As a member of the Secretary's Smithsonian Council, an advisory 
group, I have had a chance to speak with a senior administrator at 
the Smithsonian Institution about the ID movie situation. I can say 
that the SI was blind-sided by this entire matter. Staff members at 
one level were not aware of what staff members at another level were 
doing. Any of us who have been museum administrators at much smaller 
museums can sympathize with this situation. It is, perhaps, even less 
surprising in an organization with so many thousands of employees and 
with the enormous complexity of the Smithsonian (the SI handles 
30,000,000 visitors each year). Though all of us attempt to keep our 
fingers on the pulse of our museums, some things do fall between the 
cracks. Unfortunately, this one was a doozy. The Smithsonian is the 
nation's largest and perhaps most public museum. Thus when mistakes 
are made--and this entire matter clearly developed from a mistake by 
one or more staff members--they are writ large.

Unfortunately, once the contract had been signed, there was no good 
way for the SI to get out of it. Many of us might simply have 
cancelled the film on principle, but there are various scenarios that 
could be imagined developing from that decision that might damage the 
institution far more than the damage incurred by the decision that 
was made to permit the film to be shown. There was no good decision 
to be made.

The administrators and staff of the Smithsonian are gifted people who 
have the best interests of the various museums at heart. They manage 
a huge conglomerate of museums for the nation's benefit. 
Unfortunately, they got snookered on this one, and badly so. Yes, 
better controls should have been in place to catch this type of thing 
before it happened, but even the tightest regulations require staff 
members who are alert to often subtle hidden agendas and who know 
exactly what to do in a particular situation. A senior staff member 
might see the ramifications instantly, especially a scientist or 
someone in upper management, but for a marketer, PR person or junior 
staffer to understand a hidden agenda by a very smart group of people 
who have masked their true intentions of taking advantage of a great 
institution, it may be far too much to ask.

A ball was dropped by the Smithsonian Institution. Let this be a 
cautionary tale to all of us. If our great national museum could be 
fooled, for whatever internal reasons based in management. personnel 
mistakes, or failures of internal checks and balances, imagine how 
vulnerable those of us are who work in smaller museums that are not 
quite so public.

Having managed a museum for 20 years I can say that the decisions 
made by senior management before and after any crisis are often 
(maybe always) second guessed by everyone from staff members to the 
public. After you have sat in the "big chair" for a while you realize 
that a decision must be made before things that are going bad in a 
hurry get even worse, and one cannot wait for a broad consensus to 
develop before making the decision. Generally these things are not 
easy calls to make, and no one is so prescient as to know whether or 
not this or that particular decision will prove to be right or wrong.

The Smithsonian is not the villain in this story, it is the victim. 
The Smithsonian--our great national museum-- needs our support in 
this matter, now more than ever.

Tomorrow, the movie will be coming to your museum. What will your decision be?



>On 6/2/05 10:47 PM, David E. Haberstich's electrons arrived as:
>
>I think the museum in this case was blindsided and its entrenched
>big-institution policies and slow reaction-time was exploited -- hacked, as
>it were, by a smaller and more agile organization's tactical maneuver.
>
>Now, it's a lose/lose for the Smithsonian and a win/win for Discovery
>Institute.  If the Smithsonian cancels the screening, DI will have a field
>day with the publicity -- charging censorship and appeasement of a radical
>atheistic fringe of science that fears open dialogue.  If the Smithsonian
>allows the screening, DI will exploit the association ad nauseam -- all they
>need say in future publications is that the film screened at NMNH and
>readers will assume the endorsement.
>
>
>_____________________________________
>S t e p h e n    N o w l i n
>
>http://xrl.us/stephennowlin
>
>Vice President,Director,
>Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery
>Art Center College of Design
>1700 Lida Street
>Pasadena, CA 91103
>626.396.2397
>[log in to unmask]
>
>http://www.williamsongallery.net
>http://www.artandscience.us
>http://www.pasadena-culture.net
>_____________________________________
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-- 
Dr. Michael A. Mares
Research Curator
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
2401 Chautauqua
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK  73072
phone: 405-325-9007
fax: 405-325-7699

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