To Knight, the
UO joining the WRC was the same as its turning its back
on the work Knight is doing to advance human rights within
the industry.
Sidebar: Confessions
of a Duckaholic
The last time Dave Frohnmayer was embroiled in such a high-profile
dispute was in 1985, when he was Oregon Attorney General
and the
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was wreaking havoc on the state.
Now, as president of the University of Oregon, Frohnmayer
is on the receiving end of a very public temper tantrum
by his biggest donor, Nike CEO Phil Knight.
During the 15 intervening years, Frohnmayer has been
through a lot. In 1990, his bid for the governorship was
derailed when the Christian Right put up its own candidate
and siphoned off enough Republican votes to put Democrat
Barbara Roberts in Mahonia Hall. In 1992 his brother,
John, was dethroned from the National Endowment for the
Arts when he put artistic freedom ahead of congressional
politics.
More recently, he has lost two daughters to a rare disease
that also afflicts his sole surviving daughter, Amy. Finally,
just six months ago, Frohnmayer nearly died from a cardiac
arrest.
You could excuse the man if he had little patience for
the antics of a millionaire shoemaker. But rather than
lash back or cave in, Frohnmayer has cast this as a regrettable
misunderstanding between friends.
He spoke with WW by phone last Friday.
WILLAMETTE WEEK: A lot of people are hoping you and
Knight will make up. Do you think there's any chance of
that?
DAVE FROHNMAYER: It's something I'll work on very hard.
I think it's going to take time, and it's about relationships
more than it's about money at this point. It's not as
though this is a donor about whom I don't care an enormous
amount. Our fathers went to law school together; he's
been extremely supportive of the university on the academic
side as well as the athletic side. We are personal friends.
How good friends? Have you been over to dinner at
Knight's house?
No, but we shared a common mentor. Bill Bowerman was
my father's best friend and Phil Knight's track coach
and business partner. Bill and I were close right up to
the end. So it's the second generation, and for me those
things run very deep. I know they do for Phil too, and
we have talked about that since he made his public announcement.
You've talked since then?
Yes.
Who initiated it?
I'd been trying to get him but he called me Monday morning
[April 24]. The call was utterly without acrimony.
What did you say?
It was a personal, soul-searching conversation, where
we basically shared on an emotional level how we felt
about things and our mutual sadness they had developed
in that direction.
So he felt betrayed?
Well, I said, 'I bet you feel betrayed.' And I think
he did.
What were the emotions you were expressing?
That the loss of the relationship...I can think of only
two things emotionally that are worse in my life, and
that's the loss of my two daughters. We agreed it was
a mutual tragedy, and we both regretted it had come to
this. He felt he had no choice, and I told him there was
an enormous amount of pain on all sides. He understood
it was not personal, nor was it intentional.
Then why couldn't he make any allowances for the University's
decision?
He's got to speak for himself. I can't do that. He's
built a company of which he's very proud; I don't want
this to turn into a Nike-bashing incident. My own personal
view was Nike has been a world leader in attempting to
reform conditions in Third World countries--and has the
battle scars to prove it.
The issue of sweatshop labor first came to national
attention in the early 1990s
when activists pointed out the abysmal conditions in
the factories where Nike
and other apparel makers subcontract production. Since
then, students have taken up the cause, demanding that
the products that bear their school's logos not be made
through the suffering of Third World workers. The solution,
it was believed, was to set up monitoring groups that
could report on the conditions in the factories.
While there are several organizations dedicated to improving
the working conditions in developing countries, for U.S.
schools the choice has come down to two groups: the Fair
Labor Association, which was created in cahoots with Nike,
and the Worker Rights Consortium, made up of labor and
human-rights groups who were originally aligned with FLA
but spun off to evade corporate control.
Universities, spurred by concerned students, are rushing
to join such groups: There are 134 in the FLA and 46 in
the WRC. Several schools joined both, but the University
of Oregon joined only the WRC, prompting Knight, the university's
most generous alum, to publicly renege on his pledge to
donate $30 million for an expansion of Autzen Stadium.
WILLAMETTE WEEK: Do you feel that you betrayed Phil
Knight?
No, I think it was a genuine misunderstanding. I think
the assumption was that Nike knew [based on media reports]
the direction our decision-making process was moving and
that the WRC was no problem for Nike. If you rewind the
VCR, perhaps we should have inquired further, but we thought
their licensing people were well informed of the direction
we were heading. It had been well reported in the press,
but maybe that word didn't get to Phil.
You said earlier that Nike's been a world leader for
human rights. What's that based on?
