HOW TO LOSE $20 MILLION

By MASSIMO CALABRESI NEW YORK

WHEN IT COMES TO NASTY POLITICS and financial mismanagement, the academy has few rivals. Last week the king of all fund-raising foul-ups was unveiled when Yale University admitted that it was returning, at the donor's request, a $20 million gift from Texas oil billionaire Lee M. Bass. Scrambling to put a spin on the fiasco, Yale claimed that giving back the money, intended to endow a new program in Western Civilization, was an act of courage in the face of unreasonable demands. Some critics of the administration claimed a Pyrrhic victory for multiculturalism. At heart, though, it was managerial ineptitude and a clash of egos that ruined the deal.

The saga began four years ago when then dean of Yale College, professor Donald Kagan, a vocal champion of the study of Western Civilization, helped inspire the $20 million donation from Bass, a 1979 graduate of Yale. Bass, whose family had given a total of $85 million to Yale by the early '90s, agreed to fund seven new full professorships and four associate positions in Western Civ.

The money came at a particularly sensitive moment. Kagan had alienated many faculty members through his speeches about excessive liberalism and with his support of faculty cutbacks. "The donation was seen as a weapon in the hands of someone who had an autocratic style as dean," says Comparative Literature professor Michael Holquist, who, along with Comp Lit chairman Peter Brooks, was one of the earliest and most open critics of the Bass-funded program. The problem was that "the money was being given to support Kagan," says Holquist. "In the academy, it's always a clash of egos." Even those in Kagan's camp agree that a personal power struggle, rather than multicultural objections, was the source of friction.

Richard Levin, who became president in 1993, and his provost then compounded the problem by trying to retain as much of the $20 million as they could for the university's core endowment. They favored filling the four junior positions with existing faculty. Kagan and other original planners of the program resigned from the committee, and a new one was formed. In a colossal blunder, Levin failed to inform Bass of these changes, and when the new group expressed concerns, the members were told, according to a university source, "Don't worry about the donor."

The final blow came in November, when Bass learned of the changes by reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page. "The first he heard about it was when he read that editorial," says a member of the Bass camp. "They just didn't carry out the terms of the agreement at all." As the Journal described it, the forces of political correctness had sandbagged the hiring process for the new program. Infuriated and distrustful of Levin, Bass then demanded that he be allowed to oversee appointments to the chairs he'd endowed, a request frequently made by donors but always denied by the university. "Yale would not be Yale if it had ever yielded to any such request," said Judge Jose Cabranes, a trustee of the school.

One irony is that many of Kagan's detractors on campus are also great advocates of Western Civ. Another is that by implying that multiculturalism, rather than clashing egos and tightfisted administrators, was interfering with Bass's gift, the Wall Street Journal editorial writers helped ensure the demise of a program that would have strengthened Yale's classical curriculum.