Downfall of USC's President: the Problem of Administrative Epistemology
It's a good time to take stock of renewed scandal at USC. One month into the new round, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has announced a "Title IX directed, systemic investigation into the University of Southern California’s (USC) handling of reports of sexual harassment against former employee Dr. George Tyndall." Opportunistic though it may be (see Catherine Lhamon's comment ), the new DOE investigation points again to a structural management problem at the University. I'm going to bracket the profound gender trouble that propels the kind of abuse at issue and look at the role of an ongoing epistemic crisis in administrative practice. On May 16th, the Los Angeles Times broke the story of a coverup of an allegedly predatory campus gynecologist, Dr. George Tyndall, with this headline: "A USC doctor was accused of bad behavior with young women for years. The university continued letting him treat students." The invest...