his boss was just plain sucky.  It's not that he was afraid, it's that he was never quite sure what to do, what to say, so his default strategy was just to take the hit soundlessly and endure, like the good soldier that he was.

Para hailed from Michigan, his parents by way of the Republic of San Marino.  He was raised Catholic and reared his own family in the church, but it was not something he much publicized.  What was obvious when you looked at him was that he was blue collar through and through, and bluer as he got older and moved up the charts of the university administration. 

It was his shirt sleeves, that was the thing.

Back in the day, Para was a musician and composer, not professionally, just in school and long enough to get a PhD and a university level teaching position.  Decades later, his great orchestral opus still lay unfinished, according to him deemed "too dark" by others.

When Para was "just" a teacher, he did his best to fit in.  He had a family and he wanted tenure.  There's nothing more income-worrisome that having two young daughters and a career of semi-professional musicianship.  Para was not a published scholar, he was not a person of renown.  He was a devoted assembly line guy trying to lock down a lifetime job and never face the ups and downs he'd seen everywhere back in Michigan.  And, while he may not have been a scholar, Para was plenty darn smart enough to have learned something that too many other and smarter guys had missed:  success in academia did not go to the best at what they did, it went to those who "fit in" and made life just a little bit easier for those already in power.

This lesson was so potent to Para, he adored sharing it with CSULB friends and colleagues over and over again.  In fact, it was the only "academic lesson" anecdote in his repertoire.  As Para told it, "When I was at a previous job, this guy came up for tenure.  Brilliant musician, brilliant composer, brilliant writer, brilliant teacher.  Got turned down for tenure.  Someone on the review committee pointed to a video of the guy conducting an orchestra and said he didn't like the way the guy held the baton, he didn't like the way he dangled it.  If you know what I mean.  So he was denied tenure.  But he had a library of successful records and publishing, more than all the professors in the department put together.  And, within a year, he was a best seller too, with lots of awards.  He didn't even need to go back to teaching."

Para would always wink at his listeners when he referred to the "dangle", and the meaning was never unclear.  But the moral?  Para would always sit back, cross his arms over his chest, watch his listeners' horror, and smile broadly.  "Welcome to academia," he would say.

So, in his days as a teacher, Para's shirtsleeves were either long or short, his look conservative, brown, non-memorable.  But when he stepped in as Chair of the CSULB Music Department, he would wear long sleeves with the cuffs rolled under and back, under and back, in an artsy, odd, apache or gaucho or gondolier sort of way that was all his own.  Had he held a baton, he would have dangled it, just to prove that now he could.

But when Para moved up to Associate Dean of the College of The Arts, the sleeves got rolled back out and down.  He was at risk again.  No real risk of losing what he had, but a very real risk of losing what he wanted.

See, the entire CSU system got a new Chancellor as of 1998.  Charles Reed was his name, and he had a plan.  It was genius really.  While the Trustees and the Governor could have and should have sought out a Chancellor from the world of business, some billionaire CEO emeritus who would come in and run this billion dollar system for a dollar in salary as a way of giving back to the people and being productive in retirement, in fact they went out and did the obvious, pulling in Reed from his Chancellorship of the State University System of Florida and agreeing to pay him a bunch of bucks.  It's like everyone read the Sparks notes and did what everyone always does rather than try to enter the new millennium with a bold and prescient stroke.  So, Reed came to the CSU and made pals with the state legislature and the Governor by humbly selling them a con.

It was the classic "pigeon drop", simple reverse psychology, and it worked on both Republicans and Democrats because a sap is a sap is a sap, regardless of party affiliation. 

Instead of being a hard-nosed advocate for increasing the CSU's budget, what CSU Chancellor Charlie Reed did was readily agree to taking less from state coffers provided that the state would let him do internal financial allocations without state interference.  This is what's known as a "bucket allocation".  Give us as much as you can spare, and we'll spend it as we see fit.  How's that sound?

In this case, it meant jacking up the costs of CSU and campus administration by 400%.  It also meant jacking up student tuition by 400%.  And it meant cutting the costs of instruction by a unionized faculty by eliminating any cost-of-living increases while also eliminating more and more full-time and tenure track jobs, as well as cutting curriculum and courses, and reducing the maximum units counted toward graduation.

This will be covered in depth in chapters to come, but surely you are thinking:  Huh?  Why do this?  Why cut back on the teaching and increase the administration of teaching at a place of teaching?

And the answer is:  good red-blooded American greed which plays to good red-blooded American ego.

Charlie Reed had never been CEO of General Electric or even the Night Manager of your local IHOP.  He'd never been a successful leader in the private sector.  He'd had a political appointment in Florida which led to his Chancellor's job there, and then he came to the CSU.  His career had been a cakewalk of entitlement and now he was once again overseer of a closed system, a publicly-funded business with a distinctly finite possibility for growth.

Unlike a real business, there is no profit in public education.  You are either a bad manager who spends more than the state gives you, or you stay within budget and keep your job.  There's no upside to a job well done because there's no such thing as a job well done.  If you spend less than you were given, then you asked for too much and that's a no-no.  If you raise outside funds, then the state gives you less.  Being the Chancellor of the CSU is no way to create a positive personal legacy of reputation in business.  Quick, name a famous university chancellor.  Now name a famous entrepreneur or CEO.  See what I mean?