Several years ago I went to Korea, and Nike enjoyed a
very high reputation. And I wasn't talking to official
Nike representatives, I was talking to people in the neighborhood
of the factory who said they welcomed its presence. I
have no evidence of atrocious behavior, and my operating
assumption would be they could pass the monitoring of
any group.
So to you, Nike had nothing to lose by your joining
WRC?
Yeah. Maybe I was naive, because Nike certainly views
it differently. But my view was that they're so far ahead
of their competition that certainly they would have passed
any test I know of.
Including WRC?
Yes.
WILLAMETTE WEEK: What does this agreement with the
WRC actually accomplish, since your agreement with Nike
isn't actually up until 2003? It seems like you've left
an escape valve.
At this point, it's still a work very much in preliminary
progress. As you know, a number of the universities are
unhappy with the secretiveness of the WRC. Their initial
meeting was closed to the public and media. If this is
going to be a university-logo monitoring organization,
then the universities are going to play a big role in
it or it will be a very short association.
While it's too early to tell how effective the WRC will
be--the group
held its organizing meeting just this month--there are
marked differences between it and the FLA.
The board of the FLA, established in 1996, includes Nike,
Kathie Lee Gifford, Adidas, Reebok and other transnational
garment contractors and manufacturers. It will provide
the thing the companies need most: A "sweatshop free"
certification that can be used as a marketing tool to
quell the fears of guilt-ridden shoppers. The WRC will
provide no such gold stamp.
Dara O'Rourke, an associate professor at MIT and longtime
Nike observer, has been watching the public debate over
the two groups and sees some problems with the industry
group.
The FLA controls who serves as monitors and which factories
will be audited. Only 30 percent of the factories will
be monitored over the first three years, yet based on
that, the entire product line will receive certification.
"A big concern of the students, consumers and anyone
involved is the monitoring has to be credible and publicly
accountable," says O'Rourke. "One of the reasons the FLA
is not credible to many people is that the companies draw
up the lists, they choose the monitors."
In response to this criticism, Nike has agreed to release
its audits, a move O'Rourke applauds. "I think that's
an important step towards real transparency," he says.
"It allows the ability to monitor the monitors. There
is really very little chance the stakeholders--activists,
labor, etc.--are ever going to believe a secret audit.
These things have to be made public."
At the University of Oregon, the students who were pushing
to join a monitoring organization favored the WRC over
the FLA. Still, both groups went through several levels
of scrutiny. First, the 11-member licensing committee
looked at the two groups for months then recommended to
Frohnmayer that UO join the WRC.
Frohnmayer stalled, requesting a vote of the full university
Senate first.
Students, frustrated with the foot dragging, staged a
protest in the administrative offices that resulted in
14 arrests over three days. Finally, last month the university
Senate voted to join the WRC, prompting Knight's withdrawal
of cash.
WILLAMETTE WEEK: Do you believe the FLA got a fair
hearing on your presidential committee?
Well, I think that it did based on the faculty members
who were on the committee; the past president of our alumni
association was also on the panel. The students were pretty
well informed about the issues and in favor of the WRC
over the FLA.
One of the things that seems to have outraged alums
is the idea that a small group of students pushed you
over this radical cliff.
It isn't what happened at all. It was a yearlong process.
In fact, I resisted those students who wanted to shut
the university Senate out of its appropriate role in the
consideration of the issue.
Was the university Senate vote a way to stall this
process? There is a perception by some students you were
trying to stonewall the WRC agreement.
It's ludicrous. It's absolute fantasy land. The university
Senate would have been within its rights to issue a vote
of no confidence if I had muted an issue that was on their
agenda for a report from the licensing committee.
There's another notion that the kids camped out on
your doorstep and they were able to convince you to go
with WRC.
Look, I had all those years with the Rajneeshees. I'm
not going to be intimidated by a few students.
Both Brown University and the University of Michigan
have suffered
the wrath of Knight over the past few weeks, but that
was purely business.
Nike spokesperson Vada Manager says Knight's relationship
with the University of Oregon is much different than those
with the other schools. To Knight, the UO joining the
WRC was the same as its turning its back on the work Knight
is doing to advance human rights within the industry.
"This is about his personal philanthropy," says Manager.
"That tells you that he feels so strongly about the issue
that it became about his entire philanthropy to the university."
And yet the personal nature of the relationship is what
kept Frohnmayer from keeping Knight in the loop--to avoid
the appearance that the university was giving undue influence
to its biggest donor.
