NEWS

“I guess I’m going to be a celebrity now,” Clevis Headley muttered to a student on Thursday, Nov. 4, as he walked out of the existentialism class he teaches.

The philosophy chair of two years resigned on Oct. 27 — two weeks after a lawsuit by another philosophy professor alleged that his promotion to the position was the result of favoritism.

The lawsuit was directed at Manjunath Pendakur, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and accused the dean of anti-Semitism, ageism and fraud. The lawsuit is riddled with Headley’s name and that of his wife, Marina Banchetti, who happens to be the assistant to Dean Pendakur.

“I’m highly appreciative of his gracious offer to step away from the chair position to help the department,” Pendakur wrote on Oct. 28 by e-mail to the faculty. “I am accepting it in order to assist the department. He will return to his regular duties as an associate professor.”

Although Headley described himself as a celebrity, he is reluctant to accept the role. The UP attempted to speak to Headley three times by e-mail, once by phone, and once in person. He had not replied as of press time.

Attorney Marc Reiner, who represents professor Carol Gould in her lawsuit against Pendakur, said that Headley’s resignation doesn’t change anything — it’s too late.

“His resigning is in line with some of the allegations that they may try to deny,” Reiner said. “He wasn’t a good-confidence chair.”

Lester Embree, an eminent scholar and professor of philosophy, thought the move should have come sooner.

“I think Headley should have resigned when he found out he had lost the confidence of his department qualitatively and quantitatively,” he said. “He stuck it out, I don’t know why.”

The loss of confidence Embree is referring to came in the form of a May 2009 letter that was petitioned by four out of five tenured philosophy professors — including Embree — that called for Headley to resign.

“We respectfully inform the Dean that the current Chair has not earned our confidence,” the letter read. “And his actions and attitudes do not sustain a belief that time will improve his ability to do so.”

Ethics professor Robin Fiore — who left FAU this past summer and moved to the University of Miami — wrote by e-mail that the letter, which she had also signed, was an “extraordinary action.”

“At any other University, this would have been taken quite seriously,” she wrote. “As an ethicist, what I found morally deficient was that the administration refused to take up any instance of malfeasance or particular grievance (and so perhaps answer the question of effectiveness) because the administration found all to be in order simply as a matter of whose judgment about the Chair mattered to the administration. The faculty apparently had no say in such matters and according to the administration, no rightful claim to have a say.”

She finished her e-mail writing that the matter became less about the chair for her at that point and that she had lost her confidence in the university’s administration itself. So she left.

There was another reaction to the letter, however. It began a string of meetings between administrators and the philosophy faculty. During these meetings, the faculty was told to support Headley and cease complaints, according to Gould’s lawsuit.

“The first meeting, soon after that petition — it was all discussed around and it was more or less that we were urged to find a way to get along,” Embree said.

Gould confirmed that this meeting occurred in May, 2009.

Over a year later, in July 2010, there was what Embree called a “more serious” meeting during which the faculty was asked what it wanted to do.

Three models were proposed:

1. Keep calm and carry on

2. “Diaspora” — a term proposed by Gould — a dispersal where each professor would be assigned to a different department.

3. Receivership — an outsider would be assigned to administer the department. This could work by either bringing in a new chair or attaching the entire department to another, like the English department, and its chair would supervise both.

Embree said that the faculty that met “very much agreed that the department should find a way to stick together, probably in one form of receivership or the other.”

“But for a while,” Embree continued, “[Provost Diane Alperin] thought the dispersal model was still on the table — she said we should find departments who would take us.”

The faculty resisted this, as they believed a dual-department head would need a “helicopter” to do the job, as Embree recalled the then-joke.

While ideas were thrown around and discussed by the

faculty, Marina Banchetti and Clevis Headley rarely spoke at such meetings, Embree said — they just “sat there.”

“They are partners,” Embree said. “My guess is that Headley very much resented the vote of no confidence, and even though a year had gone by, he hadn’t gotten over it. And his partner was sticking by her man.”

Dean Manjunath Pendakur didn’t bring much to the table either.

“Interestingly enough, Pendakur repeatedly said he would not be involved in solving this. He wouldn’t find a place for us to go,” Embree said.

Even graduate students like Cecil Lunsford and Jenny Mantoni had their own problems with Headley.

