Thursday, October 18, 2007

El Fin

Decido dejar de publicar en este Blog pero no significa que lo haga desaparecer, prefiero que en los resultados de búsqueda de Google siga apareciendo este esfuerzo por desenmascarar al mayor farsante literario y académico de la historia: Pedro Ángel Palou.

Palou y sus secuaces han demostrado brillantez a la hora de ultimar un proyecto como la UDLA. Ha sido la batalla del desgaste a través de las mentiras y han comprado la verdad con el poder del dinero, triste lección que aprendemos pero que no nos sorprenda, así se mueve todo en este mundo y en especial el estado de Puebla . La UDLA lleva viviendo momentos difíciles y ya poco puede hacerse para recuperar el proyecto académico donde me formé. Leo en algunos Blogs comentarios optimistas (pero poco realistas) de que todavía puede recuperarse el proyecto que se ha perdido pero mucho me temo que eso ya no es posible. Ya no existe nada que ligue esta realidad fascista con el pasado, a lo que fue la Universidad 

Pedro Ángel Palou y sus secuaces, bajo el patrocinio, auspicio y anuencia de la familia Jenkins, desaparecieron el proyecto universitario que brindó las libertades para fundar un periódico estudiantil único como La Catarina; el espíritu crítico que durante tantos años fue cultivado en las clases, fue exiliado; el orgullo exaUDLA, ignorado; la dignidad de los profesores y administrativos despedidos, pisoteadas; la memoria histórica, desterrada.

Desde la llegada de los Jenkins, el lema Sapientia, Pax, Fraternitas, nunca había tenido tan poco sentido en el campus. Con Pedro Ángel Palou, y antes con Nora Lustig, es evidente que el único interés de esta familia era acabar con el pasado de la UDLA, terminar con la memoria y el proyecto académico que Manuel Espinosa Yglesias y Enrique Cárdenas fundaron e impulsaron. Se corrió a la sabiduría por la mala cuando destruyeron los departamentos como Ciencias de la Comunicación, Relaciones Internacionales o Economía. La paz fue quebrantada cuando una inepta autoridad como Pedro Ángel Palou y sus secuaces se pusieron en contra de toda una comunidad estudiantil, académica y administrativa tomando decisiones basadas en la paranoia y la esquizofrenia: "todos los que piensan y se expresan están en contra mía, todos son conspiradores". La fraternidad ha terminado por diluirse en un campus donde todo mundo desconfía del otro y tiene que mirar por encima de su hombro, la instalación de un majestuoso equipo de seguridad es la guinda del pastel.

Han triunfado Palou y sus secuaces pero a quién le gustaría ganar como ellos, a mí no. En esta batalla ideológica han ganado usando la sinrazón, la cerrazón y la mentira; hemos perdido todos los que queríamos un proyecto universitario diferente y único en México; hemos salido derrotados y deprimidos los que abrazamos ideales más nobles y descubrimos que en nuestro país las cosas siguen igual que siempre. Una lección de vida muy dura. Me queda el consuelo de que todo lo hemos hecho siguiendo la ética y con ideales más nobles que el dinero y el poder, cosa que ellos, esos malandrines de poca monta, no entenderán jamás. Sus carteras se engrandecerán pero sus almas se empequeñecerán hasta desaparecer. Yo prefiero quedarme con la riqueza de espíritu.

Réquiem por un proyecto,
a modo de epitafio:
A Pedro Ángel Palou: que el millón de dólares que los Jenkins te dieron para soportar estos años te dure bastante, porque sabemos que del crack eres sólo la mascota, no eres tan buen escritor y aunque puedas pagar los premios que ganas, el único premio que jamás podrás comprar es el gusto de la gente que te lee, ni siquiera la posteridad está en venta, esos se ganan a pulso no con billetes, con historias interesantes y originales, no con polémicas baratas de zapatas gays o morelos casados. No eres más que un intento y así te quedarás toda tu vida, en potencia. ¿Quién te citará? Creo que nadie porque quién querrá utilizar tus palabras llenas de incongruencias y mentiras.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

La Realidad (ii)


El periódico Stanford Daily publica el día de hoy una nota bastante extensa sobre las buenas maneras y formas en que Pedro Ángel Palou conduce la UDLA. Sigue llamando la atención que en el extranjero se dé más cobertura a lo que ocurre en la Universidad que la propia prensa poblana o nacional. ¿A cómo estarán los "chayotazos" (dinero que se da a los periodistas para comprar su silencio)?

