School wasn't prepped for this scandal

I love these prep-school kerfuffles. The "overcompensated, underwhelming bishop" who hauled down $500,000 a year to run St. Paul's School (John Kerry's alma mater). The Phillips Andover Academy (the George Bushes' alma mater) lawyer who threatened to sue a tiny, all-black charter school in New Orleans, just before Hurricane Katrina struck. Those naughty girls at Governor Patrick's alma mater, Milton Academy, dealing out favors to the hockey team.

Now this. An alumnus of New Hampshire's elite Phillips Exeter Academy waged a protracted propaganda war to unseat the vice president of Exeter's board of trustees - and won. On Wednesday afternoon, board president Charles Harris circulated a letter saying that Dr. Paul Goldenheim, who had been on probation for his past 15 months on the board, was finally stepping down.

Here is what happened. Goldenheim was a vice president and chief medical officer at Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue Pharma when he and the company pleaded guilty to charges of "misbranding" their notorious painkiller OxyContin. The government convicted Purdue of downplaying the addictive qualities of Oxy. Goldenheim got busted under the legal doctrine of "strict liability," meaning the government didn't have to prove that he knew about the illegal behavior; the law says he should have known about it.

The Purdue case excited extreme emotions. Before Judge James Jones fined and sentenced Goldenheim and two other Pharma executives, he heard wrenching testimony from parents of dead OxyContin addicts. Outside the Virginia courtroom, demonstrators called Goldenheim and his codefendants "monsters, corporate drug lords, sheer evil and as bad as Adolf Hitler," according to the Roanoke Times. In court, the Times reported, Judge Jones said "it bothers me" that he felt unable to send the three executives to jail.

Before the sentencing, Goldenheim offered to resign from the Exeter board. (Yale went through similar travails when its trustees Vernon Loucks and Diana Brooks ended up in the legal high grass. Both resigned.) Exeter, stupidly, not only kept Goldenheim on but promoted him to head up its search committee for a new headmaster. "[Board president] Harris was his friend from Academy days and made the case that Goldenheim was a broken man," one participant told me.

In his letter, Harris said that Goldenheim had "acted in accordance with the highest ethics of his profession" and pleaded guilty "to avoid additional years of litigation and disruption." Harris acknowledged that an anti-Goldenheim campaign had been launched by an unidentified alumnus, "who was very concerned that retaining Paul in leadership positions puts the Academy at risk." Said person - I don't know anything about this man, except that he lives in London - "began to contact other members of the community, some of whom came to share his views," Harris wrote.

In retrospect, it looks like Goldenheim used good judgment in offering to resign, and the board dropped the ball in deciding to keep him on. Perhaps now is the time to disclose that I attended Exeter and don't know anyone mentioned in this piece. Harris and Goldenheim declined to comment.

The other Gates Foundation
In 2005, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., known to all as "Skip," set up the nonprofit Inkwell Foundation, named after a famous beach/gathering place for African-Americans on Martha's Vineyard. Skip talked about the foundation in a recent interview with Martha's Vineyard magazine and touted it when he launched his for-profit business, AfricanDNA.com, last year. "The precedent-setting site is the only company in the field of genetic genealogy that will provide African Americans with family tree research in addition to DNA testing," its initial press release declared, adding that "a percentage of all profits will be donated to the Inkwell Foundation, dedicated to reforming the teaching of science and history in inner city schools using genetic and genealogical ancestry tracing."

Public records indicate that the charity, domiciled in Gates's Cambridge home, has been dormant since its inception. Jill Butterworth, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office, says Inkwell has never filed the required, annual form PC, for public charities. "They are currently not in compliance," Butterworth said. "It's possible they are inactive or have dissolved. We are checking into it." Gates declined to comment.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.