Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [197]
She refused to give any interviews about why she’d canceled the program and she demanded absolute silence from everyone associated with it, including personnel from Hull House and the participating families. There was never a report issued or a cost analysis published, and for this she was severely criticized by philanthropists who prize accountability as a curative force. “The problem with Families for a Better Life was not that it failed but that it was a wholly unconstructive failure that provided no systematic knowledge about the transition from welfare to work,” wrote Peter J. Frumkin in Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy. Formerly with Harvard, the professor of public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and director of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service faulted Oprah for being so secretive and protective of her image. He felt her welfare-to-work experiment was too important not to be shared with those who remained committed to making progress on the issue. “There should be no stigma attached to constructive failure that builds knowledge … [but] heavily funded initiatives that end in unconstructive failure like Winfrey’s deserve all the criticism they presently receive and more.… There is no excuse for being both ineffective and unaccountable.”
Oprah did not feel she owed anything to anybody. With the exception of the donations from Random House, Inc., and Capital Cities ABC, she had funded Families for a Better Life Foundation by herself, and she was not about to finance a public report on its failure. As she had earlier told the graduates of Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut, in her commencement address, “Know this—if you make a choice and come to realize that that choice is not the right one, you always have the right to change your mind, without guilt.” She folded both her foundations, There Are No Children Here and Families for a Better Life. Then she started another one, named For a Better Life. She put Rufus Williams, a senior manager for Harpo, in charge of its operations. In the years between 1996 and 2000, she changed For a Better Life Foundation to the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, to encompass most of her charitable giving, and her largest contributions went to the Oprah Winfrey Scholars at Morehouse, the Oprah Winfrey Boys and Girls Club in Kosciusko, and Oprah’s Angel Network, which she promoted on her show for viewer donations. She had no intention of throwing off the humanitarian mantle of Princess Diana, and despite Professor Frumkin, she was not about to acknowledge any mistakes that might diminish her role as an inspired leader.
In fact, Oprah considered herself and Stedman to be such enlightened leaders that they teamed up to teach a course at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, titled Dynamics of Leadership. “It has been a dream of mine to teach,” she told Jet, “and Stedman and I share the same beliefs in the importance of dynamic leadership in this country.”
The university was thrilled by its new adjunct teacher. “The feedback we’re getting from MBA students has been phenomenal,” said Rich Honack, assistant dean and director of marketing and communications in 1999, “because she is truly admired, especially by the women and minority students, who see her as someone who has made it.” Oprah insisted that no press be allowed on campus during her weekly Tuesday night classes, and each of the 110 students selected for the course had to present a special identification card and be checked by four security guards before he or she was admitted to the classroom. University officials warned that any student talking to reporters would be subject to disciplinary action, which could