Llama la atención los últimos párrafos que buscan ligar con la UDLA al antiguo gobernador de Nuevo México, Bill Richardson. Su padre fue presidente del Consejo Universitario e incluso el ahora senador demócrata en plena carrera para la candidatura a la presidencia de EE.UU. cursó un verano en la UDLA. Además fue orador invitado en la graduación de 2003 y hasta hace poco era miembro honorario del casi extinto Consejo Universitario de la UDLA. 

Aquí puedes consultar la nota.

También la incluyo completa en caso de que no se pueda acceder a ella por "misteriosas" censuras.




Crisis in Mexico
Profs claim mass firings at former study abroad spot
October 4, 2007
By Andrea Fuller

When Marcela Cuellar ‘00 looks back on the quarter she spent at the Universidad de las Americas de Puebla (UDLA) in Mexico, she remembers a school “very comparable to Stanford.”

She and other Stanford alumni have fond memories of UDLA, where Stanford sponsored a winter quarter-only program that lasted from 1998 to 2003, when it ended due to low enrollment.

“[Studying at the University] for me was a good experience because it made me feel like they had hope for the future in Mexico,” said Violeta Barroso ‘00.

Today, the Mexican university is reeling, according to a number of UDLA students and faculty, who estimate that nearly 70 professors and 120 staff have been fired or forced to resign since the 2005 appointment of the current rector, Pedro Angel Palou.

Former UDLA Dean of Colleges and International Relations Prof. Mark Ryan said that 24 full-time faculty were dismissed without formal review in December 2005 and that 100 administrative workers were dismissed in June 2006. The communications and economics departments lost half their full-time faculty last May, Ryan added.

The Firings
While UDLA administrators ignored repeated requests from The Daily requesting comment, others involved with the school spoke at length about the mass firings.

“Despite years of dedicated service, [professors] were dismissed without any evaluations or reviews,” Ryan, who was formerly an American Studies lecturer at Yale, wrote in a statement. “The cause, clearly, was merely their dissent, and the rector’s perception of them as a threat to his personal power.”

Ryan said the firings were often accompanied by abrupt office lockdowns, computer impounds and short-notice requirements to vacate university quarters.

“They reportedly were told that if they exercised a legal right to protest their firings, their severance pay would be halved,” he said.

“Respected administrators who served UDLA for decades were fired abruptly,” added a former part-time female professor who asked not to be identified for fear of being banned from campus. “There is a climate of fear on the campus, because nobody knows who will be next to lose their jobs.”

Toward the end of 2006, the administration began enforcing a type of loyalty oath, Ryan said.
“A newly promulgated ‘code of ethics’ stated that neither professors, employees nor students could act in a way that ‘negatively affects the institution’s image,’” Ryan said, quoting from the code. “Any ‘public declarations’ that do not reinforce an ‘image of the Institution as prestigious, solid, cohesive, pluralistic and open to dialogue and constructive criticism’ implicitly became punishable, whatever the reality.”

Several professors also said that Palou replaced the professors who were fired with less qualified personal supporters.

“Before UDLA’s personnel director was fired, he gave me the names of seven political friends Palou had hired as department heads after firing their predecessors,” said Neil Lindley, a former member of the Consejo, UDLA’s advisory board. “The new people, none of whom had university experience, were paid three times the salaries of those who were fired.”

Alleged Conspiracies
Palou consolidated his power further in May when he gained the support of the Patronato — the University governing board controlled by the Don Guillermo Jenkins family. One male professor who asked not to be identified by name said that Palou convinced Jenkins that professors were conspiring against the university.

“Guillermo Jenkins is an elderly man now,” the male professor said. “He’s ill. I think Palou’s convinced Jenkins that there are conspirators and he’s rooting out these conspirators. [Palou] fires anybody he suspects as not being loyal. He interprets loyalty as absolute approval for what he wants to do.”

