A couple years ago we puzzled over why the successful science writer Malcolm Gladwell would tie his reputation as a journalist to the anvil that was the Penn State child rape scandal. That was when he said, “I feel the leadership of Penn State was totally, outrageously attacked over this. I think they’re blameless.” Some further background on this story is here, but to me the real mystery is why Gladwell would get into this one in the first place. I mean, even if everything he was being told was true, did sleazeballs like the Penn State administration really deserve his full-throated support?
The above-linked article by Tom Ley suggested that Gladwell’s actions here came from a kind of intellectual overreach, where he started with a pet theory and then worked backward to look for a dramatic example. That still didn’t seem like enough, though.
But then this came in the other day from an anonymous commenter:
My [the commenter’s] understanding of the Gladwell take on the Sandusky scandal is colored by his dive into college rankings in February 2011 several months before the Sandusky scandal saw the light of day. The article reads like an advertisement for Penn State, with a long quote from Spanier.
If you look at the top twenty schools every year, forever, they are all wealthy private universities,” Graham Spanier, the president of Penn State, told me. “Do you mean that even the most prestigious public universities in the United States, and you can take your pick of what you think they are—Berkeley, U.C.L.A., University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Illinois, Penn State, U.N.C.—do you mean to say that not one of those is in the top tier of institutions? It doesn’t really make sense, until you drill down into the rankings, and what do you find? What I find more than anything else is a measure of wealth: institutional wealth, how big is your endowment, what percentage of alumni are donating each year, what are your faculty salaries, how much are you spending per student. Penn State may very well be the most popular university in America—we get a hundred and fifteen thousand applications a year for admission. We serve a lot of people. Nearly a third of them are the first people in their entire family network to come to college. We have seventy-six per cent of our students receiving financial aid. There is no possibility that we could do anything here at this university to get ourselves into the top ten or twenty or thirty—except if some donor gave us billions of dollars.
To me [the commenter], it is obvious that Spanier was a primary source for this article, and he used the same charm offensive with Gladwell to have this article written as he used with rich alumni to get big donations to the University. After the Sandusky scandal hit, Spanier turned to Gladwell one more time to have him print another press release.
That makes sense to me. Gladwell has a long history of being conned by persuasive men, the sort of charismatic guys who, I’m guessing, believe their own spiels (for example). So it fits his M.O. that the source of Gladwell’s particular misstep was, again, him falling for someone’s self-serving story.
Graham Spanier: just another plucky rogue outsider doing battle with the Establishment.
Is Gladwell “conned by persuasive men” or does he like to be buddies with powerful men? I lean toward the latter.
Mark:
Spanier isn’t powerful anymore! And even in his heyday, I wouldn’t describe him as particularly powerful. And John Gottman (the subject of the link at the end of the above post) wasn’t powerful at all. He was a minor celebrity, but that’s not the same as power. I’d say that “conned” is closer to the truth. If you’re willing to be conned, there are some advantages: you can tell some great stories! A similar issue arose with the Freakonomics team. I’m sure they got conned for good reasons, but, after awhile, the habit of being conned can be addictive, as it gives you an unending supply of great material.
“Yes”
Graham Spanier is doubling down, he has a book in preprint about the scandal. It even has it’s own website, https://www.spanierinthelionsden.com/
I know everyone wants to read the blurb, so I will post it here:
“After sixteen years as president of Penn State, Graham Spanier found his life and career turned upside down almost overnight in November 2011 in a firestorm of breaking news concerning alleged child sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach. Little did Spanier know that his life would unravel in a nightmare of false accusations and labyrinthine legal proceedings stemming from a scandal surrounding a man he barely knew and who hadn’t been in Penn State’s employ since 1998. In the Lions’ Den is a personal memoir, told by a central figure caught up in the crush of those events. It reveals how and why the university and many individuals, including Spanier himself and legendary football coach Joe Paterno, were unfairly targeted in a colossal miscarriage of justice.
