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archivist blamed and terminated after a

by UO's interim president said Thursday he had nothing to do with the debacle and is being scapegoated.



James Fox, head of the UO Special Collections and University Archives, said during an interview in Portland that Interim President Scott Coltrane's office should be responsible, as the "creating office," for vetting records to remove confidential information concerning students, faculty and staff members.

Instead, Fox said, Coltrane's office transferred the responsibility to librarians in a written agreement that Fox wasn't shown. Kira Homo -- a lower-level digital archivist, who has since resigned after also being suspended with pay -- released the 30,000 pages digitally without telling Fox they weren't vetted, he said.

Fox's Portland lawyer, Craig Crispin, said he has filed notice to warn that the archivist may sue the university, which, the attorney wrote, has "irreparably damaged Mr. Fox in his professional standing and occupational reputation by placing him in a public false light."

Fox said that since arriving at the university in 2000 he had attracted large donations and numerous authors' papers to the UO Libraries, diversifying collections to include material from prominent African American, Latino and native American writers.

Since then, Fox said, he repeatedly warned superiors that records management was a disaster waiting to happen.

"I love my job and I love the University of Oregon," Fox said. "I'm shocked and hurt that I'm in this position right now. I've been a very loyal employee. I've done nothing wrong."

Fox's interview, although solely from his perspective, sheds light on some of the mysteries and accusations surrounding the controversial records release. While Coltrane pointedly faulted archivists during a Feb. 13 interview, UO spokespersons have disclosed few specifics, at times citing legal prohibitions against commenting on personnel matters.

But UO publicists have also refused to release a full investigative report produced by a law firm hired by the university. That report is almost certainly a public document under Oregon's open-records law.

Until Thursday, Fox had repeatedly declined to comment on the Dec. 3, 2014, records release, which caused a campus uproar and led archivists nationwide to reexamine how they handle and provide information. But Fox spoke, with his lawyer present, during a two-and-a-half-hour interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive and the Register-Guard, Eugene's daily newspaper.

Coltrane has insisted, since sending a widely circulated email Jan. 20, that the records were unlawfully released. His memo was a public call for a faculty member -- known to the administration, but initially unnamed - to return a USB drive containing archives from multiple presidents.

Economics Professor Bill Harbaugh, a blogster who frequently criticizes UO leadership, identified himself as possessor of the digital trove. He returned the records, saying Jan. 29 he'd exposed what he called the university's obsessive secrecy.

Told of Fox's statements Thursday, UO spokeswoman Julie Brown said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive that many of the released records contained sensitive, personal student and faculty information. She wrote that the records included information deemed confidential by state and federal law, subject to attorney-client privilege and exempt from disclosure under the public records law.

Harbaugh never publicly circulated Social Security numbers or that type of private information. But he did draw from the records to place two posts on his irreverent blog, uomatters.com. One post exposed a confidential memo from a UO lawyer, who had since left the university, advocating dissolution of the Faculty Senate.

The other post potentially embarrassed Robin Holmes, UO vice president for student life, by showing that public-affairs staff members "ghost wrote" an op-ed published by the Register-Guard with her byline. The op-ed defended the administration's handling of a case in which three Ducks basketball players allegedly raped a female student, who has since sued the university and basketball coach Dana Altman in federal court.

In her email Thursday responding to Fox's statements, Brown acknowledged "legitimate questions about the sufficiency of the resources available to manage the records at issue." She said those questions would be addressed.

"Regardless ... however, it is the responsibility of the head of Special Collections and University Archives to supervise the archives and records management unit," Brown wrote, "and to ensure that documents containing private and confidential information are properly reviewed and not improperly released."

On Thursday, Fox and his lawyer gave reporters a copy of an independent review team's 2013 report that praised overloaded UO library leaders and staff members for "highly effective and creative use of their resources" -- but described those resources as insufficient. Tobin Klinger, senior director of UO public affairs communications, had been unable to locate the report for days.

"Campus records management seems misplaced in the Libraries and likely should be located elsewhere," said the report, written by three national library authorities. "Data management and curation activities are another area" under-staffed and potentially misplaced, the team wrote in a statement that Fox considers prophetic.

