Periodic External Evaluation Of Any Academic Institution Is Never A Bad Idea
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/yale-report-academia.html
Although the MD Anderson Cancer Center has been through a bunch of media promotions, tag line changes, and now a new logo, the underlying mission of the cancer center has remained the same—eradicate cancer.
It has utilized four guiding academic pursuits to attempt to do that—clinical care, research, education, and prevention. My question is, has anyone examined whether or not this endeavor is succeeding? And, what are the metrics of success? These academic pursuits cannot be measured only in dollars, square feet, or numbers of personnel. But easy metrics are hard to find.
In the attach editorial from The New York Times on April 22 by Bret Stephens, the recent report from a committee at Yale empaneled by Yale’s president Maurie McInnis determined that Yale had lost its way. It said that the purpose of the university is “to preserve, create, and share knowledge.” This is a much different mission than that of MD Anderson, but just as basic. Yale had lost its way in pursuit of DEI and wokeism among other distractions. Has MD Anderson lost its way? Has anyone looked?
The Yale president had determined that public trust in elite universities had vanished and that the universities needed to do something to gain it back. Two of the reasons for the lack of trust were listed as “bureaucratic bloat” and “an intellectual atmosphere of censoriousness and self-censorship.” These two apply at Yale and may apply at MD Anderson as well. Has Anderson grown too big? Has the huge growth in bureaucracy served the underlying mission of the cancer center? And what about the intellectual environment at Anderson? Are faculty and staff free to speak their minds or do they self-censor for fear of job loss?
Also noted in the Yale report is the difficulty of making change. “Part of the problem is that a university that spent decades turning itself into what it is now cannot easily turn itself into something else—not least because the self-governing (and often self-dealing) structures of academic life make it difficult to foster deep cultural changes that universities require.”
As this blog has reported many times, the inflection point downward in MD Anderson’s history was when its president, John Mendelsohn, got involved with two, major headline-grabbing business scandals, Enron and ImClone, and the UT Board of Regents left him in place for another nine years. Overnight, it seemed, Mendelsohn turned the reins of institutional governance over to the lawyers. All decisions were based on risk aversion, none on boldness in the pursuit of the conquest of cancer. “Research-driven patient care” gave way to lawyer-driven overregulation where money trumped discovery and policies overrode publications. What else can explain the plethora of on-line training aimed at blaming any wrongdoing by a faculty or staff member on that person by saying that the institution informed all personnel about every rule one could imagine? If someone broke one of the rules, it is no longer the institution’s fault. That may be avoiding risk through obfuscation, but that will not cure cancer and it sure takes everyone many hours to take the annual computer-based trainings like the EEE. These are faculty hours away from patient care and research and, thus, wasted just to avoid risk. Ask any patient at the other end of an IV line getting a phase 1 drug about risk.
I think the time is right for a thorough examination of the direction that MD Anderson has taken in the past 25 years, its successes and failures, and the plan on moving forward again in pursuit of the mission of eradicating cancer as opposed to increasing income, over hiring, and over paying institutional leaders.
Here are some questions for any committee tasked with this review. If such a committee is formed it should contain real experts in clinical cancer care, cancer research, graduate education, and cancer prevention. Its members must have no past or current affiliation with MD Anderson including people involved with pharmaceutical companies in contractual relations with the cancer center.
Here are some of my questions:
Is MD Anderson non-protocol clinical care objectively and measurably better than standard of care elsewhere? What are the critical metrics (e.g., alteration in the natural history of cancer)? For which cancers does MD Anderson truly alter the outcome and give patients a better chance at greater survival? For example, I am certain that care on the Adult Leukemia service is state-of-the art and that department has metrics of its success. I believe that MD Anderson surgeons, pathologists, radiologists, and radiotherapists are without equal. But does all that fire power lead to more cures and prolonged life spans?
In research, has any new drug emerged from research that began in an MD Anderson laboratory? Drug company trials with MD Anderson discoveries count if Anderson identified the drug. An example from the past of a treatment that saved lives is liposomal muramyl tripeptide invented by Dr. Fidler and clinically developed by Dr. Kleinerman for the treatment of osteosarcoma. In my time as a vice president, the Leukemia Department was a leader in accruing patients on Gleevec trials. I’ll bet there are many other examples of MD Anderson leadership in clinical research. What are they? Which department has been a leader in this? Which departments have been treading water and require new leadership?
In education, how many MD Anderson fellows have gone on to make significant contributions in academic medicine? Which PhDs and MD-PhDs have continued to make significant contributions after their training at Anderson? I know that several of the MD-PhD graduates of the UT Medical School-MD Anderson Cancer Track that I initiated back in 1989 and ran for ten years are now on the MD Anderson faculty. One is a department chair. Has that continued in this century?
Finally, in prevention, what discovery at MD Anderson has altered the way populations can be screened for cancer and what practices have MD Anderson faculty developed that alter cancer risk in any population?
I am sure you can think of many other questions that such a committee could examine to determine the quantifiable strengths of MD Anderson and the areas needing work and investment.
Finally, on the administrative side, I can readily point to the fact that under my vice presidency, there was a single door through which all paperwork supporting research would enter. Faculty did not have to search for the right person. That person was LZ. That was the purpose of my office—“service with a sense of urgency” was our mission statement. My guess is today there are many doors for research paperwork (clinical protocols, animal protocols, biosafety declarations, conflict of interest disclosures, grant applications, contracts, and submissions to the FDA) and few are under faculty control. They used to be. That they aren’t is too bad for the current faculty.
I have been made aware of tremendous runarounds perpetrated on wronged faculty who are bounced between the Compliance Office, HR, and departmental administration only to have their grievances ignored or overturned by the department chair or even the president. That’s not good administration at all.
