Tiger Weekly, a publication serving the LSU community, talked with university chancellor and former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe about the space agency’s exploration plans. There’s not much here (he tells the reporter he likes the Vision for Space exploration, adding, “I’m biased, since I helped to fashion that new direction”), although he seems less concerned about a new space race with China than some others in Washington and elsewhere.
The article leads off by noting, “Although his job as LSU Chancellor keeps him busy, Sean O’Keefe hasn’t stopped keeping track of events at his previous organization, the NASA.” As it turns out, the day the Tiger Weekly article was published, O’Keefe revealed he’ll soon have more time on his hands:
Effective June 1, 2008, I will step down as the 7th chancellor of the Louisiana State University. I will continue as professor of public administration for the balance of this spring semester, but relinquish duties as chancellor at the end of this month. The president has agreed to appoint an acting chancellor who will perform the duties of chancellor effective Feb. 1.
From O’Keefe’s resignation announcement:
“The university system leadership clearly has the authority and deserves the prerogative to empower those who can take the university to the next level and I wish them every success in that quest. It is evident to me that LSU needs a campus leader who enjoys the full confidence of the board and the president.”
So it is pretty clear he was fired.
If so, it’s way too bad he didn’t stay at NASA. The VSE was headed much more in the right direction, then, than it is now.
— Donald
Sean O’Keefe was not fired. I can say that with the utmost authority.
Donald: If so, it’s way too bad he didn’t stay at NASA. The VSE was headed much more in the right direction, then, than it is now.
Ditto. O’Keefe was an astute politician and recognized the distinction in roles among engineers, scientists and executive management. He certainly had a better attitude toward the all-American value of competition. He wasn’t a Captain Kirk, but he certainly wasn’t Mr. Spock. One thing that’s become fairly evident to me is that Vulcans make sh*tty commanders.
“It is evident to me that LSU needs a campus leader who enjoys the full confidence of the board and the president.”
Translation: O’Keefe does not have the full confidence of the board and president.
Pushed.
He was not pushed, John. He quit. I’ve talked to him about his. Have you?
Why’s it matter so much to you? What’s in it for you to act as his PAO?
Gee John, if you saw someone (you) post something totally untrue about someone you know – and whose circumstances you were familiar with – wouldn’t you say something? Nah. Why check facts, eh?
This might shed some light on the matter:
http://media.www.lsureveille.com/media/storage/paper868/news/2007/12/30/News/University.Mum.On.Okeefes.Job.Security-3146148.shtml
I found this with a very simple web search.
More updated info here:
http://www.lsureveille.com/
From the above links:
“The e-mail, posted to The Advocate’s Web site, alleges LSU System President John Lombardi told O’Keefe he “should be looking for another job.” (Dec 30)
and:
“It’s the prerogative of leadership to ensure that you have someone who enjoys the full confidence and full support of the leadership who is making strategic decisions,” O’Keefe said of his reason for resigning. “And I think that appropriately means they should seek out someone who can establish that role.”
O’Keefe dodged questions regarding the reason he was asked to leave. He directed those questions toward members of the LSU Board of Supervisors.”
“Asked to leave”/fired, you say potato, I say potahtoh.
Hopefully he’ll get a nice going away package like Dan Goldin.
The Reveille article seems to be much better sourced – i.e., they talked to more sources other than just O’Keefe. The clear conclusion from both the story and O’Keefe’s own statement is that he was asked to resign by those who make personnel decisions. Seems like if he didn’t, they would have fired him.
I don’t understand this argument you’re making, Keith. Did you talk to anyone on the LSU board? Why didn’t you post links to these articles instead of just O’Keefe’s resignation statement? We you even aware of them? It took me about 10 seconds to find these stories.
Doug and everyone else: I have talked to a lot of people involved. Believe what you want, but you are not informed as to what is going on. The board did NOT ask him to resign – a few members expressed their intent – others (the majority) did not – and many local community and business leaders took out an ad in the local papers to state their support. No vote was taken – and no one was asked to resign. O’Keefe made the decision to resign – just like he decided to leave NASA.
Of course, you just draw “conclusions” and do not rely on facts. Not much of a journalist, are you Doug? “Seems like” is not a fact, just your ill-informed speculation.
Of course, if you don’t like my websites Doug, start your own. You work at Yahoo, right? Shouldn’t be hard to find some help.