Adriene Lim, dean of UO Libraries, has sent memo after memo to Johnson Hall, as the presidential administration is nicknamed for the building it occupies, requesting more resources to manage records, Fox said. "She told me that she couldn't get anybody over there to listen," he said.

Fox said during the interview in his lawyer's office Thursday that former UO President Dave Frohnmayer, who died March 9, had the foresight to allocate "tens of thousands of dollars" to hire students and others to remove confidential information from his records so they could quickly be made available to the public.

"After Frohnmayer left, it was a topsy-turvy situation at the university," with a rapid turnover over of presidents and interim leaders, Fox said. "Things were terribly disorganized."

The university administration could have placed a moratorium on access to presidential archives until they could be vetted, Fox said. Instead, he said, archivist Homo, a former Libraries dean and a member of Coltrane's staff entered an agreement by email to transfer unexamined presidential archives to the Libraries without telling Fox.

The Oregonian/OregonLive has been unable to reach Homo, a United Academics officer who said in a statement released by the union that she resigned partly because of what she called the "fracas surrounding the records release." Harbaugh is also a union officer.

Fox said he never saw the email agreement until late January or early February, when a lawyer hired by the university to investigate the records release "flashed" the memo in front of him and asked whether he'd ever seen it. Fox said no.

Archivists discussed the request for the digital presidential records for perhaps five to eight minutes during a weekly staff meeting in November 2014, but Homo raised no red flags about their content or quantity, Fox said. He said he supervised Homo, but she often didn't share information because she felt she reported to Kate Brown -- then Oregon state secretary, now governor - given that the secretary of state controls the Oregon State Archives.

Homo and other archivists knew that Harbaugh, the well-known campus contrarian, had filed the presidential-records request, Fox said. But Society of American Archivists' ethics codes forbid responding differently to library patrons based on their views, he said.

Fox said Harbaugh initially asked only for "guides" - or, as Brown wrote Thursday, "an index or catalog of the materials" - but then his request morphed into a bid for the full records.

"We have thousands and thousands and thousands of linear feet of collections," Fox said. "Every time a request comes in, I don't look at each one of those. I can't."

He added that he never had computer access to the presidential archives Homo released.

Fox said that at one point in his UO career, top Libraries administrators told him he was a terrible manager. In response, Fox said, he summoned the courage to request a "360 review" by Bruce MacAllister, university ombudsperson.

Fox - on the advice of his attorney, who said MacAllister's Power Point 360-degree review summary was unintelligible out of context - declined to release it. Fox said the report found areas for improvement, but concluded he was doing the job of two-to-three people.

Fox said he followed up by taking management training on his own initiative. He learned how to handle difficult moments with employees, for example. His background as a "rare-book guy" who studied Greek and Latin didn't prepare him for managing as many as eight workers, some part-time, he said.

Fox said that after the November staff meeting, he next heard of the presidential records weeks later, after Harbaugh posted an item from the trove on his blog that potentially embarrassed UO leaders. Fox said he was busy at the time, departing to visit a donor who was going to leave more than $1 million to Special Collections upon his death, and visiting prominent writers who had papers the department might want.

Those missions were the "awesome" part of his job, Fox said. "I get to meet so many interesting people," Fox said. "You have to be thinking about what collections are going to be important to people in 50 to 100 years."

For instance, he said, a rumor that a New York dealer might try to buy the late Oregon author Ken Kesey's personal papers prompted Fox and Frohnmayer to visit Kesey's widow, Faye. A group effort, taking a decade, culminated in the UO's $1.4 million purchase in 2013 of the Ken Kesey Collection.

Fox said he's proud that Special Collections are becoming a nationally prominent repository for science fiction written by well-known women authors.

One of those famous authors, Ursula Le Guin, circulated an open letter Tuesday to Coltrane and other administrators supporting Fox. Le Guin, of Portland, wrote that instead of profiting from her literary papers, she had been donating them for many years to Special Collections.

"The Library has consistently handled my papers well, but since Mr. Fox came to be in charge of Special Collections, the job has been superlative," Le Guin wrote. "As for responsibility, reliability, honesty: he is in charge of all my papers including those that are and must kept private, and I trust him completely, unquestioningly, with that charge."

