After
By
Leonard Zwelling
Dedicated to Cousin Stu
“Luchshen Kugel: A classic Jewish noodle pudding that’s as comforting as it is versatile.” From a Copilot search
My cousin Dr. Stu Levine tells a story about a man dying in bed. All of sudden he smells the aroma of his wife’s luchshen kugel wafting into the bedroom from the kitchen.
She comes to the bedside and he asks, “Honey, please, can I have just a small piece of the kugel.”
“No,” she says. “It’s for after.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens after.
The article attached from The Wall Street Journal of July 19 by Peggy Noonan discusses what might come after Trump. Many people in the MAGA universe are jockeying for position to follow the master. In some ways this fight for dominance might be sustaining the Jeffery Epstein controversy in MAGA-world. After all, why should anyone really care about the files on a man who died by his own hand six years ago? But, of course, in MAGA-world there is doubt it was a suicide and there are questions about what is hidden in the still unreleased files, although we have just learned that Trump is in them and so is Bill Clinton. Is there a list of pedophiles in the Deep State? Hillary Clinton? Curious Magaites want to know. I am not sure I care, but MAGA-world does and is holding potential next generation leaders’ feet to the fire over the release of the files. Will this determine who leads MAGA-world after Trump is gone?
And, as for after, what happens to the vice presidents and academic leaders at MD Anderson who used to be faculty once their administrative tenure (or their stay at the top) is over? A great example of doing it right was Dr. Kleinerman. She led Pediatrics for 14 years and once removed continued to make contributions to research on relevant and important problems in the care of young people with cancer. There is no doubt her tenure as Faculty Senate chair was productive and consequential.
I contrast that with my own experience as a vice president. Once I was removed, I was kind of lost. I had closed my lab for lack of time to write grants and manage research. I hadn’t cared for a sick person in decades. What was I to do after?
I guess I got lucky and started a new career in health care policy, went to Washington, and then wrote about it in blogs, op-eds, and a few books afterwards. I didn’t have a plan for after, as the BW had. I had to make it up on the fly. Her way is better.
I’m not sure what will happen to the current crop of MD Anderson executives after they are MD Anderson executives. Those in patient care have probably ratcheted back their time in the clinic and the OR. Will they just be able to pick it back up when Dr. Pisters or the faculty have had enough of them? And what about Pisters himself? He’s not really an investigator as was Mendelsohn or DePinho. What will he do when he’s no longer president and why can’t that happen a lot sooner?
The message to all executives in academic medicine is not to do what I did and go into a high-powered job without a plan for after. Have a plan or wind up like the dying man in bed having to wait for after.
