Bergeron’s Bullying May Tie Back to Brown

In his letter to the Board of Trustees (BoT) on Feb. 7, Dr. Rodmon King, the former dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, accused President Katherine Bergeron of  “bullying behavior” and cultivating a “toxic administrative culture of fear and intimidation.” These accusations are under review by the BoT and an outside consultant. In the meantime, The College Voice took a look at Bergeron’s time at Brown University to see if any of these allegations were part of a pattern.

Before she began working at Conn, Bergeron spent time at the University of North Carolina, Tufts University, and the University of California Berkeley before arriving at Brown University in 2004. At Brown, Bergeron started as a professor in the Music Department before being promoted to dean of the college in 2006. 

From the time she started in her position as a dean, Bergeron received backlash for her leadership and restructuring of her office. Around the time Bergeron was promoted, The Brown Daily Herald published several articles on the increased turnover in the administration. Some of these articles include: Bergeron’s email outlining the restructuring of the Dean of the College’s office, allegations of Bergeron firing two deans, and an on-the-record conversation with Steven Cornish.

Cornish was the former dean of first-year studies at Brown when Bergeron took over as dean of the college. He is currently the academic affairs coordinator at Colby-Sawyer College. The College Voice attempted to contact everyone mentioned in Cornish’s 2007 conversation, including Perry Ashley and Jonathan Waage (the two aforementioned fired deans ), Armando Benogchea (former dean of freshman studies/associate dean of the college), and Sheilah Coleman (former assistant dean of the college), all of whom left as a result of Bergeron’s office restructuring, according to The Herald. As of the publication of this article, only Cornish responded to the interview request.

When asked about his time working with Bergeron, Cornish told The College Voice, “Bergeron showed little to no appreciation of the work that the Dean of the College had been doing and did not seem anxious to learn from those of us doing the work. She brought in outside consultants and quickly embarked on restructuring the office. I cannot recall any meeting where our opinion was sought out or listened to. Decisions that had previously been made collectively, were now made solely by Bergeron.” 

The need for outside consultation seems to be a pattern for Bergeron when starting a new position. Three months after she was appointed dean of the college at Brown, she requested an “external review of the office’s organization by her peer administrators at Princeton and Stanford,” according to The Herald. Similarly, multiple examples from the Conn archives of the President’s Letters and Statements show Bergeron’s introduction of consulting firms that would be assisting in evaluating several parts of the College. She is quoted in The Herald saying an outside opinion is important because “It’s good to get a sense of where you stand.” She also said she received opinions from people on campus because, “whenever you’re in a new job, people will tell you things.”

The story of Carolyn Denard also sheds light on the questions behind Bergeron’s restructuring and leadership. Denard was an associate dean of the college at Brown, but she left in 2008 after just two years under Bergeron to take a job at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. In 2012, Denard joined the Conn administration as dean of the college and senior diversity officer, a job now split into two separate positions, taking over from her former Brown colleague, Armando Bengochea. She, once again, worked under Bergeron in 2014, but left less than a year later to become the Associate Provost for Student Success and Professor of English at Georgia College. Denard retired in 2021 and was unavailable for comment. However, her story lives on through the professors who have been at Conn since her time here. 

According to a professor who asked to remain anonymous, “many people felt that [Bergeron] gave Carolyn, [who was] new to the job, the difficult task of evaluating and then canceling the ‘beloved’ tradition called fishbowl.” Fishbowl was an annual tradition where seniors got drunk and ran across campus naked. The professor explained that it appeared as if Bergeron gave Denard a task that would make the college community dislike her, making it easier to push Denard out. Bergeron started as Conn’s president on Jan. 1, 2014, and Denard was gone before the calendar year was over. Without hearing Denard’s side, we have no way of knowing if her decision to leave Conn was related to Bergeron, but the timing is certainly coincidental. 

On their own, none of these stories conclusively prove past issues with President Bergeron, but together they start to raise concerns. Going on the record with a newspaper is intimidating, especially if you still work at the institution or in the profession you are speaking about. The independent review of Bergeron currently being conducted by an unidentified firm is intended to be confidential to get the whole story without potential backlash. At this point, only time will tell if this will confirm the allegations, but at the very least, several careers have been affected since Bergeron has been in power. 

This article was researched in collaboration with Lia Dietrich ‘23 and Mary Flathers ‘23