By Dan E. Moldea Excerpt: The
Whistleblowers' Lunch at Bravo Bravo
Here are excerpts from Part Four of my new book on
corruption in higher
education, a discussion among whistleblowers and
their allies. Jon Oberg, who blew the whistle on
student-loan fraud,
reacts to the revelations of David Halperin and those
who blew the whistle on
for-profit-college fraud. Jon then turns to
praising the work of Jim Keen,
the epidemiologist who blew the whistle on scientific
corruption in a university-research setting.
David Halperin: [Education
Secretary Betsy] DeVos, actually herself, was an
investor in
for-profit higher education. . . . She has said things
basically about an industry
that’s proven again and again to be engaged in fraud.
She’s pointed to the
students as the fraudsters. And she’s said that we have
to get rid of these
policies produced to protect students. . . . What she was
describing was students
getting their federal loans forgiven, in a situation where
they’d wasted years.
They put in their own money. They’d taken out private
loans. They’d wasted
their grants and even the GI Bill. . . . What she’s saying
about students, that
they’re the fraudsters, is such a disgrace. So, I’ll never
give-up this
issue. (p.322)
Jon Oberg: David’s work over the years has
really put into the vocabulary the
idea that the Department of Education is ruining
lives. And it really does. It
just ruins lives. It ruins families, forever, and
that’s incredible. (p.
323)
Jim Keen: I want to improve the welfare at
MARC [Meat Animal Research
Center] and the quality of the science, too. . . . But
beyond MARC, the needed
changes happened throughout ARS [Agricultural Research
Service] because of the
whole ripple effect. So, I think what I did helped
make the agency become
better actually, to better use taxpayer dollars, to do
higher quality and more
welfare sensitive research. I mean they’re getting
looked at for the first
time. . . . And now they’ve got a little fence around them
at least. So, what I
wanted to happen at MARC happened. (p. 308)
Jon Oberg: One thing you said that I’m so
glad to hear: Your legacy is partly
about the improvement of science. I don’t think too
many people have picked up
on that. . . . That’s an important aspect of what you
did. That’s why it’s so
disturbing to me to know that the leadership of a
university may be undermining
science by always siding with industry. . . . I spent
years and years in research,
scientific method, ethics, and conflicts of
interest. I’m just appalled at what
MARC set up as an inherent scientific conflict of
interest, and nobody really
seemed to give a second thought to it. . . . (p.
329)
Corruption is
not inherent in government; integrity can be
restored. It strikes me the wrong
way that we think corruption is all over, and we can’t
fight it. It’s bad, but
you’ve got to fight it." (p. 337)