January 17, 2008
National Briefing | South
Louisiana: L.S.U. Chancellor Quits
By AP
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe of Louisiana State University resigned after three years in the position. In his resignation letter, Mr. O’Keefe said the chancellor should have the confidence of the university system’s president and governing board, reinforcing suggestions that board members and the system president, John Lombardi, wanted to fire Mr. O’Keefe. Reports had circulated for nearly two weeks that Mr. O’Keefe had been told by Mr. Lombardi to start looking for a new job because of a dissatisfaction by some university officials and by business leaders. No specific complaints against Mr. O’Keefe were ever lodged publicly, and business leaders around Louisiana voiced support for him. Before taking the chancellor’s job, Mr. O’Keefe was the administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Keith, post links to these other stories on your web site and allow your readers to decide what to believe here. Give them the full story. A simple link to the official LSU press release and ad-hominem attacks on people here do not suffice.
“Of particular concern at the time was the fact that Mr. O’Keefe, a former administrator of NASA who does not hold a doctorate, was awarded a tenured professorship.”
“Mr. Cope said that after the initial rocky start, Mr. O’Keefe never was fully able to connect with faculty members.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/01/1280n.htm
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Amid Speculation He Was Being Pushed Out, Louisiana State Chancellor Steps Down
By KARIN FISCHER
After two weeks of speculation that he would be forced out as chancellor of Louisiana State University’s flagship campus, in Baton Rouge, Sean O’Keefe announced his resignation on Wednesday.
Mr. O’Keefe, a former Bush administration official who was lured back to his home state three years ago, said in a written statement that he would step down as chancellor on February 1.
“The university-system leadership clearly has the authority and deserves the prerogative to empower those who can take the university to the next level, and I wish them every success in that quest,” Mr. O’Keefe wrote. “It is evident to me that LSU needs a campus leader who enjoys the full confidence of the board and the president.”
Rumors of a possible rift between Mr. O’Keefe and newly appointed LSU system president John V. Lombardi, along with some members of the Board of Supervisors, surfaced earlier this month, just as the chancellor should have been savoring the university’s national football championship. An e-mail message circulated by a prominent local businessman and obtained by The Advocate, a newspaper in Baton Rouge, alleged that Mr. Lombardi had told Mr. O’Keefe that “he should be looking for another job” and urged other business leaders to support the chancellor.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Lombardi said the chancellor’s decision came after a yearlong evaluation. The often outspoken president declined to release any details of that performance review, calling it a private personnel matter, and refused to comment on whether he had asked Mr. O’Keefe to tender his resignation.
‘Right Fit’ Missing
In an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. O’Keefe said he had not been asked to step down, but that neither the president nor members of the board “argued with the proposition that this might be a good time for me to resign.”
“There has to be the right chemistry, the right fit,” he said.
Mr. O’Keefe’s resignation will give Mr. Lombardi the first substantive opportunity to put his mark on the sprawling Louisiana State system. Indeed, Mr. Lombardi, who previously led the University of Florida and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, was hired in July with a specific mandate to shake up Louisiana State’s 10 campuses, which include two medical schools and 10 public hospitals. LSU has struggled at times with issues of academic quality and how to function as a cohesive system (The Chronicle, July 9, 2007).
There had been some speculation that Mr. Lombardi might use Mr. O’Keefe’s departure as an opportunity to consolidate the duties of system president and university chancellor, but he shot down that notion on Wednesday, saying that any attempt to juggle the two jobs was “almost certain to fail.”
Instead, Mr. Lombardi’s predecessor, William L. Jenkins-who himself had been rumored to have been forced out amid conflicts with the Board of Supervisors-will lead the Baton Rouge campus until a new chancellor is selected. Mr. Lombardi said he expected the leaders of the search committee to be named as soon as next week.
Dubious Faculty Members
Kevin L. Cope, president of the Faculty Senate at Baton Rouge, said faculty members hope that the selection process for the new chancellor would be open but that, because of the secretive nature of past searches, “there’s a depth of skepticism at LSU exceeding that of the Mariana Trench.”
In fact, Mr. O’Keefe’s appointment in 2004 had been greeted with complaints from faculty members that he had been “anointed” in a largely closed-door process. Of particular concern at the time was the fact that Mr. O’Keefe, a former administrator of NASA who does not hold a doctorate, was awarded a tenured professorship (The Chronicle, May 13, 2005). (Mr. O’Keefe said he planned to resign as a professor in the university’s Public Administration Institute on June 1.)
Mr. Cope said that after the initial rocky start, Mr. O’Keefe never was fully able to connect with faculty members.
