Allegations that Central Asia Institute guru Greg Mortenson fabricated parts of his bestselling book “Three Cups of Tea,” and may have exploited the charity’s funds for personal use, bring up serious questions about the level of truth we expect from our leaders, especially in the world of development.
Mortenson brought the issue of girls’ education in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the forefront of mainstream culture with a compelling story of getting lost while descending K2 and then stumbling into a remote Pakistani mountain village. The villagers nursed him back to health, the story goes, and Mortenson was so inspired by their poverty and hospitality that he devoted his life to building much-needed schools for girls in the region.
It’s a powerful “leadership narrative” that inspired thousands to buy Mortenson’s book and support his charity. But it may have been too good to be true, and many of Mortenson’s supporters feel they were duped.
But how truthful do we really expect this kind of leadership narrative to be? At what point on the spectrum between a robotic retelling of factual events and total fabrication do we draw the line?
My wife and colleague Sarah Stuteville tells a killer story at a party. The women in her family are so notorious for exaggeration in their storytelling that there’s a joke about the “Stuteville reduction factor,” by which you should adjust the outrageous events in a story they tell to get the bare facts of what really happened.
But despite this (or more likely because of it), as a journalist she scrupulously adheres to the truth — almost to a fault.
She recognizes there’s room for exaggeration in some realms, but not in others.
But by its nature, a leadership narrative bridges those two worlds — and this may have been the key to Mortenson’s big mistake. He started out telling an exaggerated story to people he was close to, and it worked so well he couldn’t stop. In today’s Google-mediated collective memory trap, no one’s narrative is ever really their own once it is available on the Web. Greg Mortenson and his advisers should have been aware of this and taken steps to correct his narrative long ago. But if they had, he probably wouldn’t have made it as far as he did, to the top of the bestseller list, or to actually doing some good in the world.
So the more appropriate question may be, at what point of success and notoriety do we begin expecting the truth?
Mortenson may have transgressed in the way he told his story, and if it turns out there was malfeasance in his use of the charity’s funds, he certainly deserves all the criticism he’s getting.
But he was encouraged by a culture that demands compelling storytelling to get us engaged with an issue.
Case in point: Have you ever heard of the Citizens Foundation?
It’s a charity that has built more than 700 schools across Pakistan (Mortenson’s group claims to support 170 schools). The local Seattle chapter (mostly Microsofties who’ve relocated to the Northwest from Pakistan) raised enough in a single night of fundraising recently to build five new schools.
Compared to “Three Cups of Tea,” they have a pretty flat leadership narrative: Wealthy Pakistanis decide they should give something back to fix the broken education system in their country. They may not get much media coverage, but donors are attracted to their longevity, scrupulous reputation and proven results.
Real development doesn’t usually have a great narrative arc. It’s about recognizing systemic problems and patiently trying to solve them, one step at a time. If what we’re looking for are heroes with amazing stories, we shouldn’t be too surprised when those stories turn out to be lies.
Alex Stonehill is a journalist and Multimedia Storyteller in Residence at the MCDM.
Thanks for this post, Alex. Seattleite Nancy Bacon, who curates http://www.socialchangecollaboratory.com, tweeted that one should be suspicious of a story about pulling Pakistan out of poverty where the protagonist isn’t Pakistani. It will be interesting to see what the Montana Attorney General uncovers and how CAI weathers the potential fall out. Regardless of the decision, CAI is facing a formidable challenge in rebuilding public trust.
In the MCDM leadership course last quarter, the concept of “authentic leadership” was a core theme of the course, especially as it relates to a strong life narrative. In other words, how does your life story and experience steer you, and how can you lead those around you by strategically sharing that life story. It doesn’t mean that you have to be Mandela or King, but it does mean that you have to be genuine–and this is where Mortenson potentially slipped.
In this age that demands transparency–while at the same time providing a rich array of tools that can both sleuth or selectively cloak identity–the premium placed on authenticity is high.
I think you may be conflating the two issues at hand here. On the one hand, he lied about the story. On the other, he misused the funds he raised for things like private jets and a comfortable salary.
It certainly would be possible to take liberties with the story to raise significant funds that went to the mission to build schools while living a modest – yet livable – lifestyle. You can argue whether the end justifies the means in that context. There’s probably more leeway here than in the next scenario.
But I think what has people up in arms is that he took a large portion of that money to bankroll his personal goals and comfort. This certainly seems to be at the root of Krakauer’s ire and is something that people generally have less patience for.
I think you can tell a great story without resorting to lies. And I think a certain amount of “creative license” to spice up a story is allowed. But selling fiction as fact and then asking people to donate money to bankroll a lifestyle? That’s not allowed.
This is one of the few commentaries on l’affaire CAI that places it within a context supporting reasonable discussion instead of extreme response. At the same time, there seems to be an almost universal rush to believe the “60 Minutes” report (despite its clip-and-slice build-up of innuendo). Thus even your discussion begins with allegations-taken-to-be-facts rather than placing CAI and CBS as equal parties on the starting line of investigation.
Are there genuine concerns worth investigating? YES
Did “60 Minutes” prove any of it’s allegations? NO
I agree that they’re two separate issues. But what I observed in a lot of the media coverage so far was that people were far more concerned with the authenticity of the story than the financial side.
I must have read 4 or 5 articles about it and still don’t have a clear picture of whether the schools were getting built or not.
I liked that you brought in a more nuanced approach to talk about this
issue. And that you did not immediately passed a verdict, for or against Greg Mortensen. For me, he is still a hero (though over
exaggerated) and I will feel bad if media will start a nasty campaign
against him. But at the same time, I want tough questions be raised
and I want CAI and GM to provide satisfactory answers to these
questions.
