Daily Lessons from Life 26 May 2009

"Tue, May 26, 2009 Reuters - Oxford head of poetry resigns after smear scandal

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters) - The first woman to chair Oxford University's poetry department announced she was stepping down on Tuesday following allegations that she was involved in a campaign to discredit a rival for the post.


Ruth Padel, an award-winning poet who has taught at both Oxford and Cambridge, was elected Oxford's professor of poetry just 10 days ago after her chief rival, 1992 Nobel literature laureate Derek Walcott, pulled out.

Walcott, a West Indian born poet, withdrew after a dossier laying out sexual harassment allegations made by a student he taught at Harvard University more than 25 years ago was posted anonymously to a group of Oxford academics.


In a statement issued earlier this month he described it as a "low and degrading attempt at character assassination".

Padel, 63, denied having anything to do with the mailings but admitted having contact with journalists about Walcott. She was due to hold a press conference on Tuesday morning to announce her resignation, but ahead of that announcement newspapers published excerpts from her resignation statement. In it she denies taking part in any smear campaign against Walcott, 79, but said she regretted having shared information about him with journalists.


"I naively - and with hindsight unwisely - passed on to two journalists, whom I believed to be covering the whole election responsibly, information that was already in the public domain," the BBC quoted the statement as saying.

"I wish to do what is best for the university and I understand that opinion there is divided. I therefore resign from the Chair of Poetry. I hope wounds will now heal and I wish the next professor all the best."


Oxford's chair of poetry dates back to 1708 and has been filled by many eminent poets over the years, including Seamus Heaney, W.H. Auden and Matthew Arnold."

Another unfortunate incident involving highly intelligent people. At least someone takes responsibility for what happened even if it is not entirely clear that she is directly responsible for publishing those old fact about the other candidate.

Lessons for me are:
1. no matter how much education you have, you are human and are subject to human failing if you are not a practising 7e Leader on the ETHICS. It will be an ongoing struggle to remind ourselves of our natural weakness to desire something too much! So much that it may cloud our judgment and lead to our eventual downfall;

2. envy and jealousy must be guarded constantly and diligently. To do the right thing demands that we have to be mindful and deliberate about what are the right things to do always. When it is in your mind consciously, it will infiltrate into your subconsciousness eventually and become an instinct! A habit.;

3. quickly realization of the mistake and admitting it minimize the damage and salvage us from deeper quagmire that make it increasingly difficult to extract oneself from. So, be quick to admit mistake is a good response we should bear in mind.

May the good lady continue the pursuit of writing beautiful and inspiring poems and good luck to the next chair of Oxford University poetry department. Much ado about nothing? ;-)