AXED

Story by Mark Worth and Mark Gardner

Photo by Neal Herbert

Robert O. Sylvester, a UW civil engineering professor with a strong interest in ecological issues, was named IES's first director. It came as no surprise to Sylvester that, at the dawn of the environmental revolution, his nascent program would be subjected to suspicion and fear on campus. "We didn't have a whole lot of people willing to give us piles of money," remembered Sylvester, now 80 and retired.

What Sylvester didn't expect was that after a generation of growing acceptance and prestige - not to mention the general mainstreaming of environmental issues in society - the Institute itself would become an endangered species. To his shock, and to the shock of many Institute supporters, UW Acting Provost David Thorud abruptly announced in October that IES's $1.2 million biannual budget and professional staff were on the chopping block.

"I was stunned," said Sylvester, who, like nearly everyone else with an interest in the Institute, unceremoniously read about the decision in local newspapers. Acting Provost Thorud, the erstwhile dean of the university's College of Forest Resources, explained that UW officials must cut $19 million from its 1995-97 budget. Of that, $12 million must be slashed because of Initiative 601, the 1993 measure that limits state spending. "Somebody has got to make these tough choices," Thorud said recently.

But was Thorud's decision merely based on dollars and cents? Not hardly, say dozens of UW professors, staffers and students interviewed over the past few weeks. For starters, Thorud's Forestry School has long been at ideological odds with IES, which explores, among other things, environmentally sensitive natural-resource practices. Institute Director Jim Karr has emerged as one of the Northwest's most steadfast supporters of sustainable forestry.

Meanwhile, an extensive review of Thorud's record by the Free Press reveals that he has been urging government regulators to hasten timber cutting on state-owned land - even to the point of imperiling possible spotted-owl habitat.

At the same time, the Institute has hurt itself by becoming a flashpoint of in-house controversy. The big blow came this past summer, when three distinguished professors and IES's long-time assistant director left the Institute. The resignations climaxed a messy, bitter flap that hopelessly split the Institute's small staff. At issue were not differences over academic direction or the vision guiding the Institute. The squabbles, IES staffers say, were petty and largely personal. "This is the ugliest, dirtiest stuff I've ever seen," Institute staffer Ellen Chu said.

While acknowledging the Institute's instability was a factor in his budget-cutting decision, Thorud denies that any political differences with IES or Karr weighed on his mind. Karr and other UW professors - as well as some students and UW-watchers - believe otherwise. "I think this was not strictly a monetary decision," Karr declared.

Other recent moves by Thorud add credence to this speculation. He recently recommended gutting a program in his own Forestry School that manages the Arboretum, and another program that examines how logging affects river and stream ecosystems. Many say that last year Thorud dislodged venerable forest researcher Jerry Franklin from a UW outpost on the Olympic Peninsula because Franklin was overseeing research that supported cutting fewer trees near timber-dependent communities.

Viewing all of this with no small degree of confusion and discomfort are UW students - 1,500 of whom take IES-affiliated classes every year, and some of whom are organizing to save the Institute. Without the Institute, many of them wonder, how will environmental studies be coordinated at the university? What does the decision say about the UW's commitment to environmental education?

Also quick to react to IES's knifing are apoplectic environmental advocates, educators and scientists who argue that universities need to devote more, not, fewer resources to environmental research and education. Thorud and other UW administrators have been bombarded with letters supporting the Institute. Wrote Alan Thein Durning of Northwest Environment Watch, a Seattle-based think-tank, "In a time when even Fortune 500 companies are establishing vice presidents for environmental studies, we find it both ironic and profoundly troubling that the administration might consider IES expendable."

Even beyond the academic fallout of Thorud's decision, UW administrators have a mushrooming public-relations disaster on their hands that even their best damage-control efforts have been unable to contain. "What kind of a signal does it send to the whole world about this part of the country," queried David Ortman, head of the Northwest Friends of the Earth office. "A pretty pathetic one."

"It Was Barely Civilized..."

If the Institute for Environmental Studies is eliminated, the UW will lose the only academic program on campus that touches a wide spectrum of environmental disciplines. Students pursuing an environmental studies degree can take classes in wildlife conservation, environmental law, industrial pollution, the global environment, chemicals in the workplace, and a host of other subjects. With its own academic advisor, IES offers students individualized help with their educational decisions.