So this is where the Wizard of Oz factors in to our tale.  Remember how the Scarecrow wanted a brain, and the Cowardly Lion wanted courage, and the Tin Woodman wanted a heart?  In the end, what did they get?  Well, in the movie, the Scarecrow got a diploma (which implied that he was smart), and the Lion got a medal (which implied that he was courageous), and the Tin Woodman got a ticking testimonial watch (which never made any sense, but the ticking and the testimonial achievement was supposed to put a clock on his life and therefore implied that he would now be human again).

Charlie Reed is a character from Oz, a fake wizard.  If he couldn't get a real CEOship in the real world of the private sector, if he couldn't be a real business leader with real success, then what could he bestow upon himself that would imply equivalent success in his world?

Easy answer.  How better to be deemed a great manager than by having more people to manage?  And how better to prove your worth than by their worth, which is to say by the amounts of their salaries, by upping everyone's pay and perks toward what they would have gotten in the private sector even though they couldn't get jobs in the private sector?

The aforementioned and fabled Mary Stephens of CSULB said it best when, in addition to so many other noteworthy statements, she told Lane and Pounds and the assembled reporters that CSULB administrators were entitled to both private sector market rate wages AND tenure. 

Go Mary.

And thank you, Charlie.  Love the Kool-Aid, dude.

So one of the key "trickle down" effects of Reed's "big admin" policy was that people like Para get a pension rate based on their highest salary, not their average, and this makes Reed look and feel good.  He's not a manager of teachers, he's a manager of administrators, and they are highly paid and much in evidence.  In fact, the initial jump from teacher jobs to admin jobs is easily a doubling of salary, and usually more, and then it goes up radically from there.  This, plus the early retirement program, creates an upward pressure on income-focused teachers to get out of teaching, leaving the teaching jobs to newer, much lower paid, non-tenured part-timers.  And this means that CSU campuses hire administrators incestuously from within, over and over again, everyone a member of Reed's cult of greed and self-gratification.  This also means that the profession of teaching is demeaned and discredited and the least important job in Reed's new vision for the CSU, now inherited since January 2013 by the new Chancellor Timothy White, who has yet to establish that he is breathing let alone on the job.

As for Para, in 2000 he became Associate Dean for one year in order to boost his salary.  He'd already essentially escaped the classroom by being Chair, at a time when too many teachers were becoming afraid of their students.  Para was not afraid of those above him, and he was certainly not afraid of students, he just did not want to parent outsiders anymore, and he wanted more money, and, like Reed, he secretly wanted recognition and respect and significance.  The opus might never be done, but Para wanted legacy by some other means.  Any other means.  So, as he was sworn in as Associate Dean, he applied for the full Deanship that would need to be filled a year later when the caretaker Dean's brief term came to an end.  Para presumed that the Associate Deanship would give him the inside track.  At the very worst, it had already bumped up his pension rate.

The thing is, Para was utterly unqualified for Dean, no matter how he wore his sleeves.

As a Chair, the one thing Para knew how to do was curry favor by handing out favors. Perhaps that was instinct.  Or perhaps he just saw how cheap and easy it was to buy people.  But while the strategy worked just fine at the departmental level where the primary job was keeping teachers happy and off the Dean's radar, the job of Dean at a public university at the dawn of a new millennium was entirely about public outreach and fundraising, two jobs that Para had never done, never wanted to do, and knew he would not be good at.

Para confided all that to Brian Lane when the two first met in 2002.  But, by then the unthinkable had happened:  Para had become Dean.

It was either one of those stories of accidental destiny, or else Para had been driving stainless steel knitting needles into voodoo dolls of the two gentlemen who were actually selected ahead of him.  Because, the in-house search committee had actually picked two outsiders as the first and second choices for Dean of the College of The Arts.  Para was given third just to be nice to a colleague who would be continuing on at the university.  It is a reality of the academy that search committees hate having to vote against in-house candidates who might later be in charge of funds and favors and merit salary increases they want, but it's somehow more defensible if fresh blood from outside is brought in, just so long as the in-house person makes the list of finalists. 

Of course, this approach would slowly change as the Reed era ground along, and outsiders got less opportunity or were only brought in briefly to take the fall for unpopular actions that the Provost and President wanted to take.  Such a fate would befall Para's successor as Dean, but that's a later chapter in this book.  (And don't feel sorry for that successor, a musically talented chap called Raymond Torres-Santos:  he knew he was selling his soul when he took the job, he just didn't know they would can his ass after only a year and after doing every ugly thing they asked.)

So, in 2001, Para was third on the list of a search that dragged out too long.  And, when the first two candidates were successively offered the job, one had already taken another job and the other had changed his mind.  And, presto amaretto!, Para was now Dean.  A Dean who freely admitted he was not long for the job unless someone could help him do fundraising.

Enter Brian Lane. 

