Exclusive: Conductor sues Cleveland
NewsThe Uruguayan Carlos Kalmar who was railroaded out of the Cleveland Insitute of Music last year, has filed suit against the institution and individually against several of its executives. Kalmar was cleared by an independent inquiry of charges of sexual harrassment and bullying.
We have been leaked this letter from the CIM’s all-controlling board chair:
Dear Colleagues,
With great disappointment, I share the news that Carlos Kalmar, CIM’s director of orchestra and conducting programs and principal conductor (who is currently on administrative leave), has filed a complaint in federal court against the organization, with several current administrators and one former employee named as individual defendants.
You likely recognize that the organization is extremely limited in its ability to comment on active litigation, particularly regarding confidential personnel matters. CIM will vigorously defend itself against the allegations but will not issue any further comment on the matter at this time.
On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I thank you for your continued focus on CIM’s students, supporting their education, and providing the exceptional opportunities they deserve.
Sincerely,
Dr. Susan A. Rothmann, PhD
Chair, CIM Board of Trustees
The wheels of justice are turning.
The chairwoman seems uniquely qualified to lead the institute in its defense against Kalmar and in its investigation of sexual harassment; from her bio page, “Dr. Susan Rothmann is a widely recognized leader in semen analysis” …
I like how she signed her letter, “Dr. Susan A. Rothmann, PhD”. (Don’t call yourself Dr unless you are an MD, and don’t add a PhD after your name if you’ve already put a Dr in front of your name, it is even more misleading, suggesting you have both an MD and a PhD.)
I should think the double doctor moniker is more likely a sign of an insecure narcissist trying to project an image of competence and authority. As for only referring to MDs as Dr., don’t be a pedant. There are a whole host of degrees that entitle their holders to refer to themselves and to be addressed as doctor. Get over it.
Waw, can you explain this further, please? I understand not using “Dr.” & “PhdD” simultaneously, but why would someone who has earned a doctorate in a field other than medicine not be addressed as “Dr.”?
In academia, where many professors hold non-medical doctorates, this is considered the correct way to address them. Why would medical doctors hold a monopoly on the title of “Dr.” above those who’ve earned doctoral degrees in every other field?
It’s fine to address PhDs as “Dr.” in formal settings; it’s bad form to call yourself “Dr.” in an email signature, especially in combo with “PhD”, which is vaguely charlatanish, like an pop-psych author desperate to broadcast their credentials on a book jacket. For one thing “Dr.” is a form of address, to be used in conversation or in the presence of someone but only rarely in writing, especially not in reference to oneself.
I hope he takes them to the cleaners.
Dr. Susan PhD is disappointed, very disappointed indeed, that this Kalmar chappie has decided to resort to litigation. I assume she’s among the individual defendants. How unsporting of him not to just fade away and accept his fate. I hope they’re current with their D&O insurance premiums.
Kalmar and his wife, Raffaela are listed as plaintiffs. CIM president and CEO Paul Hogle, provost Scott Harrison, conservatory dean and vice president for academic and student affairs Dean Southern, former Title IX coordinator Vivian Scott, and the school are named as defendants.
I worked with Kalmar and he was a perfectly-behaved professional.
Because it didn’t happen to you, whatever happened to others must be false? That’s gonna be your “logic”?
VAN Magazine has a detailed report on this, published today, recommended.
Indeed. Which is why this isn’t an “exclusive” for SL as VAN was out earlier and with actual original text and quotes from relevant individuals.
She’s “disappointed” that he sued? What did she expect him to do, walk away quietly?
Serious schadenfreude all around on this one. Kalmar: by all accounts a bad guy so suck it. Hogle: an absolute horrible, tone deaf leader who is not an artist but thinks he knows better and installs all of his Trumpy evangelicals into positions of authority and has zero perspective on what makes the institution special so suck it. I feel for the students but welcome this development. Get a real musician who gets it in charge like Cerone please. I’m afraid it’s nearly inevitable that it’s gotta go way down before it can heal. Sachs quits due to accusations from an idiot admin who actually studied Human Resources in college…it’s worse than Jerry Krause dismantling the Bulls in the 90’s, that’s what’s happening with these clowns in charge.
I would suggest that imposing a theocracy on a music conservatory is not a winning strategy. Hogle should put his crucifix back in his pants and move on.
He should sue the piss out of these self rightous authoritarian jerks and their little woke elitist entitled crybabies aka students.
Name-calling the students – classy!
Why are they exempt? They behaved like a ugly angry mob. They’re not children.
You seem to have severe reading comprehension problems.
How will this affect Lebron’s legacy?
Part of Lawyer statement. “Students boycotted his classes, rehearsals and concerts, and the school barred him from giving the students who boycotted failing grades, according to the lawsuit.
“The school placated and surrendered to the misinformed and misled mob,” making Kalmar’s job “overwhelmingly difficult, humiliating and untenable.”
