SLU names new law dean; exchanges barbs with former

The dean of the Saint Louis University School of Law resigned swiftly and furiously Wednesday in a letter accusing the university’s leadership of lacking “decency, collegiality, professionalism and integrity.”

The move comes just over a year into Annette Clark’s tenure as dean and in the middle of SLU’s fundraising to move its law school downtown.

“I no longer have confidence in either of your abilities to lead this institution or in your commitment to the well-being of the School of Law,” Clark wrote to President Lawrence Biondi and Vice President for Academic Affairs Manoj Patankar.

“I simply cannot be part of, and I assure you I will not be complicit with, an administration that can’t be trusted to act honestly and in the best interest of its faculty, staff and students.”

Clark said her resignation was effective immediately.

President Biondi slapped back in a letter of his own Wednesday, saying the administration had planned to dismiss Clark Wednesday at a scheduled meeting she “did not have the courtesy to honor.”

In a communiqué addressed to SLU Law faculty and staff, Biondi announced that he had already selected a new dean. Thomas Q. Keefe Jr., a1978 SLU alum in private practice in Belleville, Ill., will take over for the 2012-13 academic year. Patankar will begin the search for a permanent dean beginning in the fall.

Keefe, a plaintiffs’ personal injury attorney active in fundraising for the Democratic Party, said in a phone interview Wednesday he began discussing the position three weeks ago with Biondi.

“I think Father Biondi sees several moves ahead and sees further in the future than Dean Clark, who thought she had ambushed him today with her resignation,” Keefe said.

But the important thing is not “a turf war” between a former dean and a university president, Keefe said.

“Let’s stay focused on the kids. It’s about kids getting some bang for their buck,” Keefe said. “This [law school] costs a lot of money.”

Last year, Keefe told Missouri Lawyers Weekly that he was the first to admit he’s “nuttier than a fruitcake.” Wednesday he said he stands by that statement.

“I think people are a little tired of everyone working so hard sometimes to be politically correct,” Keefe said. “A little dose of humor and a little dose of common sense take us a long way toward a little bit of sanity.”

Biondi wrote that Clark’s letter to him and another one from her Wednesday to faculty and staff “demonstrate a lack of a clear and comprehensive understanding of the duties and obligations, autonomy and authority, of a modern-day dean at a large and complex university.”

Biondi was not available for an interview Wednesday.

Calls to Clark’s cellphone and desk and emails to her university account were not returned.

In her resignation letter, Clark cited numerous disagreements with Biondi’s “egregious actions,” including measures relating to the school’s projected move to downtown, reaccreditation meetings with the American Bar Association and Association of American Law Schools and funding of stipends for faculty summer research, saying she was treated “dismissively and with disrespect.

“It is the ultimate irony that a Jesuit university would operate so far outside the bounds of common decency, collegiality, professionalism and integrity,” she wrote.

In his letter, Biondi wrote: “Because this is a personnel matter — per University policy — we will have no further comment except to say that I strongly disagree with many of her interpretations of the facts. Moreover, her assertion of a lack of support for the law school could not be further from the truth.”

More than a year after the previous dean stepped down, Clark joined SLU as dean in July 2011 from Seattle University School of Law, where she had worked since graduating from there in 1989. Her letters say that she will remain a tenured full professor on the law school faculty, as is her “contractual right.”

The “last straw” Clark cited in her resignation letter to faculty was a dispute with Biondi over the funding of faculty summer research stipends.

Biondi had refused to pay for the stipends out of the school’s operating budget but agreed to the funding after frantic action chronicled in emails obtained by Missouri Lawyers Weekly, which reported on the dust-up in June.

But Biondi “undid that agreement a little more than two weeks after being embarrassed by the [Missouri Lawyers Weekly] article,” yanking $260,000, enough to fund 20 summer stipends, from the annual fund, Clark wrote in her resignation letter.

The fund is composed of unrestricted gifts from school supporters and is used for financial aid, resources for the law library, student activities and other programs.

Pulling the money from the fund put “us in a far worse financial position than if he had simply disapproved the summer stipends,” Clark wrote.

The earlier attack on summer stipends had upset faculty members when the university wanted their support for the move and the fundraising required for an ambitious renovation of a 260,000-square-foot building at 100 N. Tucker Blvd. slated to become the law school’s new home.

Clark included the project among the other challenges she faced as dean, writing that the president “dropped” it on the law school without any prior communication or consultation.”

Also difficult: “The expectation that we would raise millions of dollars for that project in a few short months.”

The university in January announced the planned move from the Grand Center District to the donated building. The goal was to start the school year at the downtown building this month, but in March the target date was pushed off to summer 2013.

In his letter Wednesday, Biondi wrote, “This change in leadership in no way slows our determination to move our law school into its new home in downtown St. Louis.”

He also wrote that he “strongly disagrees with many of her interpretations of the facts” but declined to comment in more detail because it is a personnel matter.

Clark had said in a May 19 email to faculty that Biondi and other school officials were “looking for our faculty to be enthusiastic participants in the project and in the fundraising efforts.”

On Wednesday she said in her letter to Biondi and Patankar: “From the beginning of my deanship, you have evinced hostility toward the law school and its faculty and have treated me dismissively and with disrespect, issuing orders and edicts that allowed me virtually no opportunity to exercise the very discretion, judgment and experience for which you and the faculty enthusiastically hired me.”

Clark’s resignation is “disappointing,” said John Gunn, of the Gunn Law Firm in St. Louis, who earned his law degree from SLU in 2000.

“Having met with her a few times, I felt like she was getting her footing under her. I was really impressed with how in tune she was particularly with the alumni.”

Student Bar Association President Candace Ruocco said Wednesday afternoon that the student body had received no official word of Clark’s resignation, but students were learning of it through “viral” channels such as Facebook and other social media.

“I was surprised that things appeared to be so strained,” Ruocco said. “The administration overall seemed to operate pretty fluently.”

She called the timing “unfortunate” but said she was certain that the student bar’s programming wouldn’t be affected.

“The response that I’m hearing from students is basically twofold,” Ruocco said. “Students are concerned of course about allegations of fiscal irresponsibility. There is a pretty big student concern about the effect of those allegations being made public. Students are worried about getting jobs.”

Staff reporter Donna Walter contributed to this article.

■ Read the resignation letter (PDF)

■  Read letter to faculty, staff (PDF)

■ Response from Lawrence Biondi, SLU President (PDF)

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