The new president of Albright College appears to have included misleading statements about his academic credentials and publishing record on the resume he submitted to the college. Col. Henry A. Zimon had an impressive military career that had culminated in a high-profile strategic-planning job at the Pentagon before he became Albright's president this summer. But some faculty members at the Methodist liberal-arts college have questioned the veracity of several claims on his resume in faculty meetings and in letters to the college's Board of Trustees. Evidence obtained by The Chronicle supports the faculty members' suspicions. Colonel Zimon, who retired from the Army just before assuming the Albright presidency, this week denied misrepresenting his credentials to the college. "I have no reason to shade any stories or change anything," he said. The questions began when some Albright professors tried to obtain copies of a book Colonel Zimon had said was forthcoming from Praeger, a division of the Greenwood Publishing Group.

Colonel Zimon had listed the book, Reshaping U.S. National Security Strategy: Peacetime Engagement, Regional Stability, and Global Security, on his resume under the heading "Selected Professional Publications and Presentations," noting that it was due to be published in 1998-99.

But Peter Kracht, the publisher at Praeger, said this month that his company had not published the book and does not plan to do so. "We've carefully checked all of our records, and I have not been able to find any record of a contract or publishing agreement with Colonel Zimon," Mr. Kracht said. Colonel Zimon said this week that he does have a publishing contract. In an interview in his office, he quickly showed a reporter the corner of a page with some signatures on it, but he declined to let the reporter see the full page or the entire document.

"That's my personal business," he said. He added that the contract was with Auburn House, another division of Greenwood, although the book itself was to be published by Praeger. He said that the agreement had been signed by John T. Harney, a freelance acquisitions editor for Praeger. Mr. Harney said this month that in 1992, he had discussed the publication of a book that had been written by Colonel Zimon and an Air Force officer, Chuck Gagnon, while they were National Security Fellows at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. But Mr. Harney said he had no record of any contract with either Auburn or Praeger. "We never offered a contract because it never got that far," Mr. Harney said. "They dropped the ball on me in the sense that they never delivered a completed manuscript." Colonel Zimon's resume also did not list Colonel Gagnon, who has since retired from the Air Force, as a co-author of the book described as forthcoming. Colonel Gagnon this month confirmed that he and Colonel Zimon had nearly published their work in 1992. "We came within a whisker of having it published," Colonel Gagnon said. But the book never came out, he said, because of "policy concerns" related to their status as active-duty military officers. "We got wrapped around in a bureaucracy."

Colonel Gagnon said that he and Colonel Zimon had not talked recently about publishing the book. "It was leading edge in 1992," he said. "Now, it would require us to re-edit it almost into a historical document." He added: "We haven't talked about doing that." Colonel Zimon also said on his resume that he was editing a book, a compilation of essays called CFE: The Making of the Treaty and Its Implications for the Future, with R. James Woolsey, who directed the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995. Mr. Woolsey was the ambassador who led the U.S. delegation that negotiated the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and Colonel Zimon was his assistant during those talks. Colonel Zimon, on his resume, described the book as "forthcoming/in-progress." But Mr. Woolsey said this month that he was not working on a book with Colonel Zimon. "I don't know anything about the book," Mr. Woolsey said, adding that while he had spoken occasionally by telephone with Colonel Zimon, he had not "kept close track" of him since 1991. Colonel Zimon this week said that he had discussed the idea for the book with Mr. Woolsey in the summer of 1991. "I talked to Ambassador Woolsey about he and I doing kind of a summary chapter," Colonel Zimon said. "Once I confirmed to him that I was willing to do by far the majority of the work, he said to me that it sounded like a very interesting project." Colonel Zimon added, however, that he had not worked on the project since 1991, nor spoken about it with Mr. Woolsey since then. "He will be a co-editor of the book if we finish this project, and I fully intend to finish this project at some point," he said.

Colonel Zimon, on his resume, also said he had been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and business school. But Harvard officials say he never had postdoctoral fellowships at either school, although they confirm that he held a National Security Fellowship, a position for active-duty military officers at the Kennedy School. Fellows in that program are not required to have doctorates.

Colonel Zimon's resume said that he had taught "seminars" at the Kennedy School. School officials say that he never taught there and that the policy agreement between the military and the school precludes military officers from teaching. But the director of the National Security Fellows program said that Colonel Gagnon and Colonel Zimon had made a one-time presentation of a research paper to the entire school in 1992, when they were fellows. On his resume, Colonel Zimon also described himself as having been a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and said that he was on the board of the institute's Center for International Studies. Officials of the center, however, note that it has no board. They say that Colonel Zimon was a fellow in the Seminar XXI Program, whose participants are government officials, and that he served on the program's board. The fellows are not required to hold doctorates. The Albright president agreed with those distinctions this week. But he said that the fellowships had been postdoctoral fellowships for him, because he held a doctorate when he had participated in them. Colonel Zimon received his doctorate in geography from Ohio State University in 1979. Members of Albright's Board of Trustees said this month that the search committee for the college's new president, which included three faculty members, had checked candidates' credentials, as had the search firm employed by the college, Spencer Stuart and Associates. "The search committee, along with the board, was satisfied with Dr. Zimon's credentials," said Salvatore M. Cutrona, the vice-chairman of the board and head of the search panel. "We tried to go through every nook and cranny related to the candidates we had, and we're proud of this one."

Ron Zera, managing director of Spencer Stuart's higher-education division, led Albright's search. He said this month that he could not remember who had examined Colonel Zimon's publications, although he said that the references had been carefully checked. "I don't know if every 't' was crossed or every 'i' dotted," Mr. Zera said. "I don't know if every line of his resume was validated. But a person with his kind of visibility and stature with the government -- when we checked him out, he was really clean." Still, he added: "There's always some 't' or some 'i' that could have slipped through." Some faculty members, meanwhile, say they feel that Colonel Zimon has misled Albright. "Colleges and universities are just not cut out to deal with someone who might be perpetuating a very deliberate and calculating fraud," said Achal Mehra, a communications professor. "They work on faith and trust that people speak the truth. It is my opinion that Colonel Zimon is pulling a first-class con job."

Copyright 1999, The Chronicle of Higher Education. Reprinted with permission. This article may not be posted, published, or printed without permission from The Chronicle. Subscribers can read this story on the Web at this address:
http://chronicle.com/daily/99/10/99101501n.htm

--End --

--