In the Lions’ Den exposes those who made false accusations, either for political or financial gain, including the former Director of the FBI, whose investigation was widely condemned; the governor of Pennsylvania who was voted out of office because of his central role in the matter; the grandstanding NCAA president who imposed penalties that would ultimately be reversed; an attorney general elected on a promise to investigate the injustice who would soon be sent to prison for her crimes emanating from the calamity; the grand jury judge who would be accused of wrongdoing in the saga by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; the lead prosecutor whose license to practice law would be suspended by the supreme court for his malpractice; and the university’s general counsel who would be censured by the supreme court for her malfeasance in representing Penn State officials.
The book also touches on the infamous Pennsylvania “Porngate” scandal that revealed a pornography ring operated out of the Office of Attorney General by many of the same prosecutors, investigators, judges, and state police commissioner who relentlessly pursued Spanier.
This book is for anyone interested in the real story of one of the biggest scandals in collegiate history.”
I briefly tried to corroborate the claims in the second paragraph but was unsuccessful, maybe one of the lawyers who frequent this site knows more.
It’s Evilicious!
P.S. A bit misleading for Spanier to say, “alleged child sexual abuse by Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant football coach.” For one thing, it’s not just “alleged”; the guy actually did it, right? Second, calling him a “former Penn State” etc. kinda skips the fact that he did the sexual abuse at Penn State. Also, Spanier writes that Sandusky “hadn’t been in Penn State’s employ since 1998”, but, according to wikipedia, “After Sandusky’s 1999 retirement as assistant coach at Penn State, he continued working with The Second Mile at Penn State, maintaining an office at the university until 2011.”
So, not in Penn State’s employ, using his Penn State office to recruit kids to molest, that’s all, no biggie, right? Nothing compared to the “colossal miscarriage of justice” that happened to poor Spanier and his “legendary” friend.
The second paragraph says the book “exposes those who made false accusations,” then goes on to list everyone involved with the trial except the victims.
Looks like Spanier’s claims are roughly true.
The Freeh report (former FBI director Louis Freeh), for which his firm was paid $8.2M by the Board of directors, has been panned by at least three other investigations, one of which discovered outright falsehoods in that report. And there is apparently evidence that the NCAA (then lead by Mark Emmert, the Rabid Cash Dog) colluded with the writers of the Freeh report – I guess Emmert and the university Board of directors would want to do that to get the coats hung up before the scandal hit anyone’s bank account – why not just hang the nearest unlucky bastard so we can move on and keep the cash cash cash coming coming coming! Ultimately the NCAA was forced to withdraw many of the penalties imposed on Penn State and Joe Paterno, and it reinstated Paterno’s wins.
Spanier and others were charged grand jury perjury, child endangerment, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. However, many of the charges were dropped due to “violation of their rights to legal representation.” This presumably relates to “the university’s general counsel who would be censured by the supreme court for her malfeasance”. Spanier was acquitted of the only remaining serious charge (conspiracy). He was convicted of one minor charge of child endangerment – the same charge that his purported co-conspirators plea-bargained their testimony for. Major loss for the prosecution.
Not that I give rats arse about Spanier, but the rabid tone of your comments suggested some pretty mindless slamming of the guy, which turned out to be right. All in good fun. ;)
Chipmunk:
Regarding the claim in your last paragraph: I don’t see anything at all of a “rabid tone” in any of the comments here, except perhaps in the second paragraph of your own comment.
Here is my Malcolm Gladwell story about how he can sometimes be dishonest. Several years ago on his Revisionist History podcast he spent an episode (‘Blame Game’) on sudden acceleration with ‘no apparent reason’ of Toyota cars. It was the same issue that took place about 20 years earlier with the Audi 5000 (also subject of a 60 Minutes story). Automotive writer, Brock Yates, had a weekly column in the Washington Post magazine (the weblink of the article is quite long so just google Brock Yates Audi 5000 to pull it up; it’s well worth the 2 minute read) and using plain sense noted that this was close to 100% driver error (also noted in the Gladwell podcast). Drivers were stomping on the accelerator rather than the break with the unintended consequences. Gladwell was a business reporter at the Post when Yates’s article was published and should have known the history of this. I sent him an email following the airing of the podcast to note that his reported incident was just a repeat of what had happened before. As you might imagine, I received no response back.