Lane would wind up donating more than 10% of his salary each year to students and student projects.  He would donate equipment to the Film Department.  He would bring in vast funds and "in-kind" services from personal friends, and entertainment industry pals and companies.  He would bring in economically valuable strategic alliances with monoliths like SONY.  He would introduce Para to donors and teach him how to deal with major potential "name" donors who were previously being mishandled by the school.  All of which Para would quantify and -- ch-ching! -- enter on his College spreadsheets as funds raised by Para for purposes of him hitting targets he needed to hit in order to keep his job as Dean.

At the same time, Lane and Para became fast and best friends.  From Spring 2002 to Spring of 2008, Lane and Para exchanged more than 3,000 e-mails, endless phone calls, and other correspondence.  They went to hockey games together, they and their families shared dinners and planned special events together, including surprise parties.  Para and Lane did what best friends do, they knew the details of each other's lives, they were there for each other when family health problems arose, they discussed the university endlessly as Lane worked endlessly to improve opportunities for students, and Lane followed Para's lead and tried to aid Para in his job in all ways at all times. 

But there was always one little tiny pea under this mattress of sycophantic saccharine.

Its name was Michael Berlin, Professor Michael Berlin of the CSULB Film and Electronic Arts Department (FEA).

More than one chapter in this tome will address Berlin and his antics.  The relevance at this moment is that Lane and the good Dr. Micheal Pounds had, since 2003, been reporting to Para that Berlin's credentials were fake, but Para would hear none of it.  "If you mean to fit in to the academy, do not be the department cop," is what Para ordered Lane in Fall 2003.  Perhaps if Berlin's hand had dangled, Para would have had a different opinion.  As it was, and even today, Lane still cannot understand why Para bought so deeply into Berlin's con job, and why, when all this sordid tale is finally unraveled, Para will have chosen to see his legacy and career crash and burn because of Berlin.

Regardless of Para's instructions to lay off Berlin, the Berlin problem became unavoidable at the end of 2007.  Allowed to ply his deceit, Berlin had been doing what imposters do:  adding lies on top of lies, empowered by the fact he had not been caught.  And, as he conflated his qualifications, he'd had to fake his teaching about things he didn't actually know because he hadn't actually done them.  Which, as you can imagine, was taking a toll on his students when they entered the marketplace and espoused learned knowledge that was quite simply wrong because it had come from Berlin.  At the same time, pretending to be a psychologist, Berlin had heard out many students' private revelations, so he had a devoted following whose hearts and psyches would break were they to learn the truth of their misplaced confidences.  In fact, some of those followers are so desperate not to face the truth of Berlin, they lie for him today.  He is still their master.

But, the worst thing Berlin had done to CSULB was use his trust with Para and Film Department Chair Craig Smith to slip his friend, Alan Jacobs, onto the faculty.  While Berlin was a little slick and artfully but vocally manipulative, Jacobs was a shambling grandfatherly type who played older than he was and wore old misshapen sweaters.  Who could imagine that his credits were every bit as phony as Berlin's.  And Jacobs did not have Para's full protection.

So when he came up for tenure review by a committee chaired by Lane in Fall 2007, Jacobs got caught in a whole lot of lies.  Here are a couple that were crucial to him being hired, and a third that he desperately needed in order to get tenure:  (1) he claimed to have worked as professor of film production at Columbia University's esteemed program, and (2) he claimed to have made a film which won the Best Foreign Film Award at the critically-important Moscow Film Festival.  The problem was, the Associate Provost for Academic Appointments at Columbia hunted high and low for any shred of proof as to Jacobs' past employment and officially concluded he'd never worked there; and, as for that award-winning film, it turned out that (a) the film in question had not been made by Jacobs, (b) the film in question had never been anywhere near the Moscow Film Festival; and (c) the Moscow Film Festival has never given out an award for Best Foreign Film.  Oh, and (d) the Executive Producers and distributors of a recent film that Jacobs claimed credit for, they said they'd never heard of him.

But when this incontrovertible evidence of academic and hiring fraud came to light in Fall 2007, Berlin went crazy in defense of his friend.  Crazy in that he went on the attack against Lane and Pounds and another colleague, Dr. Maria Viera, accusing them all of bias and worse.

At the time, Berlin was in the catbird seat.  He was tenured, and he was slated by Para and Smith to be Film Department Chair when Smith would retire.  And Berlin himself wanted to be Dean after that, when Para would move up or out.

So, when Berlin bizarrely stepped up to cause a ruckus and defend the indefensible, Lane could not help but ask:  if Berlin doth protect too much, then what in fact was he hiding?

Meanwhile, as Lane became the lightning rod for Berlin's and Jacobs' enmity and public attacks, he sought relief from Para and University President Alexander.

Which brings us to the key antagonist -- indeed, the super villain -- of our piece.

Fieldon King Alexander.  A man who was not named he was titled.  A man who, himself, chose to drop his first name and be called "King".  King Alexander.  That's the name he goes by.  And that's all you need to know.

He's a giant tall man, six feet and many many more inches.  In college he studied academic administration, which was the family profession.  His father -- S. Kern Alexander -- was president of Murray State University in Kentucky from 1994 to 2001.  Then the son -- F. King Alexander -- became President of Murray State, until his godfather, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed, brought King Alexander to CSULB as of December 2005, where everyone understood at the time that he would ultimately step into the Chancellor's shoes when Reed would retire. 

