Higher education doesn’t need two different organizations running superfast networks, but that’s what it’s stuck with, thanks to some personal bickering among academic leaders, according to Polley Ann McClure, vice president for information technologies at Cornell University.
In an essay in the latest issue of Educause Review called “Shame on Us,” Ms. McClure gives a behind-the-scenes account of the recent merger talks between the two networking groups, Internet2 and National Lambda Rail. Those talks broke down this spring. Though Ms. McClure wasn’t directly involved in the talks, she was an insider on both sides as a member of the I2 Network Planning and Policy Advisory Council and as a member of National LambdaRail’s board of directors.
What went wrong? For one thing, the two groups went in looking for a fight, taking an adversarial tone and losing sight of the benefits of coming together, she said. And some petty behavior among individuals added to the problem, she said. “In some instances, people seemed to be intent on ending the careers of others. It is unfortunate when people take aim at others and act out those personal animosities at the expense of the community as a whole.”
“I believe that a good merger is impossible at this point,” she concludes. “The mistakes made have created a set of cultures and organizational as well as individual dynamics that, if forced together, would most likely result in a dysfunctional organization. When I finally realized this, I pulled back from my merger activism. Sometimes a system needs to reach a new and different equilibrium before the desired organizational change is possible—another lesson learned. But we all should have learned these lessons already. We knew better. In this case, we just did not act in accord with what we knew. Shame on us.” —Jeffrey R. Young
