Strange day today. We have the morning announcement about gays at a news conference and the release of of Kim Clark as president of BYUI in the afternoon.

His replacement, Clark Gilbert, is currently the President and CEO of Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media. Did the church want to get this guy out of town to avoid the thrashing in the media about the "gays" press conference? The timing just seems odd.

A little information on Gilbert. He comes from a wealthy TBM family, was a student at Harvard Business School when Kim Clark was the Dean and Clark was reportly was a mentor to Gilbert. Gilbert was hired at the Harvard Business School under Clark's tenure.

Shortly after Clark came to BYUI, Gilbert had applied for the Athletic Director position at BYU--he didn't get it but Clark made a place for him at BYUI as the associate academic vice president of Academic Development. A position that was created for Gilbert.

Gilbert is a clone of Clark and BYUI is going to have more of the same dismissive, arrogant, GA seeking, bilge. The employees and the students will continue having to cope with a repressive, fundamentalist, administration that has something to say about everything--like wanting older women to dye their gray hair--I kid you not.

Clark Gilbert was in the midst of building a home within a stone throw from the BYUI president's home, and another VP that Clark brought in, Henry Eyring II. (We have our own little Heber,UT subdivision). Gilbert let people know that he was "building the biggest house in Rexburg." It wasn't the biggest house in Rexburg but it said a lot about what kind of guy he was.

Funny thing, though, they had just about finished the house when it caught on fire and burned completely to the ground. It burned to the ground because the subdivision was new but there was no water in the fire hydrants to put it out.

They re-built the house but Gilbert was appointed the CEO of the Deseret News and Deseret Digital Media. I don't know if he ever lived in the house. It sat empty until about two years ago when it was finally sold.

It's my opinion that Q15 is grooming Gilbert for a GA position and he's getting a lot of "church experience" so he can go higher.

Now Kim Clark can now go and live in his custom built house in that Heber City, UT area that the GA's are living in. Clark built the house in 2009, now he can live in it.

In summary, it's going to be bohica "bend over here it comes again."

Wow, I knew his wife at BYU. I'm rather shocked at how the spouses of my BYU friends are all advancing in politics, academia, etc. When I was a young woman I had great ambitions and at some point I realized the ppl I modeled my academic career after were all men. There are no LDS woman who have excelled in career, etc. I am sure that, among other things, contributed to my exit. I'm even more sad to see these brilliant, talented, and thoughtful women I went to college with reduced to the final paragraph of these announcements, "The "accomplished man" is married to "woman" and they have "#" children."

I know Clark Gilbert. Clark Gilbert was a colleague and friend of mine when I was in academia for over 7 years. I feel compelled to stand up for him on this forum. I would be less of the type of man I strive to be if I do not (especially as I try to figure out my post Mormon life (as an aside I am on week five of not stepping into a church building :-).

Clark was, at least when I knew him well, a really good guy. Highly respected in academia for his scholarship, teaching, service, and going out of his way to help other by others without regard to religious affiliation. He helped me in some significant ways back then, with a lot of his time on several occasions, to assist me one-on-one with some projects without there being any material benefit or future expectation of reciprocity on his part. A 'pay it forward' type of help that many of us have gotten.

Clark shared with me on a number of occasions that he was torn between the academic life or leaving to go and build something of real institutional substance. Yes, he did always envision doing this in a capacity related to church institutions. He choose the latter when the opportunity to do this arose when the Dean of HBS (Harvard Business School) went to BYUI and asked Clark to leave his appointment at HBS. This was no small thing as he was more than succeeding at HBS at the time. Everyone that I knew, Mormon and everyone else including myself, thought he was just nuts to leave HBS and go to BYUI in any capacity.

I've not talked to Clark directly since he took the Deseret News CEO job. But I plan to email him to set up a time to chat (btw, that is the academia norm for phone calls as it is considered respectful of each other's time to do otherwise--even with your best of friends.)

I will bet that he will do good by BYUI. Yes, he is solidly committed to the Mormon Church Institution. Even so, our conversations never really had 'belief' in the church as a part of them, so I cannot comment on where he is on the matter. He never spoke about things like 'if I pursue building things for the church I could be a part do spreading the Gospel to all corners of the world'. Rather he seemed always focused on making people's lives--yes in Mormon contexts--better though roles related to education. He carved out a chunk of his time to try create an educational institution that could serve Mormon youth in inner cities as such kids had no means or access to getting decent secondary education. I do not know if this endeavor got traction back then. But BYUI was one of the vehicles he had talked about as a potential launch-pad for an effort like this. Who knows. If I were to guess that may be one of reasons he got himself up to bat for the BYUI job and succeeded in getting it.

I hope that the roles he has been in subsequent to Harvard have not reshaped the man he was at his core that I knew. But, roles are very powerful things. We all know people who when they became a bishop or stake president their evil twin emerged. But I believe Clark at least weathered that as I think he was in a bishopric or stake HC while at Harvard. It would make me quite sad if Clark has been affected by his roles in TSCC in a negative way over the last several years.

Not all TBMs are nefarious evil doers with guile. If he becomes a GA who knows, he could be the one with enough ethics and strength of character to bring everything out into the open and actually try to fix it. The man I knew would not be OK with being a part of something that he found out was doing harm to others.

I am good with any disagreement with my opinion -- and if quite heated so be it. If there direct first person experiences that rfm'ers have had with Clark at BYUI and especially at Deseret News where he was CEO as those would probably be the most telling please do share. I would be very interested. My hope is they would be good things. But if not so good I would be, as noted above, sad for another harm inflicted by TSCC. My experience with rfm so far is that all here feel free to disagree and that is the nature of a good forum like rfm. I like that. That said, for me it would be 'unkind to humans' to not say what I feel should be said about another human being. (yes, the less than subtle mention of 'humanism' tenants is intentional)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2015 11:41AM by mannaz.

Thanks for the information. I posted earlier that many of the staff at BYU-I were not liking Kim Clark and couldn't wait until he was gone. Hopefully, and it sounds like it, Gilbert will be more likeable.

You can't be effective if people don't respect you. It will be interesting to see how the new guy does.

I do not know anything about Kim Clark. Us academics can be a self-centered and pretty selfish lot. When professors become chairs and deans it either brings out the best or worst in them. Ah, such is the profession that I have chosen.

He seemed like a nice guy and we got along well. He was quite handsome at 18.

It was a great course taught by 3 great professors. We even got Chris Dodd and Rosa Parks to lecture to our class.

mannaz, I'll second your opinion of Clark. I knew him when he was an undergrad at BYU...was a "fraternity" (aka social club) brother of mine...always was cool, decent and upstanding.

Hope he makes BYU-I a bit more tolerable place :)

I just hope this change does not throw Kim Clark off of his routine, and make him forget to take his critical life preserving thyroid meds !!!!!! that would be horrible !!!!

I wonder if his eminence, yea even Kim Clark, will still be seen wandering around the BYUI campus inspecting skirt lengths and looking for capris and flip flops. After taking his meds of course.