The new order of weak administration and mob rule will only stop when it becomes expensive and this sounds like it will be.
In my day our conservatory conductor was notoriously intimidating and sometimes abusive to players; they took it in stride as part of paying your dues. I never heard anyone claim victimhood, everyone told campfire stories about him, and he retired happily with his reputation intact. He was a solid conductor. But our generation decided to raise a bunch of babies, alas, and turn the higher ed system into a customer service oriented circle jerk of overpaid superfluous admins. What was Vivian Scott for? Clearly she was readily expendable in her vital crucial role of protecting students from harm. The dean of this struggling institute makes close to 300k, the president 500k, classroom teachers are barely paid at all….
Yes, we all miss someone as Otto-Werner Mueller!!!
Right. You survived abuse, so therefore everyone else should be abused as well. Fine line of reasoning you’ve got there.
No I don’t think therefore everyone else “should” be abused too. I’m saying they’re being babies, which they certainly are. Also, what can pass for “abuse” these days is often comical.
You can say they’re entitled crybabies all you like, but that doesn’t make you insightful or special; but rather, boring and repetitive. Watching a generation say “we’re not taking this [whatever]” while the generation that raised them to be that way calls them “entitled crybabies” is a tale older than all of us.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” – Socrates
I suspect that no, you didn’t just tell campfire stories about how much you loved enduring man-child behaviour, you just never had the intestinal fortitude to stand up like your children are, and want to rationalize away your inability to do what this generation is doing.
I know little of this situation, but these students aren’t lazy – they were admitted to a [formerly] top-shelf conservatory on their merits. Perhaps listening to these people would be more helpful than recycled “kids these days” rhetoric.
Thanks Socrates. We had the “intestinal fortitude” not to be babies anyway. If you find that boring it will be because it’s become routine and predictable, not because people like me are noticing it. The students here aren’t brave revolutionaries succeeding where their parents failed, calm down, they’re mostly entitled pay-to-play types, overwhelmingly privileged and advantaged in relative terms, many of them with wealthy parents, and 100% of the stories I’ve heard of Kalmar’s “abuse” have been weak tea. I gather he’s not likable enough, but we used to care more about whether someone was good at the job and could get results, about which I’m agnostic wrt to Kalmar, though he had a track record before coming to CIM, but which didn’t use to require placating babies.
“The students here aren’t brave revolutionaries succeeding where their parents failed, calm down, they’re mostly entitled pay-to-play types, overwhelmingly privileged and advantaged in relative terms, many of them with wealthy parents, and 100% of the stories I’ve heard of Kalmar’s “abuse” have been weak tea.”
So you didn’t go there, have no clue who the students are, and get your information from the Journal of the Inverted Posterior, got it.
I have more than a clue who the students are. I’m pretty well connected to this story, unlike you apparently, and have been in the US music conservatory world my whole life. And the late conductor I referred to was not a “man child,” that’s your Gen Z-level projection, he was a great musician with impeccable cred who taught many who went on to be very successful career musicians. He didn’t suffer fools or tolerate laziness or bullshit and could be abusive in response to that. It was all about the music for him. The pay-to-play Interlochen alums at CIM expect to be coddled.
I’m a middle aged Gen-Xer who actually graduated from CIM, unlike you. And I won three major auditions, rather than merely being relegated to having “been in the US music conservatory world my whole life.”
So sure, keep making assumptions. You’ve been wrong 100% of the time so far, keep it up.
You know nothing about me except what I’ve disclosed. I said “Gen Z-level projection,” not making assumptions about your age. Like I said I’m well connected to this story, have worked with both the students and admins at CIM. Congrats on your accomplishments. I wasn’t “relegated” to anything, speaking of making assumptions, and we’ll agree to disagree on what’s going there.
And like I said initially, I blame their parents and society, not them. They’re greatly players, generally speaking, just over-fragile. Such is what we’ve created. And I have little but contempt for the CIM administration, and I don’t assume Kalmar was Mr. Awesome, though he was cleared of in the Title IX investigation, which of course meant it must have been a rigged investigation, etc. etc.
and the typos are why I shouldn’t try posting from a phone
And yes, it is a tale as old as time and often recycled. That doesn’t make it untrue; it no doubt goes in cycles. Socrates being an observant guy was probably exactly right about the latest crop of kids in Athens, and you seem to be quoting him as though o say such people are always wrong? Virtually nobody said similar about the generation that fought WWII, for example, and their kids (my parents) were far less pampered than their kids’ kids. It’s been a steady slide in the US of increasingly entitled kids for at least three generations now, as it has been in many overprivileged societies throughout history.
The fact that Tammie Belton’s title is “vice president of people and culture” somehow says it all about this sorry story. And the ratio at CIM of students to assistant VPs and assistant/associate deans is shall we say lower than necessary.
Get em !!!!
really, Norm? Headline should read “. . . sues Cleveland Institute of Music.” “Cleveland” by itself on these pages can only refer to the Cleveland Orchestra.