Matthew Mugmon: Leaving something out

Doris Kearns Goodwin spoke at Irvine Auditorium last night.

She came as part of the University's Fox Leadership Program; her topic was "The Essence of Leadership."

She was introduced by University President Judith Rodin, who praised Goodwin and focused on leadership and "the qualities that leadership entails."

Goodwin then took the stage and launched into a fast-paced discussion about the leadership qualities of past presidents.

Her hour-long speech was interesting and informative.

She started off talking about her own fondness for the subject of history, a fondness that grew from keeping score in baseball games as a 6-year-old and listening to her mother tell her bedtime stories from her own childhood.

She displayed to the audience of students and community members her abilities as a storyteller and her knowledge of contemporary American history, with tales of Eleanor Roosevelt's role in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement, and of FDR's role in the story of the first black motorman in Philadelphia mass-transit history.

She showed she could link her historical knowledge to the understanding of current events, providing tales of the past that were relevant to the events of Sept. 11 and to the U.S. fight against terrorism.

She provided us with general insights about the past: "The wheels of history turn in ways that people can never predict," she noted.

After the speech came a question-and-answer session. Several audience members wanted more from Goodwin about her take on the world today and about how the past relates to the present.

During the brief Q&A;, Goodwin almost addressed issues involving integrity and leadership.

When asked if the Sept. 11 attacks reflected poorly on the Clinton administration, Goodwin answered yes, and talked about how important credibility is to governments, and about how, by the end of his term as president, Clinton didn't have any.

The final questioner asked the audience to forgive him for taking on a lighter topic. He asked about Bud Selig and leadership in Major League Baseball.

Goodwin answered him. Then, everyone left.

But one topic was left unaddressed.

No one -- not Rodin, not Goodwin and not the audience -- asked last night's Fox Leadership speaker about recent plagiarism concerns circling around the noted popular historian.

Two weeks ago on this page, I argued that the University should rescind its invitation to Goodwin to speak on leadership in light of the way the writer handled accusations that in her book The Fitzgeralds and The Kennedys, she used material from Lynne McTaggart's Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times.

I did enjoy Goodwin's speech. I took note of her skill as a storyteller and of the relevance of what she had to say.

But when I left Irvine Auditorium, I felt like I'd just experienced a guilty pleasure.

Goodwin could have covered another important trait of leadership -- integrity, and why she could comment on President Clinton's lack thereof without even giving a nod to concerns about her own.

The author herself could have addressed honesty and the need of a leader to take responsibility for his or her own past faults.

But Goodwin did not come to Penn to speak as a leader. She came as a historian, discussing others as leaders, even if I assumed that she had something to say about the topic that she could relate to her own past behavior.

Once it had decided to keep Goodwin on the speaker slate even after the plagiarism case had come to light, the University could have prefaced her visit with a formal explanation of why her actions fit with the University's agenda for discussing leadership.

Rodin herself could have acknowledged, in her introduction of Goodwin, the recent concerns. I doubt she would have had only words of praise for a Penn student who'd done what Goodwin did.

But now that Goodwin has spoken and the damage, so to speak, has been done, the University must figure out how to justify its vision of academic integrity to a group of students who were just given Doris Kearns Goodwin as someone to look up to. After last night, it's an issue that's more unresolved than ever.

Panels on academic integrity are fine ways for members of the University community to tackle the issue in general. They certainly can't hurt.

But just because they talk about academic integrity, or pledge to uphold it, doesn't mean students will care about it -- especially if the University ever decides to set, as an example, someone whose credibility does not match its ideals.

Matthew Mugmon is a junior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian .

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