Ryan said that Palou then fired the university attorney and three accountants investigating his finances.

Lindley protested the firings, emailing the Consejo and requesting Palou’s termination. Lindley said he then received an email from Eduardo Fermin Lastra, the UDLA Provost, requesting his resignation “due to incompatible views about UDLA and its operation.”
Lindley said that eight board members soon resigned in protest of the firings. He added that Palou’s office then sent out a memo to all faculty, staff and members of the Consejo, notifying them that the advisory board would be dissolved.

Eighteen professors met in May to discuss the firings at Ryan’s home, where they drafted a letter of protest. A UDLA guard showed up during the meeting, however, and told Ryan to report to the Rector’s office, where he would sign his resignation. Thirteen of the professors present at the meeting were fired, Ryan said.

Palou then accused Ryan of conspiring against the university.

“I was fired, although the official version was that we — the group that included Prof. Ryan — resigned,” said former Political Science and International Relations Prof. Jose Luis Garcia-Aguilar. “ Under his paranoiac style of governing, Palou called us ‘enemies of UDLA,’ when in reality we wanted reforms to stop the abuses of power and return to the very essence of a true university.”

La Catarina
University affiliates also accused Palou of censoring La Catarina, the school’s student newspaper.

Astrid Viveros, a recent graduate and former La Catarina columnist, said the communications department chair marched into the newspaper’s office last January with several policemen and unplugged computers as Viveros tried to save files onto a flash drive.

“They put a giant chain and lock on the office door,” said Monica Cruz, La Catarina’s summer editor. “We felt like criminals.”

The newspaper was reinstated a few weeks later, following an international media outcry, but Viveros and Cruz said that doing interviews has been a nightmare for the staff, with police taping them with video cameras and trailing them home.

UDLA officials said the newspaper enjoys free press rights.

“It is still functioning,” wrote UDLA spokeswoman Maria Lopez Aguilar in an email to The Daily. “We have total freedom of speech.”

But Cruz said that when students arrived on campus this fall, a new staff took over the paper.
“I told the attorney we couldn’t publish until we had a guarantee that censorship, threats and negative consequences for writing at La Catarina would never happen again,” she said. “It was not long before La Catarina’s advisor assigned a new editor and asked him to form a new staff.”

A Damaged Reputation?
UDLA faculty now face two paradoxical concerns — that recent events may destroy the school’s reputation and that they have gone largely unnoticed by those who could affect change.
Perhaps the most recognizable name associated with UDLA is that of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is also a Democratic candidate for president. The UDLA Web site lists Richardson as an honorary member of the Consejo.

A spokeswoman at Richardson’s office said the Governor would not answer questions about his relationship with UDLA.

Ryan and Lindley said that Richardson is likely unaware of recent developments at UDLA, and that the Consejo has been rendered defunct.

“Honorary members never were very active, except to be recognized at public functions,” Lindley said, adding that, “Richardson did give a commencement address in 2003.”
But UDLA has not gone without sanctions from the international community. According to Lindley, Texas Christian University is in the process of terminating its joint-degree programs with UDLA, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) put the school on “warning” status in January for failing to provide evidence that its governing board is not controlled by minority interests and failing to prove it has a “sound financial base.”

Faculty now worry about the deteriorating reputation of what was once one of the country’s best universities. Ryan lamented the implications of the controversy for Mexico.

“Faculty, administrators, students, employees and alumni have seen their university decline from a place of participatory governance and free and open expression into an authoritarian milieu of repression and fear,” he said. “They now find that the work of decades — to create a first-rate, secular, private and cosmopolitan university for Mexico, and a bridge among American nations — is unraveling.”


Tuesday, October 02, 2007

La Realidad



El día de hoy apareció publicada una nota en el periódico Skiff de TCU que cita a David Whillock, assistant dean of the College of Communication. Llama la atención que diga lo siguiente: "It seems like UDLA is being run by a dictator. If we're wrong, then prove it." Hasta en Estados Unidos se dan cuenta de la verdadera personalidad de Pedro Ángel Palou y mira que allá son bastante prudentes con sus declaraciones. Asimismo, dice que el programa dual en comunicación está actualmente en pausa.