"Having worked with him so long on these terms," Le Guin wrote, "... I find the assertion that he is being dismissed for having committed a breach of confidence is simply not plausible."

Le Guin granted, as UO's Brown noted in her email defending non-renewal of Fox's employment contract, that the records release did occur on his watch. "But that he should be treated as solely responsible, that he should be dismissed, is an egregious error in judgment and in justice," Le Guin wrote.

Fox's dismissal, effective June 30 once his paid administrative leave ends, would damage donors' trust and public respect for the university, Le Guin wrote. But Brown, the university spokeswoman, wrote that, "Mr. Fox had the responsibility of supervising the review, release, retention and management of university records and archives."

Fox said that during his leave, the university had permitted him to do some work. For example, he phoned several authors to reassure them concerning the stewardship of their papers. "Two have said they are going to pull their collections," or "are deeply considering it," because of Fox's impending dismissal, he said.

Fox said he's wooing one big-name sci-fi writer who would make international news if the author's papers came to the University of Oregon. Authors, he said, "bring national and international attention to the university just as basketball does or football does."

Fox said Lim and a Human Resources staff member he had never met abruptly informed him at 4:45 p.m. Jan. 16 that he'd be on paid leave. Summoned to Lim's office, Fox encountered Homo in the hallway, coming from the dean's office. She waved an administrative-leave letter at him and asked if he had anything to do with it.

"If it's any consolation to you, they're doing the same thing to me," Fox said. "I said, 'Kira, at least you're fortunate that you're in your 30s, and that you can rebuild. It's a little harder when you're in your late 50s.'"

Fox, who is 59, said he relies on his university position to provide for himself and his wife.

Since being placed on leave, Fox said, he has endured the humiliation of waiting in Eugene's Pioneer Cemetery each time he needs to go on campus. On university grounds, he's required to be accompanied by an escort: one of several library administrators. They sat through weekend classes he taught.

Fox said he was denied campus access to attend a luncheon Jan. 21, when he said he received a Martin Luther King Jr. Award in absentia for bringing more diversity into Libraries collections. The plaque sits in his office, he said.

On March 18, an armed UO police officer stood guard when Fox, who is 5-foot 6-inches, slim and gray-haired, went to meet Lim in her office, he said.

Before then, Fox said, Lim had said that he'd lose his position but that perhaps a new job would be created for him. This time, however, flanked by Shane Turner, director of library organizational development and human resources, Lim handed Fox a letter of non-renewal of his three-year contract, he said.

Fox said he wonders why, if Coltrane considers the records release unlawful, no criminal charges have been filed. Asked if he felt angry at Harbaugh, Fox said he had no opinion concerning the tenured professor.

Fox said that for two years he had paid a Eugene lawyer, Jill Fetherstonhaugh, to advise him on handling personnel and administrative matters. He said he also had an occupational therapist who helped him, on his dime, navigate the university's "treacherous" political space.

Crispin, Fox's Portland lawyer, charges $425 an hour. The attorney has continued negotiations with UO lawyer Douglas Park, the university's interim general counsel, in hopes of getting a severance package. But Crispin and Fox said they set a negotiation deadline of 9 a.m. Friday. The university countered with a late-Friday deadline to end negotiations.

During his leave, Fox has concentrated on hobbies; he ties his own flies, fishing Oregon rivers for steelhead. He enjoys backpacking and whitewater rafting.

Fox remains active in the community. He is listed as a board member -- chair, he said -- of Wellsprings Friends School, a Eugene alternative school. The school's Web site says his son, Mani, a popular student there, died suddenly at 16.

Reflecting on his son's death, Fox grew emotional toward the end of the marathon interview. For a minute or so, his clasped hands trembled. Fox sat, quaking, at his lawyer's conference table. He stared downward. Gradually, he regained his composure.

"I do love my job," said Fox, his voice shaking. He repeated that he also loved the University of Oregon.

"I feel like I've been betrayed by this institution," he said. "Instead of standing behind me, they've offered me up as a scapegoat."

"They're looking to shift responsibility away from the University of Oregon administration," he said, "and I'm a pretty easy target."

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