Still, the Institute is more than an academic center. It also organizes conferences and seminars designed to keep scientists, policymakers, activists and others abreast of a wide range of environmental developments. Topics over the years have included wetlands management, water rights, public vs. private landowner rights, and the use of hydropower. Another outreach tool is Illahee - formerly the Northwest Environmental Journal - a quarterly publication featuring research reports from UW and other scientists, as well as submissions from regional decision-makers.

Since Karr came on in 1991, the Institute has expanded in a variety of ways. The number of students seeking environmental studies degrees has quadrupled to 60 a year. Illahee is prospering more than its smaller, less editorially accessible predecessor. Illahee is turning a small profit, says co-editor Ellen Chu, whereas the Northwest Environmental Journal was $32,000 in the red after eight years of publication. And, both the number of courses offered and the pool of visiting professors has grown.

Though its reputation among students, environmentalists and scientists is generally very strong, the Institute has hardly enjoyed secure footing at the UW in recent years. In 1990, for example, only a fervent effort by faculty members and local environmental and political leaders rescued IES from a severe gutting at the hands of an administration-chartered panel.

James Karr, director of the beleagured IES.

Key to preserving the Institute that time around were the lobbying efforts of Vim Wright, IES's energetic assistant director and a board member of the influential Washington Environmental Political Action Committee, or WEnPAC. Four years later, she would assume a much different role.

During this period, the Institute was in a weakened state due to the lack of a permanent director. In order to put an end to the use of IES professors as stand-ins, Institute faculty and staffers urged that a national search be made for a full-time leader. The school decided on Karr, an academic powerhouse with a curriculum vitae as long the as arm of a Husky basketball player. In 1991, he left an endowed biology chair at Virginia Tech to take over the reins at IES.

With the initial backing of IES faculty and staffers, Karr enjoyed a rather lengthy honeymoon. One reason may have been that Karr spent much of his first year sitting back and somewhat passively watching the Institute run. Come 1992, however, he became more engaged in the Institute's activities.

"That didn't sit well with [Assistant Director] Vim Wright. She viewed Dr. Karr as being a threat to her power base," said Kate Roudybush, long-time secretary to both Karr and Wright. "She became somewhat recalcitrant. There became an alignment of forces."

The "alignment" of which Roudybush speaks essentially pitted Karr against, in her words, "the old guard" of Wright and long-time IES professors Dee Boersma, Estella Leopold and Gordon Orians. What followed, in the words of Roudybush, was akin to children fighting in a sandbox. "It was barely civilized - juvenile, very high-schoolish," she remembered. "What I saw was an enormous amount of ego - and a lot of insidious stuff. You would have had to live with it to believe it."

Wright's perspective is that Karr "didn't know the difference between an assistant director and an assistant to the director, sort of a glorified secretary. I viewed my position as responsive to the university and community at large." Orians painted Karr as "non-communicative" and as "someone who doesn't know how to handle power."

According to UW sources, Karr began to document what he felt were shortcomings in Wright's performance. This infuriated not only Wright, but the three professors as well, all of whom enjoyed close personal and professional relationships with Wright.

By January of 1994, the situation had reached the boiling point. On the 19th, Karr submitted his resignation to Carol Eastman, dean of the Graduate School, which serves as IES's administrative home. Five days later, Eastman asked Karr to stay on, writing that IES "has long been a model of the way interdisciplinary activity can be pursued and can work."

Karr agreed to stay, but Boersma, Leopold and Orians called for him to resign, Karr said. A vote of confidence was taken. Karr prevailed, 4-3. Those on the losing end saw the writing on the wall. On April 15, the three professors all quit and returned to their "home" academic departments. And in August, Wright retired.

Despite the internal squabbling, Professor Orians said he and the three others attempted to keep the situation from turning into a campus-wide incident. "We left quietly," he said.

In hindsight, did Karr try to do too much with the Institute too quickly? Former 20-year IES staffer Polly Dyer thinks so. "Things had been working for a lot of years over there," said Dyer, who retired in June as the Institute's continuing-education director. "When a new broom comes in, sometimes it has to be seasoned. Maybe Dr. Karr tried to move things too fast."

