Beard
By
Leonard Zwelling
noun
a growth of hair on the chin and lower cheeks of a man’s face.
“he had a black beard”
informal•US English
a person who carries out a transaction, typically a bet, for someone else in order to conceal the other’s identity.
“the beard permitted the manipulator to protect the odds”
verb
boldly confront or challenge (someone formidable).
“he was afraid to beard the sultan himself”
From Google dictionary
During our trip to Singapore and Australia, you know, the one I was not exactly looking forward to, I grew a beard.
Now I have to ask myself the question, why did I do this?
It is certainly not my first beard. My graduation picture from Duke has me with long hair, a corduroy sport jacket with a peace symbol in the left lapel (it was 1969), and a beard. That beard was brown, red, and blonde like my son Richard’s beard is today. My new beard is grey.
The definitions from Google help answer the question why I grew this beard on the trip.
Obviously, it’s facial hair.
Just as obviously, it is meant to create and hide behind a new identity. I wanted to change who I was so I started with my appearance. I get that. I wasn’t happy with the grouchy me that dreaded this trip. Thus, I emerged from my emotional cocoon with a new mien. This covers definitions one and two.
But, there is also an element of the third definition in my facial hair. Who or what do I want to challenge?
To be frank, I have heard one horror story after another emanating from MD Anderson where young faculty have been chewed up by older, more powerful faculty. Then these young faulty members expect the appeals processes or the protective wing of their department chairs and division heads to save them from the onslaught of raw power they face, they are smothered instead. The faculty-friendly grievance and appeals processes installed mainly by the Faculty Senate are functionally dead under Pisters and the new state legislation that gives university leaders free hand to fire anyone they deem unprofessional. I wanted to beard that system of faculty oppression.
This scenario of faculty diminution has become so common that when I meet the next young, tortured faculty member who wants to show me the months of emails and stacks of appeals so I might help him or her, I ask them to put the papers away.
“But don’t you want to see the documentation?” a new victim might ask.
“I don’t need to,” I say. “All the stories are the same and no one who has the power to help you cares.” The four-letter F-word is FAIR according to George Will. The president, vice presidents, and academic leadership of MD Anderson do not care about fair.
A young, productive, bright faculty member is belittled, or worse, used by an older faculty member and all the forces get in line against the young person starting with the young person’s department chair and going all the way to President Pisters. It’s always the same.
Then I ask, “well, what do you want?”
The embattled faculty member struggles for an answer, but what most of them want is to do their work and be left alone to advance their career. Unfortunately, that is no longer possible for the young faculty member at MD Anderson.
“Well, then, what should I do?” they reply.
That answer is always the same as well. The moment they started clashing with someone more powerful than themselves, usually because the more powerful person wants to put his name on a paper, or use the young person’s grant money, or outright steal the young person’s ideas, the young person only has two choices. Either knuckle under and allow the misconduct to go on or find a new job.
This is the reality of MD Anderson in 2026 under this president. It’s the Mafia with Pisters as the Godfather. I can assure anyone that 25 years ago this was not the case. My then-boss Margaret Kripke, the Chief Academic Officer, would never stand for this nonsense. Neither would I when I had to deal with it and I did. When a dispute arose, we got to the bottom of it fast and resolved it. Very little had to go to Dr. Mendelsohn’s desk.
Now, no one below the president seems capable of mediating these disputes and this president never sides with the oppressed. Some disputes even have to go to court. That’s outrageous and a clear indicator that the leadership of the institution has failed the faculty and, in that failure, proved the leadership cannot do the most basic aspect of its job. Disputes such as these should not have to go to court.
It’s a damned shame that Anderson has to lose the talents of these young people because older faculty have become (or maybe always were) unproductive and so have to lean on younger talent to maintain positions they either should never have had or had earned their supervisory role in the past, but have over-stayed their welcome.
The only solution may come with a new MD Anderson president. Until then, this will go on as the institution regresses to the mean of mediocrity and it eats its young and destroys its future.
So sad.