So, Alexander is a classic case of privilege and inheritance and entitlement and lack of initiative.  But, hold on before you gag, because this history gets worse.

Alexander is a "numbers guy" -- the only thing he can talk about is academic statistics.  He is, quite frankly, a bore.  Sadly for him, his predecessor at CSULB was voluble, charismatic, and a celebrity to the extent that academia can have celebrity or adulation.

Robert Maxson was the President before Alexander.  "Bob" was the sort of guy who would show up at your party or beer bust, his wonderful wife in tow.  He was comfortable and appropriate in any setting, and he truly loved both his students and his faculty.  You could pop in on him when he was in his office, you could buttonhole him when you saw him on the quad, you could easily get him to come guest lecture at a class.  He always had time for everybody, perfectly budgeting his time and attention so as to be infinitely responsive, just the way the best of the real CEOs do it, and he made you feel special and he made you feel heard.  And he was always smart and wise.

On the other hand, Alexander maintains his distance and has nothing to say you couldn't find in someone else's press release.  Vapid would not be an inapt description.  Pretender would be another.  His only goals are not to be criticized or have unexpected situations develop.  His only worry is that someone will take away everything he has that he never earned.  So, this book will freak him out like nothing has ever done before.  When Alexander moved Para up from Dean to Provost in 2009, it was because he got Para's assurance that Para would keep the faculty under control and off Alexander's radar.  Whew.

Knowing Alexander's shortcomings at the time of his hire, Reed talked Maxson out of full retirement by creating a special appointment for him as mentor to CSU Presidents.  It became Maxson's job to teach new CSU Presidents how best to be Presidents.  His primary pupil was King Alexander.

OK, now you can gag.

As President, Alexander aided godfather Reed in dismantling the quality of education at CSULB in favor of ballooning the administration.  As he and his father had done at Murray State, Alexander quickly siphoned money over to sports instead of curriculum, apparently under the misguided belief that sports headlines would lead to more fundraising.  And, in the best tradition of propagandists everywhere, he created a new vernacular in order to cover up and re-brand what was really happening.  As the recession hit and more students were driven to public education, Alexander pretended instead that the record high numbers of admission applications was due to the quality of the education.  As the cost of CSU tuition skyrocketed, Alexander officially designated and promoted the CSULB degree programs as "The Highly Valued Degree Initiative", as if this term had some marketplace value.  Demanding additional registration fee money from students at CSULB became "The Student Excellence Fund", but every dollar went to sports.

And no one called out Alexander on this.

Except for Lane and Pounds.  And, whenever that happened, it did not make Alexander happy.  The one thing he had learned from his father and his godfather:  he who controls the news controls public opinion, and public opinion translates into state funding when you are talking about a public university. 

So, when Lane desperately pleaded with Para and Alexander to deal with the imposters and protect the good guys in Fall 2007, Alexander went into self-protective mode.  He would always characterize this as "doing what's in the best interests of the university", but that never failed to coincide with what was in the best interests of King Alexander.  "I will have a number of people check into these troubling concerns and threats," he wrote to Lane on December 13, 2007.  Then he had Para order Lane to maintain silence about everything, to turn the other cheek no matter how bad the hostility became. 

Worse, Alexander's "people" replaced Lane on the review of Jacobs, taking the position that it was not acceptable to vet a candidate's claimed credits either by researching on-line or by contacting the official record-keepers or even by having public knowledge.  Lane asked Alexander's "people":  "So, are you saying that if someone says they got the Oscar for directing The Godfather, we can't say hold on, you're not Francis Ford Coppola!"  And the "people" said:  "That's right." 

Welcome to academia.  Well, academia CSULB-style.

So, Jacobs and Berlin and their fans used the replacement of Lane on the review committee as a way of falsely declaring that Lane was biased and all Jacobs' credits were accurate.  Nonetheless, the newly reconstituted committee quickly convened and voted against Jacobs' being retained.  The facts had never changed:  Jacobs was still a liar, and his credits were disproven, but it was entirely hushed up, and he was never fired or suspended.  Later -- as of the next Fall -- Jacobs would be paid a full year's salary to go away; but for now -- Spring 2008 -- Jacobs continued to teach, and he and Berlin and their followers continued to attack Lane; and for now all the focus was on Lane as if he'd done something wrong by simply doing his job. 

Alexander's point in handling the matter this way:  it undermined Lane's seeming credibility should Lane ever complain to the press.  All Alexander cared about was keeping the situation under wraps, he really could have cared less that his school had state-paid imposters on the faculty.

For Lane, the hostile environment worsened.  Meanwhile, Alexander's "people" did nothing to help, nor did they follow up on investigating Berlin.

Finally, five years after Lane and Pounds had reported on Berlin's false credentials, and four months after Alexander had officially promised Lane he would do something and then did nothing, Lane reached out for official verification that Berlin was lying about his credentials.  (1) Berlin claimed a Master's Degree from Columbia.  So Columbia provided proof that Berlin had never so much as taken a class at Columbia, let alone earned a degree.  Berlin had no Master's Degree from anywhere, let alone Columbia.  (2) Berlin had claimed a PhD in Psychology and that he was a psychologist.  Proof came that neither was true.  He did have a post-graduate degree all right -- in "Administration -- College Teaching" from Yeshiva.  So, he knew how to scam his way around university administrators.  The rest of his credits were equally phony.  You will read about all that in a later chapter of this book.

