"New York Magazine Article One-Sided"

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February 16, 2007

There are two sides to every story, but readers of New York Magazine have only gotten an extremely one-sided story about the ACLU: a vicious attack on Executive Director Anthony Romero and a baseless portrayal of our Board as supporting him only out of negligence and greed.

The truth is that Anthony Romero is much more than a talented fundraiser. This is why the vast majority of Board members, after discussing (on the basis of much more accurate information than New York Magazine readers have been given) have opted to support his leadership. When Anthony was new to the job he, not surprisingly, did not immediately figure out how to deal with what is obviously a contentious and cantankerous 83 person Board of Directors. The New York Magazine article recounts, at great length and with considerable distortion, two occasions on which he made decisions without consulting the Board first. One was a procedural question of notifying the Board about a situation he had handled very well in substance; another was a judgment about signing onto a grant whose conditions some (about half of our Board) thought were inconsistent with ACLU principles. A small number of Board members (virtually every one of whom was interviewed and quoted in the New York Magazine article) decided that these lapses of judgment were unforgivable. The vast majority of Board members (almost none of whom were interviewed or quoted in the article) disagreed.

I have been a proud member of the ACLU Board of Directors for almost 20 years. Although reasonable Board members often disagree about many issues, both about substance and our internal affairs, the Board is an extraordinary group of committed individuals who did spend a tremendous amount of time discussing the situations described in the article and simply disagreed with Wendy Kaminer (and Ira Glasser) that these were hanging offenses. We have had Anthony’s full cooperation in ensuring that the Board will be included appropriately in any future decisions.

When the Board disagreed with his decision to accept certain grants, he willingly and vigorously implemented the Board’s decision and has consistently brought to us every situation raising any arguably similar issues. He has hired an in-house General Counsel, and a Deputy Director with 27 years of experience running the ACLU of Northern California, to help him make sound decisions and to bring all appropriate issues to the Board. We have all grown, together, except for a small group of Board members who decided to leave the Board because they found themselves in disagreement with their colleagues. Unfortunately, that small but very vociferous and vocal group, backed by Anthony’s predecessor, has gotten several reporters to give them a platform for their very one-sided account and continue to smear Anthony with out of context quotations and heavily distorted accounts of his actions, and to smear our Board by refusing to acknowledge that reasonable Board members can and did differ about how to handle the mistakes of the past.

Anyone can look at the ACLU website (ACLU.org) to see the remarkable work the organization is doing, as even our harshest critics concede. In fact, the organization has never been in better shape. Anthony has provided brilliant and visionary management, strengthening the national staff and, yes, raising the funds for such projects as providing staff attorneys for many formerly struggling affiliates. On becoming Executive Director, he drafted careful and ambitious phased growth plans, including such goals as instituting an Affiliate Support Department to help our affiliates function even in the states most hostile to civil liberties, integrating a more international approach into our work, and instituting an ACLU television show. He has met and exceeded all his goals and continues to set new goals for himself and his staff.

It is not surprising that a small number of staff members are dissatisfied with the change of regime – change is always difficult and Anthony demands of his staff the excellence he demands of himself. But the truth is that the vast majority of the staff, like the vast majority of affiliate leaders and the vast majority of the Board, believe that what Anthony brings to the ACLU far outweighs any personal peccadilloes. Yes, we have had issues, but they have been discussed ad nauseam both within the ACLU and in every public forum the “savetheaclu” advocates can command. I wish that our critics could accept the fact that, as Scott Sherman wrote in his article in The Nation, they have made their arguments, have been heard, and have been outvoted. It is time to move on.

Susan N. Herman

The author is the Centennial Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, a member of the ACLU National Board and an ACLU General Counsel.
 

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