Thorud's Axe Falls

The summertime saw another staffing shakeup that would assume even a greater hand in the Institute's fate. Eastman, the Graduate School dean, took a job at the University of Hawaii. Other Karr-backers who also left the UW were Provost Wayne Clough, who became president of Georgia Tech, and Assistant Provost Steven Olswang, who went on sabbatical in England. Moving in as provost in September was Thorud.

Since 1981, Thorud had been the dean of the Forestry School, easily one of the UW's weightiest and best-funded departments. How did Thorud land the acting provost job? For a year in the mid-1980s, he served as the university's lobbyist in Olympia. Word around campus is that UW President William Gerberding was impressed by how deftly Thorud handled himself in the capitol. Thorud also has made a name for himself as a member of high-profile boards around campus, including search committees impaneled to find replacements for outgoing President Gerberding and several deans.

On October 4, seemingly out of the blue, Karr received a call from Thorud informing him that the Institute was to be defunded. In case there was any ambiguity about the finality of the decision, Karr was told to inform his staff that they would be out of a job come June 30, 1995. A press release sent out simultaneously reiterated what Thorud had told Karr.

Thorud explained to the Free Press, as he has to many other media organizations, that the UW simply couldn't continue to nip and tuck from departments and college throughout the campus. A large hunk of the latest $19 million cut, he said, had to come from one place. Gerberding agreed with Thorud's call.

Soon afterward, the publicity surrounding what appeared to be a decision by fiat forced the administration to back down. In particular, they were forced to launch a formal procedure to eliminate the program after IES professor and former Director Conway Leovy questioned the propriety of the decision. The administration, Leovy charged, "was out of line in moving this program ahead for elimination."

From that point on, public pronouncements were that the Institute had not been eliminated, but rather that it had only been identified for possible elimination. President Gerberding told a group of students assembled at a "Presidential Summit" on Oct. 19 that the decision was not set in stone. Gerberding acknowledged to the UW Daily that the Institute is a "program" that therefore can't be eliminated without a review process.

The about-face within the administration is evidenced by two communications from Acting Vice Provost Joan Fitzpatrick that were obtained by the Free Press. In an Oct. 4 memo labeled "Confidential", Fitzpatrick wrote to Acting Graduate School Dean Dale Johnson, "I believe the proposed defunding of [IES] would not involve the 'elimination of an 'academic program' ..."

A week later, however, after Professor Leovy called attention to the issue, Fitzpatrick pulled a 180. She sent an e-mail to Thorud on Oct. 12, which read "[IES] is clearly a program and we need to go through the program elimination process." She went on to refer to the 1990 attempt to disband the Institute. "The precedent for IES is already set," Fitzpatrick wrote.

Despite the administration's shift, Karr continued to receive messages behind closed doors portraying the IES cut as a done deal. "I continued to be told in private that this was a final decision," he said.

Regardless of the private intentions behind the public statements, the university is bound - ostensibly - by the University Handbook. According to the handbook, an academic program cannot be eliminated until the decision is reviewed by a committee of four faculty members and a student appointed by the Graduate School. Budget constraints may be a reason for the elimination of a program, the handbook says, but such decisions must also be based on "reasons of educational policy." Education policy reasons include "a change in educational priorities of the university."

In this case, it remains to be seen whether the university will argue that the Institute as it exists is obsolete or inadequate. If the Institute is done away with, faculty or students may appeal the decision, which, given the current attitude on campus, seems highly likely.

Another potential player is Gov. Mike Lowry, whose first choice was for the state university system to trim administrative spending - not academic programs. Said Lowry spokesperson Jordan Day, "Higher education is critical to our state. We said, 'Please take cuts out of administration. Don't cut programs.'" Whether the governor will join the fray remains to be seen.

The process for eliminating the Institute is likely to bring out the worst in the academic community. One factor likely to influence the fate of IES is the stature and unquestioned environmental commitment of the three professors who left the Institute this past summer. Former IES Professor Orians noted, "If the three of us hadn't left, this probably wouldn't have happened."

Each member of the trio is indeed respected in the academic community. During their IES careers, Orians and Leopold were admitted to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. And Boersma is an internationally recognized ornithologist and recipient of a UW Distinguished Teacher Award.