So, it was April 2008, and Lane was physically ill.  He'd gone to Vail to ski on spring break, and had to fly home a day later because he was in too much pain to stand.  He had a pain in his gut and his spine that was beyond brutal, and he was just beat up from head to toe.  He presumed it was stress from all the hostility at school.  He was wrong.  In fact, he was dying from cancer.  His left kidney had become a softball-sized carcinoma.  But he would not know that until the end of May.  All he knew on April 18, 2008, was that he was out of strength and out of options to wait on Para and Alexander to do the right thing. 

So Lane wrote to his best friend Don Para and poignantly, passionately, honestly laid out a raw testimony to his anguish.  It ended with a simple notice:  Lane wanted Para to know that Lane was going to go to the press and blow the whistle on the imposture and the university's failure and refusal to deal with it.  Truly, Lane hoped that this threat would be the final push to get Para and Alexander to act. 

Quickly, Para contacted Lane with sympathetic affirmation and a desire to set up a meeting to try to find an alternative to Lane's plan.

That meeting was calendared, but before it happened, Para forwarded Lane's e-mail to Alexander, and his boss wanted him to come to Brotman Hall immediately.

Sweating as he hurried across the bailey and up the stairs to the President's Office, Para kept telling himself he was doing the right thing.

Alexander had Para into his private office even before Para was announced.  Alexander had been waiting, and none too patiently.  Para wasn't sure whether he should sit down, but he did, just to buy himself a few seconds of time.  He tried to smooth out his breathing, and he wet his lips and he swallowed.  When he looked up, Alexander was standing in front of his desk, hugely tall and looming.

"What are you going to do about Lane?" he said.

*          *          *

This ends this first installment of the narrative portion of THUG. 

In future installments you will see many things, including how public whistleblowing by Lane led to retaliation by Para and Alexander and others at their command, beginning in May 2008 and continuing to this day. 

That retaliation has taken the form of the filing of false police reports, false reports to state agencies, the filing of false financial documents at the university and with the state, the filing of false claims, "leaks" of false and confidential information to the press in order to destroy the reputations of both Lane and Pounds, and the ultimate outrage of threats, intimidation, and interrogation of students by Para and Alexander and their minions.

All of this will be detailed and documented in the next installments.

Meanwhile, following are documents which relate to what you have just read in the current installment of THUG.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From 2002 until his whistleblowing in 2008, Lane was the golden child who could do no wrong at CSULB. 

Below is a reflection of those halcyon days.

It also distinctly evidences the corruption of those who run the system in their "discretionary" way rather than by the rule of law.

The CSU supposedly operates pursuant to "shared governance".  This is meant to mean that faculty have a say in administration, particularly the administration and workings of their own departments, particularly the choice of Department Chairs.  But, under Chancellor Charles Reed, "shared governance" was secretly destroyed.  Below is an e-mail from Dean Donald Para of the College of The Arts, clearly admitting that he and the administration showered political support and financial resources to place their chosen professors into positions of power.  So much for "shared governance."  Of particular note is that one of Para's "picks" below back in 2006 was moved up to Associate Dean in 2009, and is now Dean.  So much for equal opportunity in state hiring.

From: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 07:46:35 -0700
To: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Subject: USC and All That Jazz

BL - Thanks for the call yesterday.  I don't know that CSULB deserves you.  We have a very nice program here in FEA for what it is.  The program was misdirected for so long that it's hard to fix very quickly.  Actually, we are making rapid progress, to say the least.

Nonetheless, it is unlikely that we can match USC - at least in our lifetimes - but it is the goal we must set.  If we can provide an excellent program at 1/10 the cost of USC we will be filling an important role in the education of future screen writers.  The thing is, the program is really you.  You recruited the students, they came to study with a colleague - and get a degree that they want.  You produce more than any three other FEA faculty ( if you don't count Sharyn or Micheal who produce almost nothing of value).  It is really essential that Jack and Alan, in particular, work very hard.  And, like you and the others, we don't pay any of you enough to make it sensible for them to spend so much of their energies here.

One of the things we need to pursue is a named chair in writing for you.  It could take many forms, including added compensation for you and program support.  As you know, some named chairs have the salary and benefits covered by the endowment.  For others, it's a supplement.  We could go either way, but the latter is the most obvious.

If you know some people who might be willing to create an endowment for a named chair for you, let's talk with Gregory.  If we had a modest endowment of, say, $250,000, that would generate an extra $125,000 a year in salary, program support, etc.  $1M would yield $50,000 a year or more at current rates.  There are a handful of faculty that warrant "special attention" and special treatment because they are the superstars of the programs.

I know who the faculty are who have the most impact on programs - we try to do something extra for them if we can.  The list is short:

               Art - Chris Miles, Tony Marsh.  Sunook Park may grow

                           into this role.
               Dance -Loren Johnson
               Design - Tor Hovind
               FEA - BL
               Music - John Carnahan, Jonathan Talberg, and Jeff Jarvis
               TA - Hugh O'Gorman may grow into this role,

                           as may Orlando Pabotoy.

