<p>Neil Reed, a former college basketball player at Indiana University, died prematurely at age 36 from congenital heart failure. HIs death has brought up an old story about petty corruption. The way Coach Bobby Knight and Indiana University treated him a decade and a half ago, when he was a student athlete, must have left Reed a broken hearted and dispirited young man. The controversy arose when Coach Knight gratuitously criticized Reed as he was transferring from Indiana University. After Knight used his bully pulpit as a nationally famous coach to humiliate a player leaving the program, Reed defended his reasons for leaving, noting that Coach Knight had choked him in practice. Given Knight’s volatile behavior, Reed’s statement did not seem implausible. After that exchange, Reed suffered greatly for the audacity of truth. At bottom, his story illuminates the danger of measuring value in solely economic terms.</p>
<p>Bobby Knight did what most people in positions of power and influence do when challenged about embarrassing conduct by little people; he lied. The apparatus of the Indiana Athletic Dept., at least the parts loyal to Knight, leapt to his defense. Minions emerged to say that Coach Knight did no such thing. The administration questioned Reed’s credibility. The party line describing Reed was that he was a bitter quitter, a player who could not measure up at Indiana University, and who had slandered the great coach to cover his own inadequacies as a person and an athlete.</p>
<p>Fortunately for Mr. Reed, a videotape proved otherwise. The administrative apparatus defending the Coach, the basketball program, and the university had overlooked a critical detail. A grainy videotape of practice showed Coach Knight’s right hand jerking Reed’s head back as it grasped Reed’s neck. The choke lasted just a few seconds. The choke did not injure Reed. The videotape did not necessarily tell the whole story; for example, it left unclear what precipitated the choke. However, the choke happened. There are very few, if any, circumstances that one can imagine where it might be appropriate for a coach to choke his player. The attack on Reed’s character was the calumny; he had told the truth. </p>
<p>Certainly, the pain of character assassination on a national scale experienced by Reed pales in comparison to the awful torture and tragedies that befall dissidents in oppressive regimes around the world, the punishment meted out to “rats” by criminals protecting their operations, and the destitution often faced by corporate whistleblowers. Certainly, more despicable cover ups have occurred involved, trying to hide the fact of children being raped by priests and football coaches. More important men than Coach Knight have looked more ridiculous and petty in misguided efforts to lie their way out of trouble. Bill Clinton was undone by Monica Lewinski’s rather unique souvenir, the infamous blue dress with a stain - a truly seminal moment in the story of the arrogance of power. So, why should we care about Mr. Reed’s sad, but fairly banal story.</p>
<p>The answer is suggested in the last two lines of the poem “Design,” by Robert Frost. After ruminating about a black spider hidden in a white flower, Frost concludes, “[w]hat but design of darkness to appall, if design governs in a thing so small.” If a “great man” is compelled to lie about a small error, what chance does truth stand of being revealed when great matters are at stake. Powerful Americans do not care about the truth. They care about not being caught in a lie. Our university, corporate, religious, and political leaders emphasize this lesson with alarming frequency. The ethos of every man for himself, of me first, second and always, has displaced any semblance of civic virtue, any sense that interests of the community as a whole are paramount. </p>
<p>All whistleblowers are not noble and not all powerful persons are corrupt. At one point, we used to expect more of the upper classes than the poor. The wealthy and educated owed society a vestigial noblesse oblige. The upper class obliges now by supposing that their superior achievement and acquisition, relative to those they wish to trickle down upon, equates to superior virtue as well. However, the torrent of corporate, political, military, judicial, academic, and other corruption has downgraded the past expectation to a chimerical wish. Certainly, all humans are subject to the temptations that cross our paths, but the nature of the temptation differs with social status. One temptation peculiar to the powerful is their ability to marshall forces to “control the message” when bad news is imminent. While no less prone to deceit, little people generally lack access to such resources. </p>
<p>Can you recall that last time that a powerful figure, who has transgressed, stood up and took full responsibility for their actions, expressed genuine contrition, and behaved with honor while facing up to their own wrongdoing? If any come to mind, then ask yourself if they did so before attempting to deflect the blame, or after the failure was irrefutably proven. How often do we hear of powerful people behaving honorably in any context other than donating money to charity, which is nice but fairly easy if you have a lot of it. Acting in your own self-interest is practical and necessary, but hardly honorable or noteworthy. Recently, a videotape of a child giving a ball he caught at a baseball game to a distraught younger child, who missed the catch, went viral. It was a casually beautiful act. Adults tend to fight each other for the ball and/or bring lawsuits for possession. Where economic values predominate in a society, the concept of shame fades away.</p>
<p>Our universities used to teach otherwise. Learning history, philosophy, and literature was seen as part of the mission to impart values to students as they matured into self-sufficient adults. In the best colleges, morality was not indoctrinated, but taught through exposure to, and discussion of, the stirring and innovative ideas of different eras and places. Thinking about great books was tantamount to a discussion with great minds of the past. At one time, college coaches were meant to care more about molding the character of the teammates, than winning games to bring in revenue. </p>
<p>The treatment of Reed by Indiana University shows the “design of darkness to appall” governing in a thing so small. Mr. Reed’s story demonstrates the ineluctable outcome where institutions, mirroring society, place much greater value on winning rather than integrity, on money rather than honor, and on self-interest than community. In a society obsessed with economic self-improvement, character is not especially practical and therefore not valued. The appearance of character may be useful in advancing up the ladder, but eventually the bottom line becomes more important than scruples. “Just win baby!” America has always been the place for hustlers in the positive and negative sense of that word. (See “Freedom Just Around the Corner,” Walter McDougal.) As it becomes ever more commercial and impersonal, the art of the hustle, of the swindle, becomes more common and less shocking.</p>
<p>As recent high school scandals have shown, cheating is ubiquitous among the most talented and ambitious teenagers. Adults have been caught cheating for poor children in schools with low test scores in efforts to protect school funding. Ambition goes hand in hand with cheating. The zeitgeist of an ambitious country in an ambitious age pays less heed to ethics of dishonesty than to the consequences of being caught. Young people learn this from the powerful people running the institutions that they read about every day. </p>
<p>Universities with large athletic programs appear to regularly fall far short when it comes to any values other than winning. Winning, of course, brings in revenue. Fortunately for them, winning counts for more than anything else in America. We do not want to look to closely into how you finished first, just the result. (Thus, we have college rankings!) It is not how you play the game, rather it is most emphatically whether you win or lose. Perhaps at some small liberal arts colleges that earn their reputations from teaching humanities as well as STEM subjects, and where athletes are not on scholarships and athletic departments are not relied upon for revenue, the focus on values and community remains at least partially in tact. Perhaps there are other, if not pristine, than at least less muddied institutions where ethics are still important. </p>
<p>May the passing of Mr. Reed prick the conscience of those who have abused their power to disparage an honest subordinate for the “greater good” of an institution. May those who engage the powerful with inconvenient truths have resort to videotape or well fitting blue dresses with which to defend their honor against the inevitable denials and attacks. May Neil Reed rest in peace.</p>