The fate of the Institute also may depend on the level of outside support. Administrators would think twice about hacking a program that enjoys a strong reputation in the local community. But the external outcry seems muted compared to the furor generated in 1990, the last time the Institute was threatened. Institute insiders chalk up the relative silence to an active campaign by at least one former staffer to undermine IES's support.

John Huskinson, a Seattle-based environmental activist, said he was contacted recently by Wright, IES's former assistant director. "She called me and jumped on my case when she heard I was going to start a massive effort to save the institute," Huskinson said.

Wright freely admits telling Huskinson and others in the environmental community about "some of her positions" regarding the Institute. But, Wright contends, she had only good intentions at heart. The sunsetting of IES, she says, "would provide us with some new opportunities" to improve environmental education at the UW. Still, some individuals inside and outside the Institute have privately questioned her motives.

The UW's "Orphan Stepchild"

However sticky the fallout of the IES decision has become, the events leading up to Thorud's announcement were equally as rife with bickering and discord. Colleges and universities, just as any other type of institution, are the home of strident political battles. The ideological and academic competition between Forestry School and IES was such a battle.

"There is a long history of antagonism between IES and forestry," Karr said. Privately, other UW professors described the relationship as downright unneighborly. This should come as no surprise, particularly when comparing the respective ideals held by present and former Institute staffers, and Thorud.

Karr, for example, wrote in a 1994 op-ed piece to The Oregonian newspaper of Portland, "The primary threats to forest health . . . are a direct result of human actions, especially logging practices." Thorud, on the hand, suggested in a 1977 Journal of Forestry article that river streamflows could be enhanced by clearcutting riverside forests and replanting the areas with less water-dependent vegetation.

Beyond his writings, Karr has been urging a broad spectrum of policymakers - from state legislators to the president - that prevailing logging practices need to become more environmentally sensitive. Among his more high-profile activities, Karr testified in 1990 to the White House Task Force on the Spotted Owl, helped write a sustainable-forestry plan for the eastern Cascades, and authored a letter signed by 140 scientists urging President Clinton to protect fragile riparian ecosystems from harmful logging practices.

The irony - or fittingness - of the head of the UW Forestry School axing the university's environmental studies program was not lost on many. Sardonic jokes about Thorud "doing some clearcutting" at IES could be heard all over campus.

Negative reaction to Thorud's bombshell was swift and emotional. Ortman, of Friends of the Earth, commented in customarily colorful language, "You knew that [the UW administration] would seek the next available opportunity to kill IES. There have been signals that they find the Institute's work barely tolerable. The administration does not have a high tolerance for ideas that might look in different directions."

Ortman went on to describe a university largely fixated on churning out workers for Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, Microsoft and other corporate giants in the region. Then there's IES - the UW's "orphan stepchild," Ortman quipped. "No matter how radical they were at IES, they could never be radical enough to offset the bias for sustained economic growth at that place."

Chu, IES's publications editor, agreed. "The 'lords of yesterday' are trying to keep control of the university. They are fighting like cats and dogs to preserve that power. They are trying to preserve big logging, big mining, big water extraction."

Beyond the decision's tangible effects is how the Institute's possible elimination is being perceived throughout the academic establishment. The Society for Conservation Biology, for instance, blasted UW President Gerberding in a recent letter. Society president Peter Brussard of the University of Nevada-Reno wrote that the decision "was ill-advised and . . . will reflect poorly on the University of Washington."

A Conflict of Interest?

Observers on and off campus instantly began to wonder how Thorud could separate his political and academic views as Forestry School dean from his budget-cutting role as university provost. Many saw the outcome as a clear-cut conflict of interest. "It gives the appearance of a conflict," Karr remarked.

While former IES Professor Orians thinks the Institute might have been eliminated anyway, "that is not to say that Thorud may not have a conflict of interest." Former assistant director Wright said there was grave concern both on and off campus that Thorud and other kindred academicians are "in a beautiful position for a predatory role" against university environmental programs.

Sylvester, IES's founding director, suspects Thorud may have lacked objectivity in making the decision. "Certainly, the provost should have a view of society that doesn't concern just his own bailiwick," the retired professor said. "That's wrong."

A close examination of Thorud's background reveals a man whose sympathies are rooted with the concerns of the timber industry, and of the people and institutions that benefit from it.