It gives me a reason to make this a priority because the impact of each of these people is - or may be in the future - transforming in each program.  I need to come up with something.

Thanks for being loyal to your students here.  It is an honorable thing - not much in evidence in higher ed these days.  I hope USC offers you the job anyway.  Your nobility in insisting on fulfilling the promises you made the students will, I hope, be a plus for you in USC's estimation.

Let me know how it goes.

Love,

DP

PS - A week from Monday I have on my schedule to attend a panel on "hate speech" starting at 6:30.  I think that's because Craig is on the panel and I missed the one you, he, King and others did on another topic a couple of weeks ago.  I'm going to get more details.  Hate speech or the Ducks - many similarities and many differences!  The Ducks should win out.  I'll let you know today.

DP 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                

In December 2007, Lane learned that the school was once again dragging its feet in going after the imposters, so Lane wrote to Alexander, as related in the narrative installment.  Here is that e-mail, followed by Alexander's response.

From: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:54:02 -0800
To: F Alexander <fkalexander@csulb.edu>
Bcc: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>, Craig Smith <crsmith@csulb.edu>
Conversation: Trouble in River City
Subject: Trouble in River City

Dear President Alexander,

Sorry to bother you — you know I try to always be upbeat — going to have a fundraiser meeting on the Link Theatre today, for example, and that’s going well and will be awesome — but, at the same time there is something horribly negative happening on other fronts, and I don’t think you should be insulated from it because I think all of us really need your help and advice.

I have served on my departmental RTP committee (as chair) since Fall 05, just after I was tenured.  When we come down in favor of candidates, all goes well.  But there have been two occasions when we recommended (unanimously, strongly, and with much evidence, carefully cited and annotated) against retention, and, on both occasions, the situation has turned ugly and dangerous, with the candidate taking his case to the students and to other faculty, with the candidate making verbal threats and personally targeting me, and I’ve had to go to the campus police on advice of Don and/or Craig.

The second situation is happening right now, and, quite frankly, after being angrily told yesterday by the candidate that he would “get me”, that this is “personal”, that he and his wife and daughter all believe I “hate” him and that he will respond in kind, and, as he put it:  “If I go down, you can bet I am taking you down with me” -- well, I cannot tell you that I am not worried and have no intention of serving on our RTP committee again after this year.

The merits of this candidate are left to the RTP process, but retaliation against the chair of the departmental committee is not a response that should be tolerated.

On the one hand, everyone tells me to report this, and I believe that behind-the-scenes efforts are being made to resolve things, but all I know for sure is that I don’t much want to come to campus today and walk down a corridor where I am likely to have the candidate yell at me and say false and defamatory things while other faculty scurry away and whisper.  This is “Bad Day at Black Rock”.  I am not fond of buzz words, this environment is hostile and unsafe, and the RTP process protects this candidate by allowing him to act this way even as it ties my hands and keeps me from being able to respond.

My hope is that you will — well, I don’t know what my hope is — this e-mail is a flare into the night, hoping that someone will do something, because I should not be in this situation and I am not sufficiently empowered to handle it myself.

Thanks.

Love -- B   

From: F Alexander <fkalexander@csulb.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:01:23 -0800
To: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Trouble in River City

Hello Brian,

I will have a number of people check into these troubling concerns and threats.

King

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

By April 2008, Lane was ill with cancer and under siege by bad guys.  He'd been reporting imposture since 2003, to no avail.  He'd repeatedly begged Alexander and Para to do something about the imposters and the hostile environment, but they did nothing.  In December 2007, Alexander finally promised to get his "people" on it.  Then they pulled the rug out from under Lane instead.  So, by the below, Lane let his best friend Para know that he was now intending to go to the press.  This prompted Para's visit to Alexander, as related in the narrative.

(in the below, names of persons who were students in Spring 2008

 have been redacted and replaced by generic reference.)

From: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:04:16 -0800
To: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>
Conversation: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Subject: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

DP — BL.

I’d appreciate you not showing this to anyone.  Anyone.  Well, Sandy, yes.  But no one at school, please.  I am writing it only because I know you are busy as hell and it’s impossible to find you for a sitdown these days.

It’s come to this.

I finally know what a hostile environment is.

It is NOT encountering Blumenthal screaming at another motorist in the parking lot, and me later finding my own car vandalized ($1,000 to take out the dents from kicks, and re-paint).

It is NOT Maria encountering Blumenthal in the parking lot and later finding her car vandalized (keyed from beginning to end.)

It is NOT having to park across campus now in order to keep my car safe.

It is NOT having the University refuse to defend me from Blumenthal and me having to pay a $27,000 legal bill instead.

It is NOT having my best and most devoted students suddenly failing to return calls or e-mails after Jacobs/Berlin/Blumenthal got them to trash me.

It is NOT having my friend Wagman refuse to return calls or e-mails while falsely and openly attacking me and telling me there is something psychologically wrong with me and that I am biased against her new pal Jacobs or against others, even when those others are sending death threats to University administrators.