I do enjoy some of Gladwell’s works and podcasts but one needs to take some of what he talks about with a grain of salt.
Alan:
Yeah, I have the impression that to a lot of people, it’s not about telling the truth or figuring things out; instead it’s about telling good stories.
Gladwell may have been foolish to step into this, but I do think he is correct. I believe that Sandusky and the Penn State officials are innocent. The evidence against them consisted entirely of witnesses who changed their stories many years later after being offered million dollar payouts.
Furthermore, believing the prosecution story is like saying the Salem Witches were guilty. The story is unlike anything that has ever happened in recorded history. It is not possible. You must know some college administrators. Do you really think that they would sit back and allow an ex-employee to openly molest little boys in semi-public campus showers? That the football staff knew about this and tolerated it? That this went on for years and no one intervened or called the police?
No, this is not possible, and I am baffled as to how anyone could believe it.
Roger:
1. A key difference between this case and the Salem case is that child abuse is real and witches aren’t.
2. Your argument from implausibility is not convincing. This story is unfortunately not “unlike anything that has ever happened in recorded history.” There are lots of examples of people in power covering up child abuse. Consider for example this story, or the Roman Catholic church covering up child abuse for years in many different countries without intervening or calling the police. Sadly it seems that authority figures often seem less disturbed by child abuse than by the revelation of child abuse, or by the questioning of authority.
I followed the link, but I am not sure how it relates. A respected Hasidic man got accused of a misdemeanor sex offense. The rabbi approved going to the police. At trial, the charges mushroomed, and he was convicted and sentenced to 32 years in prison. His friends argued for a lighter sentence. The verdict was overturned on appeal, and his chief accuser accepted a million-dollar payoff instead of testifying at a retrial.
So who are the authorities who covered up child abuse?
You mention RC Church officials failing to call police. I guess that is why you blame Penn State officials. But how would any of them know to do that, when all of Sandusky’s alleged victims said that he was completely innocent? The alleged victims did not need Penn State’s permission to call police. Anyone can make a criminal complaint, and no one did.
It is plausible that a witness would change his story, if it gets a million dollar payoff. The Sandusky witnesses all changed their stories, so they were either lying before, or lying afterwords. It is more plausible that they lied for the money.
Roger:
From the linked article, “A studious and introspective boy, Yossel explained that Lebovits had offered him a ride home from a school outing late at night, then reached over to the passenger seat and molested him. . . . On March 6, 2008, Joshua told Detective Litwin that he had been molested by Lebovits on more than thirty occasions over four years. Once, he said, Lebovits had picked him up on his way to school and anally raped him in a building near his yeshiva. . . . One of the victims was a twenty-year-old named Aron, who said that Lebovits had repeatedly molested him in his car, beginning when he was sixteen. . . . He had struggled to process what was happening when Lebovits, a pious man, put his mouth on Aron’s penis.”
If you want call what is described above as somebody being “accused of a misdemeanor sex offense,” I recommend you consider why you are trying so hard to minimize it.
I get it that it’s upsetting when trusted figures such as rabbis or priests or football coaches behave this way, and so if you can minimize this you don’t have to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
The article said that the initial accusation was a misdemeanor offense. Not my opinion. I have no idea whether any of the accusations are true. If a small fraction of them were true, they should have been able to convict him.
Yes, it is upsetting when authority figures are child molesters. But that is not what happened at Penn State. Sandusky had no authority at Penn State, and was not accused of abusing Penn State students. The scandal was that Penn State coaches and administrators supposedly knowingly permitted a child molester to commit crimes there. That, I say, is like believing in witchcraft. It does not happen.
Sadly, I believe Andrew is correct. Moreover, if you apply your own logical test from ‘plausibility’, this idea that everyone involved was fabricating, doesn’t that seem pretty darn implausible to you?