As dean of the UW Forestry School, Thorud earned an automatic spot on the Washington state Board of Natural Resources. The panel's biggest responsibility is deciding the fate of 2 million acres of state-owned forest land. Proceeds from logging activity on this public land help pay for the building of public schools, prisons, and other government buildings.

Among Thorud's most controversial decisions on the Board was his 1985 vote to increase logging from 700 million board-feet per year to 800 million. The 3-2 tally went against then-Gov. Booth Gardner and then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Frank Brouillet, both of whom feared that too much logging might take money out of the hands of local school boards in the future.

Thorud has since fought for further logging increases. He's gone so far as to call for the Board, which is chaired by state Public Lands Commissioner Jennifer Belcher, to subject itself to regular outside "audits". Among the many questions Thorud says he wants asked is whether the public forests are "bringing in enough money." At Thorud's behest, the Board voted in November to conduct an outside audit - which could cost up to $100,000.

Further, according to minutes from a February 1993 Board meeting, Thorud resisted a new state policy designed to protect potential spotted-owl habitat from destruction at the hands of loggers. Because the Board went along with Thorud's proposal to delay the new policy, the responsibility of detecting spotted owl habitat was left in the hands of timber companies, said John Edwards, a staffer with the state Department of Natural Resources. Whether any spotted owls were driven from their homes as a result of the Thorud proposal, Edwards said, will never be known.

Minutes also reveal that Thorud has pushed the Board to adopt more of a market-style approach to logging decisions, namely because of the expected growth in timber demand nationwide. Clearly standing to benefit from such an approach are timber companies with agreements to cut on state-owned land.

One such company is Boise Cascade Corp., which has signed tens of millions of dollars worth of contracts to harvest timber on the state-owned land managed by the panel on which Thorud serves. Working as a lobbyist for Boise Cascade is none other than Ann Goos - Thorud's wife. Goos, who was married to a logger before she and Thorud wed several years ago, is the former high-profile head of the Washington Commercial Forest Action Committee, a timber-advocacy organization based in Forks.

Over at the Forestry School, Thorud has exhibited a pattern of siding against environmentally oriented initiatives.

In 1993, Thorud ordered professor Jerry Franklin, a nationally recognized timber expert, out of the UW-run Olympia Natural Resources Center. (Franklin also serves on the editorial board of Illahee, the Institute's quarterly journal). The research facility opened on the heels of 1989 legislation championed, ironically, by then-state Rep. Jennifer Belcher. Getting the boot along with Franklin was researcher Gordon Smith, who said Thorud didn't like that the pair was studying how logging can adversely affect forest ecosystems.

"The dean wanted the Center to be more tightly aligned with the concerns of the local folks in Forks," said Smith, adding that such concerns involved maintaining or increasing logging levels on public lands. Nowadays, Smith said, logging-sympathetic UW forestry professors conduct "Q-and-A sessions" at the Center. "They've been well-received," he said.

Thorud's decision to zero-fund IES isn't the only budget move that has drawn intense heat. Some Forestry School professors have been described as near-mutinous over deep cuts faced by programs with environmental emphases, and over a virtual blackout of budgetary and other information. Angry missives are being faxed and E-mailed throughout Anderson Hall, the Forestry School's campus domain. Morale at the school has hit rock bottom.

The internationally recognized Center for Streamside Studies is up for a whammy of a hit: just over a third of its $320,000, two-year state budget. The $115,000 cut is fully 60 percent of the budget reduction being faced by the entire Forestry School, which has a biannual budget of $9.7 million. Center Professor Rick Edwards said he isn't sure how the center can survive such a gutting.

Lost would be a unique resource that studies, among other things, how logging near rivers and streams affects fish and other waterborne animals, as well as the general health of waterways. Requests for the Center's research reports have poured in from throughout the world, said Director Bob Naiman.

Also up for a hefty reduction is the Forestry School's Center for Urban Horticulture, which maintains the Arboretum - one of the UW's most publicly revered resources.

Meanwhile, the Olympic Natural Resources Center, whose state budget is more than double that of the Center for Streamside Studies, is being set back a relatively painless $10,000.

"The acting provost (Thorud) has been running around telling people that environmental programs are being treated equitably, but they are not," charged forestry Professor Jim Agee. "It's bullshit."

