Frazier Choice Brings Questions At PSU — The Penn State Board of Trustees’s choice of Kenneth Frazier to head its investigation is, well, interesting.
Frazier, whose assignment was announced Nov. 12, is the CEO of Merck & Co, the major pharmaceutical corporation headquartered in Whitehouse Station, N.J.
Does Frazier have any experience investigating crime? Does he have a history of pursuing dark evidence down twisting alleys to whatever truth leads?
No. He does, however, have a track record of winning liability lawsuits. He made his bones at Merck generally successfully defending the company during the Vioxx lawsuits.
So if minimizing exposure — i.e. keeping things hidden — is the goal, Frazier might be the guy.
If the Board really does want to get the institution it directs back into the public’s trust perhaps it should reconsider Frazier’s appointment and see if Frank Keating is available.
Keating is the former Oklahoma governor, one-time FBI agent and practicing Catholic who chaired the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops‘ National Review Board examining sex abuse by Catholic Priests, much to the dismay of those who hired him hoping for a tame investigator.
Penn State, it should be noted, is not governed by the state. It is considered a “state-related” university and the state, while it provides about 10 percent of its funding, has no direct control over it. Only 10 of the 32 members of the Board of Trustees that run it are government officials or appointees of the governor.
Frazier, who received his undergraduate degree in political science from Penn State in 1975, is a member of the Board.
Frazier graduated from Harvard Law School in 1978.
For my friends with any concerns about new world orders, he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Merck, by the way, has been a consistent donor to Jerry Sandusky’s The Second Mile being among the many giving between $1,000 and $10,000 annually from at least 2006 through 2009.
Just a warning, but the last two links are to pdf files.