"The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously and hopefully." –Ellen Browning Scripps, from the Mission Statement for Scripps College

As a newcomer to the Claremont Colleges, I first thought it was business as usual. You know, the old boy network of interlocking board memberships, the taint of commerce wafting through the halls of academe, the students intuitively opposed. They feel the Ellen Scripps of the San Diego Zoo and numerous parks and preserves from California to Michigan couldn’t possibly support a biotech industry training facility on her land.

Speaking truth to power at the Claremont Colleges is becoming rather interesting. Students wanting to keep the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) out of the Bernard Field Station were dragged off Claremont University Campus (CUC) property by police in riot gear, some were forklifted, and everyone on campus, including President Peter Stanley, is becoming a Biblical scholar with respect to trust documents from 1926 through now. The students say the trust means the land can be used for any educational purpose; the trustees say the land must be used to site a college. When Robert Tranquada chaired Pomona’s Board of Trustees he told The Student Life, "The land was very specifically, and in a restrictive manner, reserved for the location of new colleges in Claremont. It is our obligation to follow the wishes of the donor [Ellen Scripps]."

Both sides are using the wrong arguments for their respective causes. Having spent the last few days sorting through the confusing tangle of KGI’s mission and governance, an interesting fact has emerged: KGI is not a college, nor does its President claim that it is. In a recent phone conversation I asked KGI President Henry Riggs if he thought KGI was a college. "No," he said. He later explained he thought KGI was a "professional school." And he said it was tailored to a very specific purpose and didn’t offer a research degree. When reading what follows, bear in mind that unlike the presidents of MIT and Caltech, institutions with which Riggs repeatedly compared KGI, Riggs’s highest degree is an MBA. Riggs lacks a PhD, much less scholarly credentials such as those held by Caltech’s President David Baltimore, who was on the ground floor of the Human Genome Project.

Moreover, Board of Trustee Chairs for Harvey Mudd College and Claremont Graduate University at the time KGI was inaugurated were both senior executives at Capital Group Companies (CGC), a financial firm listed by Corporate Watch as an international leader in biotech investments, a point Riggs does not dispute. Indeed CGC’s Michael J. Johnston actually chaired the Board of Fellows that voted to initiate KGI. Among the numerous biotech companies in which CGC has a substantial share is PIC, whose annual statement boasts in large letters "Making Our Mark in Pig Genomics." PIC offers as its mission to be the "leading worldwide supplier of pig breeding stock and related products and services to all members of the pork value chain." When these Board of Trustee Chairs approved siting KGI at the Bernard Field Station over the unanimous faculty opposition of Pomona, Scripps, and Pitzer Colleges (which also voted to protect BFS in perpetuity) whose interest did they have in mind, that of the Colleges or of that of the "pork value chain"? (Harvey Mudd College passed a similar resolution, but not unanimously.)

So far we have the governance of a CUC Board that decided to start a biotech institute by two executives of the same major biotech investment firm, CGC, but now consider this: Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustee Chair R. Michael Shanahan is the President of a CGC fund called Amcap. Amcap has exactly one educational administrator on its Board of Directors: KGI President Henry E. Riggs. In fact, Riggs is on the board of directors for four mutual funds managed by CGC.

Riggs told me that his directorships at CGS long predated his proposal for KGI. As a director on these boards Riggs has a fiduciary responsibility to CGC shareholders. As a trustee for CUC his charge is tending to the Claremont Colleges. This clearly poses a conflict of interest. When Riggs, then President of Harvey Mudd College, proposed KGI and not a law school, and when the Board of Fellows Chair Michael J. Johnston supported KGI, for instance, whose interests did they have in mind, those of the CUC, or those of the biotech industry? I raised the problem with Riggs. His thoughtful response: "That’s nonsense."

In light of his work on CGC’s behalf, President Riggs deserves a bonus. Consider the claims in Signals: The Online Magazine of Biotechnology Industry Analysis. The article states: "KGI’s new president, Henry E. Riggs…makes no apologies for tailoring this program tightly to industry’s needs. KGI graduates, he hopes, will have ‘a practical understanding of the results-oriented, collaborative culture’ of the workplace." Under the heading A new model? the article continues: "That practical approach is music to industry’s ears. Kwang-I Yu, president and CEO of Pasadena, Calif.-based Paracel, which makes genomic data analysis hardware and software, explains that his field of bioinformatics faces an acute shortage of job candidates with both biology and computer science backgrounds. Paracel routinely sends its newly hired computer scientists to biology boot camp while coaxing its biologists to learn computer programming. ‘It would be pretty nice if there were institutions that did this training for us,’ says Yu. And that’s why he jumped at the chance to serve on KGI’s advisory council." The article is somewhat dated. Yu is now a member of KGI’s Board of Trustees.

While Riggs is busy trying to convince nosy Claremont College professors that KGI is nothing out of the ordinary, he tells a different audience something else. A press release issued by Riggs’ public relations firm refers to KGI as "the first American graduate program devoted exclusively to the development of applications from the emerging discoveries in the life sciences, and to educating leaders for the biosciences." The release then quotes Riggs saying, "We believe that our emphasis on partnering with industry represents a new model for academic/industry cooperation." So which is it? "Just like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and Berkeley" (what Riggs said to me) or a "new model for academic/industry cooperation"?

Compare the aims of KGI with MIT’s mission statement: "The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind." In keeping with these goals, MIT offers research degrees. Riggs told me that KGI’s Masters in Biological Sciences (MBS) is "not a research degree."

Also, MIT and Caltech, not to mention Stanford and Berkeley, grant tenure. According to a recent Western Association School and College accreditation report on Caltech, that school has "approximately 280 professorial faculty (nearly 80% tenured) and 285 research faculty." That means that about half the faculty there are tenured or tenure track. These faculty are free to explore a broad range of research agendas regardless of David Baltimore’s interests. However, of KGI, Riggs said, "our mission is relatively narrow" and conceded that unlike Caltech or MIT, "we could let the contract run out for anyone whose work doesn’t fit the mission of KGI."

I raise the above because I worry that KGI will become a new model for corporations looking to use tax-exempt educational institutions as research laboratories. I am also concerned about how corporate interests have apparently hijacked the educational agendas of the Claremont Colleges. I am doubtful that KGI conforms with the charter requirements of a new Claremont College and I am incredulous that disinterested parties would objectively decide a biotech professional school would be the sort of institution that would best suit the needs of Claremont College students. One symptom of the bad fit is that while CUC’s CEO Brenda Barham Hill is summarily suspending students and calling in the riot police, the Honnold-Mudd Library under her control is a nightmare for students and faculty, and the Huntley Bookstore is similarly mismanaged.

The last week has shown me that the real trustees of Ellen Browning Scripps’ vision are not the financial honchos on the CUC Board, but the students being punished for displaying exactly the qualities Scripps wanted to cultivate, "the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously and hopefully."