Agee, who teaches in the Forest Wildlife department, said Thorud's administration broke a promise to hire two professors for the program - even after the salary money came in. The Forestry School, Agee said, wouldn't even put up $2,500 so the department could buy tree corers, measuring tapes and other pieces of basic field equipment. He said professors had to buy the supplies with their own money.

Where to from Here?

If the Institute for Environmental Studies is done away with, questions remain as to which parts of it - if any - will live on. "There could be a 'Plan B'," said IES Professor Leovy, "but I am not aware of it." Added Karr, "There certainly is no backup plan." Thorud was vague when asked who or what would coordinate environmental studies at the university in the absence of IES.

What is known is that tenured IES professors would go back to their "home" departments, and that some of the programs would be parceled out to existing departments or become part of special curricula. The biological side of the program appears to be well taken care of. In particular, former IES professors Gordon Orians and Dee Boersma want to develop a master's program in conservation biology. Such a program has already been reviewed by the Graduate School and appears to be on its way to approval.

In addition, an "Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology" track may become part of the biology degree program. And, according to Orians, Law School Dean Wallace Loh is interested in picking up IES's environmental law courses. The fates of other courses are less certain.

Karr fears that such a dismemberment would destroy the integrated and cross-disciplinary nature of IES. Orians, while no longer an IES supporter, noted the difficulty the university has had in sustaining interdisciplinary programs. During the 1990 flap, for example, then-director Leovy's efforts to recast the Institute as a global-change research center were stymied by several UW deans, who Orians said wanted to "dismember the thing and take pieces."

Also in question are the services now provided by the Institute, such as student advising. IES student Erik Barber, who is fighting to save the Institute, fears environmental studies students would not be adequately served by advisors lacking specialized knowledge of the field. "We're going to miss the personal attention," Barber said. "A general counselor would be able to tell you what a science class is or an English class is, but not the specific classes that would suit an individual program."

All of this makes Karr wonder how much the university would actually save by eliminating IES. "If they want to maintain the program," he said, "the savings would be significantly diminished." Part of IES's budget, for example, pays visiting professors to teach environmental courses at the UW. Without the Institute's funding, Karr wonders, what will happen to those classes? Wright and Orians concur with this point, and, in fact, are pushing the university to maintain funding for advising and instructional support.

Boersma, Orians and Wright all feel that, if handled correctly, the current turmoil may lead to an improvement in environmental curricula. "This may be an opportunity to mainstream environmental education at the university," Boersma said.

Bigger Questions Loom

The depth of the current financial crisis at the university is unclear. The UW is searching for new revenue sources, such as a possible tuition increase. At the same time, some faculty have been openly skeptical of the university's desire to create - in the midst of a budget shortfall, no less - a discretionary fund of $7 million. The cuts outlined so far not only meet an expected shortfall, but are also expected to be a source of fluid cash for new programs.

It is also unclear why the proposed cuts fall so heavily on the Graduate School. Other UW academic units have been asked to cut between 2 and 3.5 percent of their budgets. Only the Graduate School has been asked to absorb a much larger amount - a whopping 19.8 percent reduction. Of that cut, 85 percent comes from hacking IES's budget.

There is also the broader picture of other university expenditures, which seem to belie a picture of austerity. The UW is in the midst of a massive building program, with current and near-future construction of mostly science and medical buildings projected to cost up to half-billion dollars. Many have asked: How can the state and the school afford such an aggressive building initiative, but not an environmental studies program?

Further, some have questioned the propriety of temporary leaders eliminating academic programs when they won't be around to face the consequences of their actions. And, if the new university's new leaders have a soft spot for environmental programs, how will they react to their predecessors' decisions to eviscerate them?

Jennifer Tietz is one of many UW students asking themselves these and other questions - questions that may not be answered for months or years to come. As of now, Tietz is in a tough spot. She transferred from the University of Michigan this past summer because of the UW's environmental studies program. Now, the very thing that beckoned her to the Northwest is in jeopardy.

"I think it's entirely illogical for the state of Washington - the metropolis of the United States in terms of natural resources and environmental awareness - to be eliminating this program," Tietz said. "What we now need to do is make sure the administration knows how important it is for the university to have a focus on the environment."

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Contents on this page were published in the December/January 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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