I read the statements on CAI’s website and I felt that a few answers
have dodged the questions. But my overall impression is that CAI just
did not draw a clear line between CAI fundraising and GM’s royalties
and travel expenses … and therefore, they end up in some murky
waters. But I can see the situation and need for intertwining of
Greg’s books sales and its benefits to CAI fundraisers.
Part that is more challenging for me are the reports that few reported
schools are not build. This could be serious and I need clearer
answers from CAI on this.
http://www.ikat.org/wp-includes/documents/60minutesresponses.pdf
http://www.ikat.org/wp-includes/documents/gmresponse.pdf
One thing life shows us is that it is rather easy to ‘make a case’ and ‘find evidence’ to support almost any claim – or allegation. Therein, your absolute indictment and statements that Greg and CAI are guilty are foolish and irresponsible. Your rush to judgment indicates an utter lack of professionalism and a carelessness that may damage many innocent people, most specifically the thousands of people – young people – who benefit from CAI’s and Greg’s work. And, yet, the premise of your article is one of ‘responsibility’, while your article attempts to cause harm and damage based solely upon allegations. Or is your motive deeper and personal? It must be.
America is a country where people are, by law and spirit, considered innocent until proven guilty. Apparently you care little for this basic right.
I am quite confident I could find enough ‘evidence’ to support a claim that you are, in fact, simply anti – Muslim and are taking this opportunity to disparage someone who is doing great things to benefit people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As I said, it is actually very easy to find evidence to support almost any claim. Yet, I do feel that there must be something you are hiding about yourself.
The allegations against Greg and CAI are only that – allegations. There are full responses to all of the questions raised by 60 Minutes, prior to the airing of the show, on their website. While the ‘allegations’ deserve further investigation, they are anything but fact.
One thing that is a fact; You are an utterly and entirely irresponsible ‘journalist’ and this article should be removed. Now I must direct people to begin investigating MCDM which, apparently, is hiding something as well.
In response to Jim’s very valid point about two issues coming into focus here: I agree that misuse of donor money might be a central point of contention here, but I’m not convinced the outcry would be very much less if that piece of the puzzle was absent. Any time you’re asking people to empathize with a story then to react — to truly feel something and donate money or time because of that connection your story forged — you had better make sure that story is true. Any manipulation of fact will result in your constituents feeling betrayed, much like in an personal relationship in which truth was manipulated to ensure the desired result. A storyteller seeking activism can take a certain number of liberties with a story: She can omit details that aren’t relevant, she can speculate, she can even resort to fiction if it’s clearly labeled as such. But she can’t tell her readers something happened when it didn’t.
Susan,
You’re right that I may have used language that too strongly endorses the allegations from 60 minutes. Mortenson himself has admitted that versions of events in the book were “compressed,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were fabricated all together. I’ve adjusted some of the language to be less presumptuous of his guilt.
The point of the post is not to indict Mortenson, but to use this ‘scandal’ as a case study to understand how much truth we expect from different people in different situations, and how we tempt people to embellish with our demand for compelling stories to get us engaged with development issues.
The financial accusations were very weak. I debunked them over at my blog: http://doublebirds.blogspot.com/2011/04/in-defense-of-greg-mortenson.html.
Alex – Thank you for this post which I found through Tom Paulson’s twitter feed, and didn’t even know it was you writing it until the line about “my wife Sarah Stuteville!”
I have a couple of reactions to the Greg Mortenson story. First and foremost, I’m tired of the white hero story. Given my position, I read all these books to have intelligent conversations about them with our supporters. But to be frank, I’m sick of these kinds of books. While they may bring attention to a cause or an organization, I feel they do it at the expense of naming the real heroes. The real heroes to me are the people and organizations we here in America support in poor countries. In the case of Water 1st, our heroes are Meselech, one of the founders of Water Action, in Ethiopia or Wilfredo, the President of COCEPRADIL in Honduras.
I also think this points to the need for charities to have a better system for demonstrating the success of their projects. Organizations
like Charity Navigator and Guidestar present financial and governance information to donors, but in our case, that still doesn’t tell you if a hand-pump is working or not. In CAI’s case, it doesn’t tell you if a school was actually built or not. In response to accountability issues in other sectors, some nonprofits have created a form of self-regulation through industry associations that have rules or standards for membership that
exceed legal requirements (legal requirements would be filing a Form 990 annually with the IRS). These associations can provide an opportunity for nonprofits to demonstrate that they are delivering on their promises. Clearly, the incentive for nonprofits to participate in such an organization is to differentiate their work from other organizations for their funders.
The Water and Sanitation Accountability Forum is our adaptation of this concept, and we are in the process of creating this independent evaluation system, which will meet for the first time in Honduras in November.
Perhaps other organizations in other sectors can apply this same sort of concept to their work, so that donors have more than a great book or a great speech on which to base their decision to give.
Charity Watch raised serious flags about CAI and Mortensen’s use of tax exempt funds more than a year ago. Their concerns were not abated by the documents released.
http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/CentralAsiaInstitute.html
Krakauer alleges that the reason no one is sure how many schools were built is CAI hasn’t documented them adequately, including whether teachers are receiving training, classes are being taught, or students receiving financial support. Nor is counting buildings a particularly good way of measuring effectiveness, but even on that scale, CAI’s record seems to contradict Mortenson’s inflated claims.
Regardless, a $50 million charity should not be spending 59% of donations, including those solicited from librarians and schoolchildren, promoting the author’s for-profit book activities and for profit lectures.
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