It is NOT hearing Berlin openly attack me to colleagues and students.

It is NOT having Jacobs openly attack me to colleagues and students.

It is NOT having students and faculty exhorted to sign petitions and write letters in order to defend Jacobs from what they have been falsely told is my bias against him.

It is NOT watching students and faculty turn away from me in the halls or smile and act friendly as they are on their way to complain about me at the behest of the cabal.

It is NOT watching Berlin take my bio and invent his to compete with mine.

It is NOT hearing Berlin and Blumenthal openly attacking my friend Maria Viera.

It is NOT hearing Craig lie to Blumenthal and other rabid faculty to calm then down by telling them that Maria will just be occasionally guest lecturing in Advanced Production when in fact she will be co-teaching it with me.

It is NOT five+ years of Blumenthal attacking me and months of Jacobs and Berlin trashing me.

It is NOT an administration that protects the rights of transgressors and tells me to shut up and take it.

It is NOT an administration that tells me it’s handling things but never handles them, never achieves a result, merely tries to take credit for good intentions.

It is NOT a friend in the chain of command who is trapped into whitewashing the conduct of the transgressors because he is out on a limb for having originally backed them before he knew they were imposters and criminals.

It is NOT a lot of other things I could add to this laundry list.

It is none of those things.

What a hostile environment is, is what happened yesterday when I was leaving my house to head to school to teach.  I had graded and e-mailed 100 responses to Utopia students.  I had arranged for special industry guests to come to Comedy class.  I had prepared lectures and critiques.  My school bag was packed, my thermos was filled, and my keys were in hand.  It was time to walk out the door and get to school.  And I just stood there.  For nearly 20 minutes I paced back and forth from my front door to my study, sure that I’d forgotten something, but certain that I had not.  And then I realized what was going on.  I dreaded the thought of going to school.  I dreaded the thought of walking into the Department.  I dreaded the thought of running into the faculty and the students who hate me.  I dreaded the fact that I am not allowed to tell them off, that I have to suck it up and listen to their craziness, because otherwise I might be violating their rights.  I dreaded the fact the no one but no one is publicly defending me and no one but no one is privately assuring me that anything right is happening, and that I apparently have no rights whatsoever, no rights and no protection for just doing my job to the best of my abilities while others don’t do their jobs at all.

That’s a hostile environment.

Eventually I left my house and went to school and sucked it up and took it, despite the headache and the nausea and the sticking pain in the left side of my gut.  I counted the minutes I was on campus, and kept telling myself that I would be able to leave soon enough and not have to come back until next week, and there are only 4 weeks to the end of a semester that cannot come fast enough.

And now I’m writing you because, well, I don’t know who else to write, not because I really expect a result.  I’ve learned — finally — that no good will come of this.  Yes, Jacobs will likely be gone, but who knows?  He is acting for all the world like he is staying.  Blumenthal will stay unless students unfairly put themselves on the line to testify to things we have all known for years.  And Berlin — I don’t get the slightest indication that anyone in the administration cares that he is actively lying about academic and professional credentials, and I know for a fact that none of you cares that he is trashing the hell out of me and has made me look like an idiot to the COTA RTP Committee that will some day consider me for Full Professor long after he has scammed and bullied his way to the title.

Yeah, it’s a hostile environment for me.

Just don’t tell me to go file some claim somewhere that no one will do anything about.

But do tell me something to ease the pain.

And please give me some options that I haven’t thought about, because the ones I have in mind all require truth and bright lights, and I know this administration won’t go that route.  I’ll get fired for whistle blowing the truth long before anyone gets fired for lying.

That, my friend, is the reality of this place.

Dreadful.

##

From: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:22:44 -0700
To: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

BL - This is, indeed, tragic.  Your case is dramatic - your pain is real.  We need to talk - face-to-face.

Give me some times you are on campus next week that work for you - even 30 minutes - and I will try to move whatever I need to move to spend some time with you.

I believe that you are on campus on Wednesdays (and Thursdays?).  On Wednesday, I have Fac Council until 5:30 - then I'm free.  I could also do a time on Thursday afternoon or evening.

Let me know some times that work and let's see what we can arrange.
I don't know how much I can help but at least we can talk about some possibilities.

DP

From: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:36:36 -0800
To: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>
Conversation: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
Subject: Re: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

DP — Thanks — I need some words from a friendly spirit.  Could do Thursday at 2:30ish or 5:30 (class at 3:30 and MFA candidate meeting at 6:00 before class at 7:00).  Sorry to be so miserable, but there’s no point in having a job that requires one to take valium in order to go to sleep.  It’s just impossible not to constantly worry what crazy stuff somebody is going to pull next. -- B

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you will read in future installments of THUG, the subsequent meeting between Lane and Para would prove fruitless.  It would become the zero hour for the all-out instigation of retaliation against Lane by Para and Alexander.  Below is the e-mail by which Lane advised Alexander and Para that his op-ed on the matter of imposture was set for publication and there was now no turning back.  The actual op-ed follows the e-mail.

