My apologies---this is long but I implore you to read it carefully
because it puts the issue, I believe, in the framework in which we need
to consider it.

ALSB members:

A major point is being lost here in the Marianne debate.  Regardless of
Marianne's political beliefs, she has incorrectly (I would say
mailiciously) characterized the ALSB in a pubic forum.  She has done so
while being an officer of the organization. She did not bring this issue
to the Academy for discussion but instead broadcast it to the public.

Her comments are accusatory and vindictative as well as false.  As a
member of this Academy and as an officer who is, in part, responsible
for the "atmosphere" of the Academy, I take extreme exception to her
comments.  Please take the time now and read her actual comments about
the Academy...I have excised these but have not taken them out of
context----ignore the political arguments (because she has the clear
right to make them) and focus on her characterization, both express and
implied, of YOUR association.

here are the pertinent comments by Marianne about the ALSB and its
members:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Some years ago, one of my professional organizations, the Academy of
Legal Studies in Business (ALSB), adopted a resolution prohibiting it
from holding its annual meeting in any city or state that discriminated
on the basis of sexual orientation. When Congress passed its Defense of
Marriage Act, I inquired whether all future meetings would be held in
Canada. They sneered and met in Nashville, hotel deals in the steamy
South in August trumping virtuous boycotts. While I pay an annual fee to
cover my journal subscriptions, I can no longer be a member because the
group's professed views run contra to the tenets of my faith.....For
academics, they are amazingly biased. For seekers of truth, they are
surely blind. Each year they become more brazen. Now they bring in
blatantly political speakers with no connection to our field. At last
week's ALSB meetings, a Canadian and former U.N. official, served as our
plenary speaker. He characterized the United States as the drunken,
run-around son, Paul Newman, in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and the
Canadians as the good son who stays around and takes care of things at
home. His analogy netted cheers from my colleagues. When he called Mr.
Bush a liar and accused the United States of "strong-arming" other
nations on Kyoto and the International Criminal Court, I walked out in
protest. One member joined me."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I'd like to pose the following queries:
1) who sneered? I'd really like to know that.
2) are we really a "blind", "brazen" "amazingly biased" organizaton;
3) cheers? did you hear cheers at the plenary lunch this year?
4) by implication are we "intolerant"? do we force our members to hold
certain views? 5) did Marianne raise issues about goingg to Nashville?
6)has Marianne even come to any business meeting, contacted the Exec
Comm or House of Delegates in the past three or four years about these
concerns of the implied "intolerant environment of the ALSB?"
7) we have "professed views"? (check our mission statement and core
values on the ASLB webpage---those are our "values"...and you won't find
a single political issue there)

Now, I would venture a guess that if someone, whom we did not know,
posted these characterizations in public forums regarding the ALSB, you
all would be demanding that "we" respond to set the record straight.
Marianne's comments are at worst slanderous/libelous with the speaker
attempting to hide behind the guise of free speech. At the very least,
they are an attempt at organizational character assassination.

She has attacked your and my and every ALSB member's integrity with
these public comments.Yet, many of you advocate that we should not fight
back.  I would be remiss in my duties as a fiduciary of the Academy if I
did not defend our organization.

Further, when she disavows her membership, many of you somehow advocate
that we should keep her as a member/nonmember because she is such a
valuable person.  WAKE UP--SHE HAS REJECTED US!! or did you miss that
point in her article above?  She claims that we are the biased, blind,
brazen, intolerate group that she describes above.  The ALSB is US,
people, not an abstraction---her characterizations are about US, you and
me.  Perhaps in the future when a member tells me to discontinue her/his
membership, I should refuse if "we" think he/she should remain a member
because we like her/him.

People, this is not a first amendment or political debate issue; this is
a person who has paraded herself as a colleague and friend, who has
convinced many of us to buy her textbooks, who took a leadership roll in
the Academy and then turns around and stabs us in the back with
inaccurate, misleading, and negative-innuendo characterizatons about the
Academy in a public forum for her own personal political agenda.  And
many of you want the Academy to do nothing....get real and get some
backbone. I, for one, will defend our Academy from such vicious
assaults. I will not premit my integrity, the officers' integrity, and
your integrity to be impuned for political gain.  Am I taking Marianne's
comments personally?...You bet I am, and so should you.  And if you
don't rise to defend yourself and your colleagues, then shame on you!

Dan