I am going to argue that MD Anderson is no longer fulfilling its mission just as the president of Yale thought was the case at his institution. However, I could be wrong. It’s time to find out.
I wonder if President Pisters has the courage to look in the mirror, form the committee, and act on the results. It would be a far greater contribution by him than his quest for more buildings and might even justify the $4 million he is paid.
6 thoughts on “Periodic External Evaluation Of Any Academic Institution Is Never A Bad Idea”
Timely reminder that MD Anderson’s favorite mascot and marketing asset, Dr. Jim Allison, who is paraded around to solicit philanthropic donations, conducted his Nobel winning work at Berkeley, and the CTLA-4 blockade patent family belongs to the University of California. The Allison Institute is a key fundraising instrument, funneling tens of millions of dollars to Allison and his wife’s research.
Peter’s second favorite mascot, Katy Rezvani, developed a CD19 CAR-NK treatment that was licensed to Takeda for north of a Billion dollars. TAK-007 was to be Takeda’s lead oncology cell therapy candidate. Except Takeda’s trial of TAK-007 failed to impress, unable to fully reproduce Rezvani’s results. Takeda discontinued TAK-007 for oncology in 2024, shelving the cell therapy platform entirely in 2025. These are unpopular discussions, as Rezvani’s Cell Therapy Institute is, again, a key fundraising instrument.
Interesting about Rezvani and Takeda. I was unaware. These are the kinds of issues that need the to be out in the open. I thought the original Allison work was started at Science Park in Smithville many years ago. I am not expert though. My concern is on the last 25 years under three very greedy leaders. But, if no one is interested in whether MD Anderson is on the right track or not, then this goes on. LZ
Development officers earn *personal commission* on philanthropic donations, so the perverse incentives to this act extend beyond senior leadership.
With all due respect to Dr. Allison and the impact of his work, his value to MD Anderson today is as a marketing tool.
Early T-cell biology took place in Smithville, and fortunately that fits a certain narrative. But the fact remains that both the landmark preclinical paper that laid the foundation for checkpoint blockade therapy (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.271.5256.1734) and its preceding paper (https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.182.2.459) are credited to UC Berkeley, many years after he left Smithville.
I am personally doubtful that such discoveries even COULD emerge from MD Anderson anymore. The renegade attitude exhibited by Allison in pursuing this advance would today be considered unprofessional at MD Anderson. Challenging the status quo is disfavored. Expecting laboratory staff to show up and meet a deadline is an abuse of authority, and might threaten a trainee’s psychological safety.
I am going to disagree with regard to whether or not a discovery like Allison’s could happen at MD Anderson today. I believe that it could IF the right people are leading labs and the right people are doing the work. What I am proposing is an external review of whether or not the right people are in place. For example, the Leukemia Service led by Dr. Kantarjian for years had the right people in place to make many critical clinical observations. The same was true in Cancer Biology under Josh Fidler and was certainly true in all the departments of Cancer Medicine under Ki Hong. The people are the key. My argument is that Mendelsohn did not totally get the right people in place although he did have many–Stan Hamilton, Don Berry, Ki Hong, Raph Pollock, Razelle Kurzrock and certainly Margaret Kripke who kept the research engine running. The people who replaced these folks are really not up to the job nor could hold a candle to the people on my list. That’s the problem. Good scientists will do good science. Mediocre ones will not.
DePinho kept everything for himself. That did not work out well. Pisters is basically clueless with regard to research. The first thing I told him at the breakfast he requested with me upon his arrival was to get a member of the NAS as his Chief Scientific Officer. Instead, he hired from inside. Pisters does not listen and his judgment, I question. He has also paralyzed the place with fear which is not the optimal atmosphere for discovery.
It is not that a Nobel-worthy discovery cannot be made today. It is the number of obstacles faced by the faculty that make it harder than ever.
Poor leadership for 25 years begets you very little. That all could change if the Regents want it to, but they are too bust worrying about DEI and pronouns. And, after all, what do the Regents know about cancer?
Reducing James P. Allison to a “mascot” glosses over the fact that his work reshaped cancer immunotherapy. Yes, the foundational discoveries and patents trace back to University of California, Berkeley, and that is exactly how academic science works. It does not make his later role at MD Anderson Cancer Center some kind of marketing illusion, nor does it make fundraising around his work inherently suspect. Major research centers depend on philanthropy to push expensive, high-risk science forward, and attaching that effort to people with proven impact is standard practice, not evidence of wrongdoing.
The same selective framing shows up in the critique of Katy Rezvani. Pointing to Takeda Pharmaceutical discontinuing TAK-007 as if it discredits her research ignores how drug development actually works. Promising early data often fails to translate into later stage trials, especially in oncology, where attrition is the rule rather than the exception. That does not imply exaggeration or misconduct. The message strings together disconnected facts to suggest a pattern that it never actually proves, relying on cynicism and hindsight instead of evidence.
I think there is a middle ground here. There can be no denying the excellence of Jim Allison’s science. However, he is not the only excellent scientist here and he has been used to raise money. Nothing wrong with that. I think the distress comes from his wife who has used HIS accomplishments to further her power grab and some really bad behavior that is well-documented and damaging to others. Sharma was dragged into court and only the “sovreign immunity” granted MD Anderson big wigs saved her pcoketbook for getting dented.
As for the other case, I am afraid I know little about it. However, did the PI INVENT the technology or just use the discoveries of others to create a drug that was highly touted by MD Anderson only to fail in the clinic. Of course, you are right. Lots of drugs fail after initial promise. But did the institution broadcast this great discovery that was neither great nor an original discovery?
I think you have to consider the personalities involved and how the institution chose to market the people. It may well be offensive to some. The question is who behaved admirably and professionally? I will let others decide.