Carnegie Mellon appointment of ex-Trump cabinet member Richard Grenell draws criticism from faculty, staff
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More than 200 Carnegie Mellon University faculty, staff and students have signed on to an open letter rebuffing the appointment of a former ambassador and Trump administration cabinet member as a senior fellow at the university’s Institute for Politics and Strategy.
Richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany who served briefly this year as acting director of National Intelligence, was tapped earlier this month as a senior fellow of the CMU program. The appointment was made by Kiron Skinner, the founder and director of IPS. Grenell will be based in the institute’s Washington office, with regular visits to the Pittsburgh campus.
The letter to CMU President Farnam Jahanian and his top administrators cites allegations of sexism and xenophobia against Grenell, pointing specifically to a 2012 Huffington Post piece that detailed hundreds of now-deleted tweets by the former Mitt Romney spokesman that disparaged the appearance of women in the media and in politics.
A university spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
In announcing Grenell’s appointment, Skinner said Grenell’s work gives him “a unique understanding of the complexities facing the intelligence community and how to address them.”
The announcement drew immediate criticism, including from Pittsburgh native Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.
Hayden retweeted the announcement from the CMU IPS Twitter account asking, “Why would you do that?”
Why would you do that? https://t.co/pomfZGFxxq
— Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) June 12, 2020
Last week, the Undergraduate Student Senate sent a letter to school administrators expressing concerns over the appointment, noting many students are “troubled by Mr. Grenell’s public statements and the reputation that he would bring to our department.”
Skinner later released a statement defending Grenell’s appointment.
“As the nation’s first openly gay member of a president’s cabinet, a political conservative, a Christian and a 10-year veteran of the State Department, (Grenell) brings a unique perspective to the practice of U.S. diplomacy and politics,” she said.
Skinner served on Trump’s transition team in 2016. In September 2018, she took leave from CMU to become the State Department’s director of policy planning, serving for a year. She said she found Grenell to be “personally and professionally generous and respectful of varying opinions,” and she invited him to become a fellow “in the spirit of intellectual freedom.” Provost James Garrett also called the appointment a matter of academic freedom.
The letter from faculty and staff accused administrators of distorting the meaning of academic freedom.
“But academic freedom does not in fact comprise an individual right to make appointments in a university,” the letter reads, “and it certainly does not remove the obligation to properly vet candidates for faculty positions (including visiting faculty) to ensure that they meet our university standards.”