From: Brian Alan Lane <brianalanlane@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:52:01 -0800
To: F Alexander <fkalexander@csulb.edu>
Cc: Don Para <para@csulb.edu>, Craig Smith <crsmith@csulb.edu>, Maria Viera <mviera@csulb.edu>, Micheal Pounds <mpounds@csulb.edu>
Conversation: Trouble in River City #2
Subject: FW: Trouble in River City #2

Dear President Alexander,

Last Fall I wrote to you that I was being retaliated against for whistleblowing on the phony credits of a colleague.  You advised that you were passing the matter along to your team and it would be handled.

Nonetheless, the retaliation has not ceased, it’s only broadened, as the attackers have shamelessly and outrageously dragged in both teaching colleagues and students.  Students!!!

And, there are additional targets now — including Maria Viera and Craig Smith and Micheal Pounds and Don Para — plus additional attackers, as more phony credentials have come to light, including phony degrees and phony academic employment records.

This is a mess, it’s harassment, it’s a hostile environment, and legitimate professors are being sacrificed to protect the supposed “rights” of criminals.  My life here has become absolute hell, to the point where I actually did not want to come to work a couple of weeks ago, and where, even now, I try to be on campus as little as possible.  And, yet, I love our students, and I love this job and this place — or at least the vision of what it should be.

Understand, I also very very much like your team — and count two of them as close personal friends — but each has stuck to a role and bitten off a digestible and compartmentalized chunk of this matter, and then followed “procedure” to pass the thing along and along and along, and now it’s back up to you.

Is has been virtually an entire academic year of actionable agony, and the bottom line is that while everyone has done something, no one has really done anything — which is to say, no results have been achieved.  Lots of running in place, and nothing accomplished to stop ongoing damage and repair the trauma that already exists.  Things are dramatically worse now than they were the last time you and I communicated.

As you know, in harassment and retaliation situations, the urgency of response is key to whether the response is deemed adequate.  Your team has continuously expressed to me that there are no policies or procedures in place that allow for an urgent response.  So, one year wasted, and apparently more to come.

At this point, I’ve chosen to go public with my thoughts on these matters — referring ONLY to the public record and without naming any individuals.  No one’s rights and no University procedures are being violated.  These are issues that a public University must face in a public venue.  We brag about our successes, we must also face our failures.  This is a case of academic fraud.  It is therefore a crime.  The failure to face it is another crime.  The failure to protect honest and honorable employees is the final and most unforgivable of crimes.  At least that’s my opinion.  But, knowing you and your principles, I believe it is your opinion as well.  My attorney -- Michael Olecki — has reviewed the attached Op-Ed piece and concluded that it passes legal muster.  I have now sent this piece out for possible publication.

Let us move forward with openness to address and rectify these matters, re-assuring faculty, students, and the public that crime will not be tolerated at or by this University.  Please review the attached.

Thank you.

Best --

Brian Alan Lane

As Lane would soon find, Alexander's and Para's first active response to the above was to file a false police report against Lane, to humiliate him and terrify his students as his office, his bag, his car, and his person were searched.  The false report?  That Lane was supposedly bringing guns to campus.  This would not be the last false police report filed by these people.  Whenever Lane published any whistleblowing, the University would immediately increase its retaliation, and they still consider their police force to be their own private gestapo even though, thankfully, the officers themselves are embarrassed about how they are misused.

As for Michael Berlin, he was suspended and given his termination by CSULB just before Fall 2008.  He was then paid in full while on suspension, until the termination became final as of May 2009.  Throughout that time and since, he continues to claim that he works as a professor for CSULB, as well as other false credits in academia, psychology, and the entertainment industry.  CSULB's Para and Alexander have always been aware of Berlin's continuing public claim that he works for CSULB.  They have failed to correct this public record.  This causes Berlin's supporters to continue to back him and attack Lane with lies.  Then Para and Alexander try to use those witnesses against Lane, knowing full well that they are lying.  Here is Berlin's current biography at the University of California at Irvine Extension Program website.

Brian Alan Lane is a tenured Full Professor at CSULB.  In addition to receiving numerous awards and grants, he was selected as a Favorite Professor in Fall 2005, and was named Most Valuable Professor in Spring 2008.  Then he became a Whistleblower. For more info you can visit his website BrianAlanLane.com. 

Please comment, interact and go read the next installment just posted!

Installment Two -- Spielberg (Narrative) and (Documents)

Whistleblowers can tell their story at Whistleblower Refuge.

THUG The Book and all the foregoing material is copyrighted for all purposes in all media 

-- all rights reserved by Brian Alan Lane -- 2022

THUG The Book Is designed so you can read the Installments in any order you want.

Installment Eleven - If A Para Falls In The Forest, Does Anyone Care?
Installment Ten - Cookin' The Books Alexander Style
Installment Nine - The Riddle of The Stinks

Installment Eight - the King Who Must Not Be Named

Installment Seven B - The Biggest Academic Ponzi Scheme Ever

Installment Seven A - Indictment of The Alexander Family For Criminal Conspiracy

Installment Six - The Odor of Mendacity

Installment Five - The King's New Clothes

Installment Four - High Crimes and Pissy Demeanors

Installment Three - The Long Beach Studios Hoax

Installment Two - Spielberg Narrative

Installment Two - Spielberg Documents

Installment One 

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