The university bought a $400,000 condominium near the president’s official residence in Garden City, N.Y. Between 1990 and 1995 Adelphi leased a $7,500-a-month Manhattan apartment, and then bought a $1.2 million condo for him nearby. Adelphi officials insist the surplus homes are used for fund-raisers and visiting dignitaries. “You can’t raise money in goddammed Long Island,” says trustee George Lois, whose firm created an in-your-face ad campaign for Adelphi. But Diamandopoulos also has the option to buy back the Manhattan condo-and its contents–at a 25 percent loss to Adelphi. These revelations led to an overwhelming vote last fall by Adelphi faculty to oust the president.
Instead of leaving, the 67-year-old Greek-born philosophy professor dug in his heels. He sued his critics for defamation and refused to cooperate fully with a New York state attorney general’s inquiry, forcing the A.G. to issue formal subpoenas. Investigators are probing the Adelphi administration’s spending on real estate, travel, cars, entertainment and salaries-particularly the president’s. In 1993-94 Diamandopoulos got $$25,000 in salary, benefits and deferred bonuses, making him the nation’s second highest-paid university president (after Boston University’s John Silber). “Being the president of Harvard is easy,” proclaims Lois. “President of Adelphi is the hardest job in the world.”
Clearly, Diamandopoulos has steadfast support among the trustees. The dynamic former president of Sonoma State University in California was hired 10 years ago to remake the relatively anonymous Adelphi into the Harvard of Long Island. Since then, the Harvard Ph.D. has renovated buildings, balanced the budget and beefed up curriculum. An Honors College for 187 students opened in 1995.
But critics believe his successes mask deep financial distress. Diamandopoulos once boasted Adelphi would have 15,000 students by 1990. Today there are 5,005. This year nearly every department fell far short of its freshman-recruitment target. Professors often tell students to use a neighboring college library for new journals. “It’s very hard to do research here,” says senior Sara Ann Hajduk.
Crank calls: On Nov. 29, Catherine Cleaver, director of Adelphi’s professors union, was listening to her voice mail. Eight crank calls had come in late in the evening, she said. One was from a man saying, “F-k you.” Six were from one woman posing as different people: “I thought you [the Committee To Save Adelphi] were some liberal, radical, Nazi, sort of Karl Marx crap organization, that’s hanging around and destroying universities,” she said: “I want you out of there, not President Diamandopoulos.”
Cleaver thought little more about them until private investigators showed her a fax. It appeared to be sent from the Diamandopoulos home to the president’s mentor-Silber, the Boston University president who is an Adelphi trustee. The fax, obtained by NEWSWEEK, said: “We both left a few choice, but well beneath our dignity, messages on their voice mail [the campus extension for the American Association of University Professors]. Petros said the war is on . . .
The committee hired a voice analyst who concluded, “with a high degree of certainty,” that Cleaver’s caller was Diamandopoulos’s wife, Maria. The local district attorney is investigating possible aggravated-harassment charges. Silber calls the fax “as phony as a $3 bill” and says he never received it. The Diamandopouloses refused to speak to NEWSWEEK, but a spokesman called the charges “scurrilous.”
Is Diamandopoulos a misunderstood crusader–or a delusional despot blinded by hubris? It may be impossible to sort out the answers. If the college’s centennial-ad-campaign rhetoric is any indication, there is no hint of a truce. Adelphi, the motto goes, is proclaiming a “Return to Glory.” Students, however, may be pining for a return to serenity.
NEWSWEEK should have cited The Chronicle of Higher Education for information ranking Peter Diamandopoulos of Adelphi University as ““the nation’s second highest-paid university president.’’ We regret the omission.