But the chancellor did earn the support of the business community, who have been among his most vocal backers in recent weeks. Earlier this week, a group of nine state businessmen took out a full-page advertisement in The Advocate lauding Mr. O’Keefe’s accomplishments, among them leading Louisiana State through the effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, improving state support for the university, and starting the most ambitious fund-raising campaign in LSU history.
“I’m terribly disappointed,” said C. Stewart Slack, a former chairman of the Board of Supervisors who was one of those who took out the ad. “It’s like firing the football coach after he won the national championship because he lost two games during the regular season.”
Did you get the permission of the The Chronicle of Higher Education to reprint their article on Jeff’s website? An article only available to paid subscribers?
Avoiding the he-said-she-said sideshow and getting back to the news itself does this mean O’Keefe might be available as a NASA administrator choice for future presidents? How practical and feasible would it be? Would it be a good thing? I (and perhaps others too) would like to hear opinions and details on that*. And what does O’Keefe himself think about such a possibility?
* Particularly since it’s my understanding (perhaps incorrectly) that the vetted list of possible administrator choices with bipartisan congressional support is rather limited and perhaps even shrinking. Feel free to correct me on that, especially if you can document it with publicly available material (it’s what the internet is for).
I’d be astonished to see him back at NASA.
Keith, what are you yelling at us for? O’Keefe is the one who resigned. It was the LSU president and others who didn’t want to keep him on. Why don’t you focus your anger at them?
I really don’t understand your actions here. You’ve limited the information to your own readers to a link to an official press release. You’ve provided them with almost no context to O’Keefe’s departure. And you’re over on this site ranting at all of us about it.
This is increasingly common. When NASA announced, on the Friday that started a long Christmas break, that it was slipping the Mars spacecraft by two years, people went to NASA Watch hoping for additional information. What did you do? You attacked Lou Friedman. Your remarks were way out of proportion to anything that Lou said, and they added nothing to understanding the story. This involved a conflict of interest serious enough to delay a mission for two years, and you’re focusing on Lou Friedman’s comments? Why?
You’re now ranting about James Hanson. You trashed the book about him without even reading it. You then complained about how he was stirring up right wing blogs by actually reporting results of NASA’s research. This is a much bigger issue than Hanson. Did you miss the WaPo story about how large sections of the Antarctic ice sheets are destabilizing?
Many people find NASA Watch to be useful, but this behavior is mystifying. Especially when it starts running over onto this site.
Oh stop whining like a little boy Doug … I’m such an awful person… Bad Keith.
If you are SOOO upset by NASA Watch and all of the horrible things I do, why on Earth do you continue to put yourself through all of this torment? Stop reading it – I am certain that you’ll feel much better right away.
Indeed, why do I have three email addresses of yours blocked?
Find another obsession….
January 17, 2008
National Briefing | South
Louisiana: L.S.U. Chancellor Quits
By AP
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe of Louisiana State University resigned after three years in the position. In his resignation letter, Mr. O’Keefe said the chancellor should have the confidence of the university system’s president and governing board, reinforcing suggestions that board members and the system president, John Lombardi, wanted to fire Mr. O’Keefe. Reports had circulated for nearly two weeks that Mr. O’Keefe had been told by Mr. Lombardi to start looking for a new job because of a dissatisfaction by some university officials and by business leaders. No specific complaints against Mr. O’Keefe were ever lodged publicly, and business leaders around Louisiana voiced support for him. Before taking the chancellor’s job, Mr. O’Keefe was the administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Keith’s comments here speak for themselves, really. When a ten-second web search turns up more information about a story than his authoritative web site, ya gotta wonder about credibility. On this or anything else. And when he responds to criticism like a middle-school bully, then maybe he’s right; we shouldn’t pay as much attention to what he writes.
Anyway, we’ve wasted enough time on discussion of the relatively unimportant departure from an academic post of a former NASA administrator. Time to move on here….
Doug is obsessed with me. I block his emails – from multiple accounts – after I tell him repeatedly to stop bothering me. So he uses other websites as proxies to whine and moan. Get a life Doug. Indeed, please ignore me Doug – you won’t get so hot and bothered.
Time for Jeff to shut off comments.
That’s just pathetic. Crazy even. Keith’s endless evasions. Exaggerations. Can’t answer basic questions. Incessant personal attacks. It’s very sad and pathetic.
Yes, Jeff, cut off comments on this. O’Keefe’s departure is a minor issue anyway, given the other stuff that’s going on.
Regrettably, I have to agree, and will close comments for this post as well as take other measures to ensure the quality of the discussion here.