Knight's claim that he was surprised by the decision
shocked students on the committee, such as Eric Pfeiffer.
"Of all the things protesters and people who don't like
Frohnmayer say about him, that was the one criticism that
I took for granted, the idea of him and Phil Knight being
hand in hand," says Pfeiffer.
WILLAMETTE WEEK: Let's talk about academic freedom.
Some say you have taken the moral high ground with a stand
for academic freedom over corporate control. Is that true?
All I've tried to do is protect the independence of the
university decision-making process. I don't think there
was an effort to exert corporate control. We didn't get
any advance calls saying, 'If you do this I will withhold.'
But this incident shows us very clearly the relationship
between private corporations and public universities.
Should this give us pause?
That's stating it too strongly. Phil Knight has been
a very generous contributor. He's never attached a single
condition to any gift he's given.
Joining the WRC has unleashed a torrent of criticism
from outraged alums, including contributors. Some are
saying you have singlehandedly destroyed everything they've
been working to build.
Well, that's pretty strong medicine. It's also true that
I've raised more money for the University of Oregon than
any other president in its history.
Others are saying that the university should not be
involved in politics.
If we were just blithely joining organizations that were
interested in other causes, however human, that would
be a very different story. But we've been very careful
to divorce ourselves from that kind of involvement. Our
interest is very specific and targeted. This is a University
of Oregon trademark. We have an economic interest in that
and a social and humanitarian one.
Is there any way these recent events tie into your
recent
cardiac arrest?
It causes you to reexamine your priorities. The first
thing I thought when I woke up out of the fog of anesthesia
was, 'It can't be my time. I can't go yet. My work isn't
done.' I thought first of Amy and my family because Amy's
got this horrible disorder that's killed her sisters.
I thought about the university and how I've tried to do
a good job as its steward.
Do you feel your stewardship is threatened because
of Phil Knight turning his back on the university?
I think that it is certainly the rockiest episode I've
had since I've been president.
How do you think this will be perceived 10 years from
now?
I can't run the VCR forward that far.
But if you could decide how this will look, what would
you want?
That we did the right thing in the right way. That whether
or not we made what history will vindicate as the right
decision, the process was right.
Confessions
of a Duckaholic
A lifelong U of
O fan is fighting mad about the flap between Dave and Phil.
BY BRIAN LIBBY
243-2122
As a lifelong University of Oregon supporter, I was shocked
by last week's news that Nike chairman Phil Knight was closing
his checkbook. To be honest, I wasn't fretting about future
donations to the law school, architecture department or
any other truly important institution. I was worried about
sports.
I grew up in green and gold, the child of U of O alums.
As a duckling I watched with joy as Knight and Nike helped
turn around an athletics program mired in decades of futility.
College sports takes a lot of money--especially if you
want to win--and Knight has helped Oregon close the gap
with other, better-funded Pac 10 schools like UCLA and
Washington. In addition to Nike-backed scholarships, the
Swoosh's imprint on the school gave the Ducks immeasurable
prestige as it competed for prized out-of-state recruits.
So, when I learned that the university drove its golden
goose away, I was furious. Unlike many Duck fans, however,
I'm not mad at UO President Dave Frohnmayer, but at Knight.
Maybe Nike, which has taken steps to improve treatment
of its foreign workers, is getting a bum rap. Other corporations
arguably do worse without such public condemnation. Perhaps
Nike even deserved, as Knight argues, a heads-up about
the Ducks' plans.
But Knight's crown of thorns still doesn't fit. After
all, if Nike is innocent, why is he so defensive?
Knight calls this fiasco a matter of broken trust. He's
more right than he knows. UO has always leaned left, and
Knight's donations implied that education and athletics
were above politics. My dad and I, political opposites,
could find common ground at Autzen Stadium. By withdrawing
on such political grounds, however, Knight has tainted
the virtue of his past philanthropy.
For all my fury at Knight, though, I'm just as mad at
myself. When Nike's treatment of its foreign laborers
made headlines, I turned a blind eye. Although I wasn't
happy about reports of sweatshop conditions, they never
kept me up at night the way a Ducks loss on the gridiron
did.
Knight's sudden abandonment of Oregon awakened me from
my sports-induced trance. I had gone easy on Nike because
it supported the Ducks, and now that the affair was over
I saw how blind I had been to its transgressions.
Whether it's as a Ducks fan or as a supporter of worker
rights, my respect, admiration and appreciation for Phil
Knight all disappeared when he broke ranks with Oregon.
Unless it's bathed in green and gold, you won't see me
wearing the Swoosh again.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
