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The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

The Student Newspaper of DePaul University

The DePaulia

DePaul community’s concerns grow over Dean Koocher

Gerald_Koocher-2013_11
College of Science and Health Dean Gerald Koocher has been criticized for his actions as described in the Hoffman Report. (Photo courtesy of DEPAUL UNIVERSITY)

Members of the DePaul community are continuing to express serious concerns with the university’s handing of the controversy surrounding College of Science and Health (CSH) Dean Gerald Koocher nearly three months after the release of the Hoffman Report, with some now calling for him to resign or be removed from his position.

Koocher, who served as both President and Vice President of the American Psychological Association during the time in question, has been under fire since the release of the 542-page report, which details the APA’s collusion with the Department of Defense. This contributed to the implementation of policies that led to the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush Administration, the report said. 

Although the report did not conclude that Koocher knew about torture taking place at the time, it suggested that the top officials in the organization “had strong reasons to suspect that abusive interrogations had occurred.”

The report also criticized Koocher for his gatekeeping role when serving as a board liaison to the task force of Presidential Ethics and National Security (PENS), where he belittled and dismissed those with alternative viewpoints, the report states.

DePaul professors were given the opportunity to discuss the topic during a closed portion of the university’s monthly Faculty Council meeting last Wednesday. According to multiple sources in the room, far more faculty spoke out against Koocher than supported him, with many describing a culture of fear within the CSH under his leadership.

“Regardless of what happened, it’s a public relations nightmare,” said Noam Ostrander, chair of the department of social work in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS). “And when I talk to my colleagues in CSH, they’re nervous, they’re afraid, I don’t think they feel like they have the liberty to have much of a voice.”

According to sources that wished to remain anonymous, some of the debate at Wednesday’s meeting centered on whether the matter is an issue for the college or a university-wide issue.

For many, it became university-wide on Sept. 5, when it was announced to the Liberal Arts & Sciences Academic Council (LASAC), a group of chairs and directors in LAS, that Koocher would be the Academic Affairs representative on the search committee to find a new dean for LAS.

This sparked immediate backlash within the college. On Sept. 7, a coalition of LAS Faculty Council members, LAS Senate representatives and LASAC members sent an email to Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, C.M. and Provost Marten denBoer requesting that Koocher be removed from the committee.

“This deanship is a highly desirable position that should draw interested applicants from across the country,” the email said. “However, the recent media attention surrounding Dean Koocher’s collaboration with the Department of Defense’s coercive interrogation program may jeopardize the search committee’s ability to attract the best candidates for the LAS deanship. 

“Dean Koocher’s presence on the search committee for LAS thus represents a conflict in our values, and creates a perception of the University that is diametrically opposed to how we want the College and the University represented,” it continued. “Therefore, we request that Dean Koocher be removed from this committee and a more suitable replacement appointed.”

more2A day later, it was announced that Koocher had stepped aside and was replaced on the search committee by College of Communication Dean Salma Ghanem.

“Given the controversy surrounding the Hoffman report, many faculty just didn’t see Dean Koocher as the best person to represent DePaul in the search for a new LAS Dean,” said professor and LASAC member Scott Hibbard. “Hence, there was broad support for the letter.”

Koocher will address the controversy again on Monday, Sept. 21 in a question and answer session he is hosting for faculty from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in McGowan South, room 108.

For many, however, the time for Koocher to go is now.

“I certainly hear from folks in other institutions in Chicago who say, ‘Well, now is the time when DePaul will have to say that this isn’t okay’,” Ostrander said. “And I think until we’re willing to do that, we’re really open to some severe criticism. I think he either needs to resign or be removed from the deanship. This is not the public face that we want out there for our university.”

A student-led petition drive seeking Koocher’s removal as dean started last week on Change.org. The petition already has more than 300 signatures, with comments indicating a wide spectrum of geographic areas as students, alumnus, and academics criticized the dean.

Senior Jack O’Brien, president of DePaul Psi Chi, an honors society for psychology students, started the petition when the university did not “take steps to move towards accountability and transparency.”

