Bernstein withdraws $ rather than have his donation named after a black man at U of M

[drjeff]

The only thing "racist" is that UM only has one building named after a black person on their entire gigantic campus.

[downtownguy]

I worked in philanthropy for more than 20 years. From what I read in the Freep article, I don't see Bernstein as the culprit here.

Without knowing all the machinations of what happened leading up to the gift, I hypothesize three possible scenarios:

In one, the development office of the U/M [[the fundraisers) was extremely negligent in crafting the naming rights. They should have expected the backlash that would have ensued by replacing the only building on campus named for an African American with new, white donors' names. It is typical these days that naming opportunities often resemble Russian nesting dolls. The biggest donor gets his/her name on the building, next biggest get their names on a wing, then a hall, then a room, until you're darn near naming ceiling lights and air vents within each room for a different donor. It's reported that they planned to do that here, but the big mistake, in my opinion, is that they were diminishing Mr. Trotter's good name to a lesser prominence in the process.

In another scenario, perhaps President Schlissel or another senior administrator promised naming rights on the building in an effort to curry favor with Bernstein, who, as Chair of the Board of Regents, is their boss. I've seen it happen. Then the development staff -- having a different plan for naming rights -- has the unenviable task of trying to put the genie back in the bottle without pissing off their bosses. Difficult, if not nearly impossible.

Finally, the cynic in me also wonders if it isn't possible that Bernstein, with all his lawyer-ly skills, is practicing damage control by telling the press that the naming rights was never a big deal to him and his wife. Transfer the blame to the university, let them deal with it! But I don't know, and without personally understanding what Bernstein's motivation was for this gift, and the size of his ego, it's possible altruism was his primary motivator. Some people do still make generous gifts -- based not on the size of their ego, but on their desire to do some good.

[Gistok]

Downtownguy.... you are right... some donors do want to remain anonymous. Whoever paid the $2 million to finish the restoration of the Grand Foyer of the Detroit Opera House was an anonymous donor [[back in 1998)... and that name is still a secret today.

[Wesley Mouch]

The only thing "racist" is that UM only has one building named after a black person on their entire gigantic campus.

The only racism I see is that kind of accusation, frankly. Your statement isn't polite or considerate -- but seem mean spirited.

Perhaps you meant the use the flavor of the month -- implicit bias.

But of course UM prefers explicit bias in favor of black applicants in their admissions policies by their explicit admission and advocacy.

[drjeff]

The only racism I see is that kind of accusation, frankly. Your statement isn't polite or considerate -- but seem mean spirited.

Perhaps you meant the use the flavor of the month -- implicit bias.

But of course UM prefers explicit bias in favor of black applicants in their admissions policies by their explicit admission and advocacy.

I put "racist" in quotes to indicate it's debatable at best. I don't think there's some master plan to prevent buildings from being named after black people- more that they will name anything for anyone if you pay them enough for the privilege and apparently it's only old white folks who do that. By the way, I spent 12 years at UM as a grad student and post-doc. I no longer donate money to them for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. It's a gigantic money generating machine, all morals and ethics be damned.