Only Transparency Can Save Great Institutions
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/opinion/nyt-175-anniversary-sulzberger.html
Today as I write this, September 18, 2026, The New York Times is 175 years old. The above essay is from A. G. Sulzberger, the current publisher of the newspaper. He wrote the editorial to be published on the birthday of the newspaper that had its origins before the Civil War at the southern tip of Manhattan. The first issue sold for a penny.
This is the paragraph that caught my eye:
At The Times, we believe the job of a newspaper is to seek the truth, to help people understand the world and to hold the powerful to account. This means equipping people with the information they need to make decisions. It means bonding our diverse communities with a fuller understanding of the lives, hopes and concerns of our neighbors. It means asking tough questions of government and business leaders on the public’s behalf. It means doing all this with an ironclad commitment to fairness, accuracy and independence — delivering the news, as our longstanding credo puts it, “impartially, without fear or favor.”
To me this is a call for objectivity, honesty, and transparency. It’s a pretty good strategy for leaders of any institution or endeavor to follow.
I am going to argue that for the past 25 years at least, at MD Anderson, this has NOT been the policy of those who have led the institution. As an example, we still have no idea why John Mendelsohn, Ron DePinho, and Peter Pisters discontinued their presidencies or were forced to. Did they do something wrong or simply overstay their welcomes in the eyes of the Board of Regents? Why did Dr. LeMaistre and Dr. Mendelsohn stay on the job until their replacements could be named, but this was not the case with DePinho or Pisters? How are the faculty and staff of MD Anderson supposed to react to the news of the Pisters resignation when by most common measures of success–financial and reputational–Anderson under Pisters was doing well. (According to his parting email, Pisters says that the institution has never been in better financial shape. Then, why is he leaving at the age of 66, far earlier than Clark, LeMaistre, and Mendelsohn?)
This blog thought he was a poor leader because he really did not understand modern cancer research, he did not care about faculty well-being, and surely was not inspirational in any way as were Clark, LeMaistre, and Mendelsohn when they were at their best. No one wanted to go into battle with Peter Pisters or, for that matter, with Ron DePinho.
Many organizations fire their leaders. Presidents fire those they hired, Donald Trump for sure. All of that is fine, but the rest of the organization ought to know why these things occur. Without objective information, people make up a story. The made-up story is almost always wrong and often damaging to morale. It is logical for any faculty member to believe that if HE could be fired, I will be next.
Some of my readers discount The New York Times as a source of information. I will be the first to admit, it is not what it once was. The writing can be dreadful and what the editors think is news can often be questionable. But, the Times is far better than most other sources of information including broadcast news and the internet. Yesterday I erased my DVR’d recording of the NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas as soon as he listed the stories he would cover. None of them were real news. There was nothing about the economy. There was nothing about Iran. There was nothing about Ukraine. There were floods, helicopter crashes, premature, drug-related deaths of TV stars, and the latest on Princess Di 30 years after her death. Give me a break! Trump is right. It is fake news!
I have found that my efforts to read the editorial, business, and news pages of both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal remain my best chance at staying informed.
Any group of people whether a work force or the entire population of a country is more likely to be efficient and effective when those in the group understand why decisions above them in the food chain occurred. The UT System’s habit of secrecy following awful Regents’ decisions only causes more distress in the rank-and-file faculty and classified staff.
People want to believe that their leaders are competent, logical, and have their best interests at heart. Neither the leaders of the United States nor the UT System have engendered such feelings in their constituencies. The U.S. has an election coming up that might significantly change the leadership at least in Congress, but it is unlikely to increase the confidence of the American people in their government.
I see little hope for the UT System under this Board of Regents, this Chancellor, and this Texas Legislature.
I suggest that the Regents let us know why Dr. Pisters is leaving and what direction they wish the UT cancer center to take in the future. It would be nice to know that someone is in charge, someone has a vision and a plan, and someone actually cares. It has been a long time since the faculty and staff of MD Anderson have been in a place where they understood the plan for the institution. For the most part, since I got to Anderson in 1984, decisions at the level of the UT System were opaque and outwardly arbitrary. That can be changed if the Regents want to change it. This is unlikely.