“I think it reflects poorly on our university, especially on our College of Science and Health, and even more so on our young psychologists in training and recent graduates,” O’Brien said. “And that’s not fair to them at all. They’ve put their time, money and energy into their degrees. And it’s being cheapened in a sense by being connected to all of this.”

Sources have said that the question and answer session will be important in assessing where the situation is it.

“I think that Monday will be interesting,” Ostrander said. “I feel in some ways that’s the bellwether.”

Ostrander suggested that DePaul’s Vincentian values make for a unique situation were a “values-based decision” is in order.

“I can’t see a really good reason for keeping the status quo,” he said. “It’s so hard to really hammer those Vincentian values and then have this sort of sitting out there in the public.”

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  • K

    K.J.L.Sep 21, 2015 at 5:27 pm

    Articles Re: Dean Koocher, The APA, and Torture

    (many more can be found by a Google search)

    New York Times:

    “The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists.”

    “The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” the report’s authors conclude.”

    “The involvement of health professionals in the Bush-era interrogation program was significant because it enabled the Justice Department to argue in secret opinions that the program was legal and did not constitute torture, since the interrogations were being monitored by health professionals ”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/report-says-american-psychological-association-collaborated-on-torture-justification.html?_r=2

    ==========================================

    The Chicago SunTimes:

    “A DePaul University dean is mentioned prominently in a damning report that recently accused the American Psychological Association of colluding with the government to condone psychologists’ work at Guantanamo Bay without regard for the “harsh and abusive” interrogation techniques allegedly employed there.”

    “Among the APA officials “intimately involved in the coordinated effort to align APA actions” with the Department of Defense was Gerald Koocher, then president-elect of the APA, the report alleges. Today he is dean of the College of Science and Health at DePaul.”

    “But Hoffman’s report, first published by The New York Times, quotes emails from Koocher that seem to brush off allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay. He once suggested the APA repeat the same public statement in response to torture allegations “until ‘evidence’ of anything becomes public in 2055,” according to the report.”

    http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/857162/depaul-koocher-guantanamo-interrogations-report

    ===========================================

    Harpers Magazine:

    “I believe the APA’s collaboration with the CIA regarding the Bush-era interrogation program will eventually be recognized as one of the greatest scandals in the history of American medical ethics. ”

    http://harpers.org/blog/2014/10/the-apa-grapples-with-its-torture-demons-six-questions-for-nathaniel-raymond/

    ===========================================

    The Huffington Post:

    “Senior APA officials — principally then-ethics director Stephen Behnke, as well as then-president Ron Levant, and then-president-elect Gerald Koocher — plotted with key DOD officials to have the APA issue loose ethical guidelines that allowed psychologists to participate in detainee interrogations and that did not “constrain DoD in any greater fashion than existing DoD interrogation guidelines.”

    “The independent report is filled with extraordinary revelations highlighting the level of corruption, including rampant conflicts of interest, that tainted the APA process for creating and defending the 2005 guidelines. Examples of that corruption include:

    Six of the nine voting members of an APA task force established to write the guidelines were psychologists who were either military officers or contractors working for the DOD. ”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-carome-md/outrage-of-the-month-lead_b_7897836.html

    ===========================================

    The Boston Globe:

    “The outside review concluded that two of the association’s former presidents — Gerald Koocher, a psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Ronald Levant, who taught at Harvard and Boston universities — were “intimately involved’’ in coordinating the association’s policies to line up with Pentagon preferences.”

    ““They were involved in legitimizing health professionals participating in acts that could constitute war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity,” Raymond said in an interview, referring to the psychologists named in the report. “They were part of the mosaic of protections that helped indemnify then-President Bush against criminal torture charges.””

    “Among the more specific allegations directed at Koocher in the report: that he specifically rejected an attempt by a member of the task force to add a guideline saying psychologists should adhere to the Geneva Convention’s definition of human rights violations.
    Koocher, in his written response, said he was trying to keep the task force focused on coming up with an “enforceable APA ethics code, rather than any toothless international treaties.”

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/07/19/psychology-association-worked-with-defense-officials-loose-interrogation-guidelines/DsPxSETzHmc4QsSjLjR9mN/story.html