Lunsford had asked Headley to help him get funding for his graduate studies. Such funding is given to students seeking to do research or be teacher assistants to pay their way through their studies. Though Headley helped him get one semester’s worth of funding, the stipend cut his federal financial aid and the money soon ran out. Lunsford’s studies cost him more than they saved him.

“I was basically working twenty hours a week and making the same amount of money as I would if I didn’t work, which took away from my studies,” Lunsford said of the $3,000 he had to earn to pay off the semester’s debts. “He’s supposed to provide graduate students with a list of what funding is available. I was only ever offered one.”

The program that Lunsford mentioned is called the Master’s Liberal Studies program, which offers master’s level credit in different fields, like philosophy or English. It was shut down last summer.

“This is something that Dr. Headley had direct oversight of,” Lunsford said. “When they closed it down, they didn’t inform any of the senior faculty, they didn’t inform any of the students. I found out basically overhearing a conversation.”

Lunsford recommended that undergraduate students not sign up for the major until an ethics professor was hired and a replacement found for outgoing Jari Niemi— a social-political philosopher who claimed he was terminated halfway through the tenure process.

“You can’t graduate without those classes,” he said, adding about FAU’s replacing these positions: “It doesn’t seem that there’s any emphasis to do that at the moment.”

Jenny Mantoni, another graduate student, was also disappointed that her department’s chair was Headley.

Graduate students use committees of faculty to help them write thesis papers. The committee members are usually faculty within the department of the student’s focus. The members advise the student on the paper itself and help guide it.

When Mantoni approached Headley about being part of her committee, he was not very helpful, nor was his wife.

“Since there’s not that many teachers — philosophy teachers — that teach graduate courses at the university, I was very limited to the amount of people I could ask,” said the graduate philosophy student. “Getting a no from a professor, it left me with no other options. I was declined by Dr. Banchetti and Dr. Headley.”

Mantoni did finally get two professors to be on her committee, one of which was an anthropology professor. The other, Robin Fiore, quit her job before summer. She was left with one committee member who was not part of the philosophy department.

She asked Headley for advice. In August, Headley advised Mantoni to abandon her search for a committee and focus on her paper. Without a committee to help her, Mantoni realized she wouldn’t be hitting her goal of graduating this coming December.

On Sept. 6, Mantoni e-mailed Headley, claiming that if she didn’t find committee members, she might be forced to “inform President Saunders of the situation.”

On Sept. 7, Headley called Mantoni three times before 10:30 a.m. She e-mailed him that she preferred to communicate by e-mail. Headley continued calling, refusing to e-mail Mantoni with an “appropriate response.”

Eventually, Mantoni contacted an office in the Graduate College, which oversees all graduate programs regarding processes like accreditation and deadlines for thesis submission.

A day later, On Sept. 8, Headley contacted Mantoni and told her that two different professors had agreed to be part of her committee. Though Mantoni got her committee member, it was too little and too late — she wouldn’t be graduating this fall.

The solution to all these problems, from professor Gould’s to Lunsford’s, came more than a year after the letter of no confidence was submitted.

On Oct. 28, the philosophy department met. Provost Diane Alperin reviewed the development of the issue and announced that an outside professor would be brought in — Headley would resign.

As of Nov. 1, political science professor Jeffrey Morton had become a “receiver,” or the interim department chair of philosophy.

“I know Jeffrey pretty well,” Embree said, “He’s a very kind of — he believes very much in following rules, and I’m optimistic.”

“Jeffrey may find out that he made a mistake. I think the receiver will be under pressure to do things like to control me because I’m rather outspoken about things,” Embree smiled. “He may be under pressure to get Lester [Embree] to behave himself.”

While Morton is no philosopher, his academic experience will help him with his new position.

“He is an academic — he’s a researcher, a teacher,” Embree said, adding that Morton’s experience will translate well “for what he needs to do.”

“I’m hoping it will improve morale,” Carol Gould said of Morton. “We can breathe a sigh of relief in that we’re not going to be dissolved, at least for a while. We’ll be looking forward to a healing process with Jeffrey.”

Cecil Lunsford is concerned that a political scientist will not do justice to the philosophy department.

“I have no qualms against this guy, I don’t know him, but political science is nothing like philosophy in any way, shape or form,” He said.

Gould, however, couldn’t stop saying nice things about Morton.

“He has a great deal of respect for and appreciation for what philosophy is,” Gould said. “He is a person who knows that a good university needs a philosophy department.”

According to Dean Pendakur’s e-mail, Morton agreed to be the interim chair until the end of the academic year.