Will the real Dean of SOPA please stand up?-Part 1

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Dean George Klay Kieh is the current Dean of the School of Public Affairs (SOPA). He arrived at SOPA in August 2019 as the 5th Dean since 2009. Dean Kieh was the first Dean to be an outsider and not chosen internally. Dean Kieh has claimed that he was a political prisoner recognized by Amnesty International. Dean Kieh also applied for the SOPA Dean position at least twice and possibly 3 times before being hired. Notably Dean Kieh only had 1 year of experience as Dean prior to coming to TSU.

Dean Kieh arrived on high hopes to straighten out the colossal mess left behind by the authoritarian regime of Dean Herrington who in one email to the entire faculty, directed that anonymous student evaluations be deposited into faculty personnel files, possibly as a method to terminate faculty, potentially a 6th Amendment violation.

However it quickly became crystal clear that Dean Kieh would not be any different than Dean Herrington and in fact, may have actually made things much worse for SOPA faculty by his bullying and abusive nature, especially screaming at faculty and students in all CAPS.  Transparency State has been provided with several emails that clearly show truly awful leadership, incivility and lack collegiality that ironically Dean Kieh keeps insisting that faculty must be civil and collegial to each other, but perhaps the same norms do not apply to him. 

Transparency State was aghast to be provided with an email in which Dean Kieh attacked a graduate student in front of several SOPA faculty and bullied and badgered the student to recant a written statement. The student had asked to be excused from Dean Kieh's investigation, yet he persisted in badgering the student through emails and CC'ed several faculty.  It is also strange that Dean Kieh decided to conduct an investigation himself instead of asking for assistance from HR, Title IX or the Faculty Ombudsman.   

But possibly the worst career decision Dean Kieh has made was keeping Dr. Ewoh on as Associate Dean.  In fact, when Kieh arrived at TSU in his opening faculty meeting, he informed the faculty that he would choose an insider for the position of Associate Dean, clearly meaning to replace Dr. Ewoh.

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