El artículo también cita a fuentes de la SACS y el peligro que corre la UDLA de perder la acreditación y la cancelación de los programas de colaboración con TCU.

La Catarina, la que fundamos hace siete años no la que secuestró Palou y sus secuaces, se inspiró en el Skiff tanto en su estilo periodístico como en su organización. Aunque han dado un amplio seguimiento al conflicto (ver cobertura), me decepciona un poco que la nota no profundice en la usurpación que perpetraron las autoridades en agosto. Funcionó su plan para confundir a la opinión pública. Hicieron parecer que las cosas seguían igual, que se seguía publicando La Catarina, pero por cuánto tiempo podrán sostener esta mentira. Algunas personas y organizaciones parece que se dan cuenta pero no es suficiente.

En fin, incluyo el link además de la nota completa:


Administrator: Program with sister school on hiatus
By: Ana Bak

The university has put a program with its Mexican sister school on hold, citing free speech and press issues. David Whillock, assistant dean of the College of Communication, said the undergraduate dual degree program with Universidad de las Americas-Puebla is currently on hold.

Conflict arose at the university in January.

  • UDLA was put under warning by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, an accreditation agency, Jan. 2.
  • La Catarina, the university newspaper, was shut down Jan. 16 for 16 days for criticizing administrators, students said.
  • Fifteen faculty members and five board of trustees members were removed in April.

Whillock said TCU cannot ignore what is taking place at UDLA. "It seems like UDLA is being run by a dictator," Whillock said. "If we're wrong, then prove it." But because TCU's relationship with UDLA has been established for so long, Whillock said, it would be hard to close the door. Although the relationship isn't stable now, there could be a good opportunity in the future, he said. "The relationship is for the students," Whillock said. He said TCU has been concerned about the situation at UDLA's student newspaper, La Catarina, since it shut down and reopened in January. The newspaper is being published again, but UDLA students have said they are still being censored. "I've heard rumors while it's still open the issues have not been resolved," Whillock said.

Monica Cruz, former editor in chief of La Catarina, said UDLA and the newspaper staff started discussing its expression of the freedom of speech this summer to ensure its stability. La Catarina was shut down in January because of cartoons and opinion columns criticizing the university's administration, Cruz said. Cruz said the staff asked for a written guarantee of its freedom of speech because of a university code that prohibits publishing anything that would damage the university's image. She said while waiting for this guarantee, the university published a new La Catarina on Aug. 29. "We were replaced," she said. "The new editor in chief has no experience."

Whillock said the program would be on hold until UDLA started to value the same things TCU does, such as freedom of speech.

UDLA has also been under a yearlong warning with SACS since Jan. 2 for violating two core requirements. SACS, which also accredits TCU, reported UDLA's governing board is not adequate, and the university has not shown financial stability. In April, five board members were fired and the board of trustees dissolved, said Neil Lindley, former board of trustees member at UDLA. Lindley said this was a "blatant violation of SACS requirements."

However, Maria Lopez Aguilar, vice director of communication at UDLA, said there would soon be new governing organs at the university and said she didn't have enough information to comment on the status of the board of trustees. According to an article from a Puebla newspaper, La Jornada de Oriente, the rector of UDLA, Pedro Angel Palou, announced Sept. 24 a new governing form would take place with an election in October.

Provost Nowell Donovan said if UDLA was to lose its accreditation, discussion about the school's situation with UDLA would increase. As of now, Donovan said, TCU is not taking an aggressive approach toward UDLA. "We're here and they're there," Donovan said. "There's no reason to do anything." Lindley said losing accreditation could lead to UDLA's closure. "It is not a light matter," he said.

Jack Allen, vice president of SACS, said losing accreditation could affect funds a university receives from the U.S. government. The federal government relies on the accrediting associations when considering the allocation of funds, Allen said. UDLA was accredited before it received federal grants from the U.S., so losing accreditation could mean more than just losing finances, Allen said. "There's a certain prestige in being accredited," Allen said. UDLA will undergo review with SACS in early December, Allen said.