Lott’s abrupt departure from the AEI

Posted by Tim Lambert on April 12, 2006
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Ever since Lott started at the American Enterprise Institute there have been people there who have wanted to get rid of him.

I was forwarded a copy of Lott’s final email to AEI staff. It suggests that he was abruptly forced to leave:

From: John Lott
Sent: Sun 4/2/2006 4:00 AM
To: Everyone
Subject: Goodbye

Dear Everyone:

Friday was my last day at AEI. It has been great to get to know many of you over the past four-and-a-half years. If I can ever be of help or you just want to say hello, I can be reached at: johnrlott@aol.com. I wish you all every success. Thanks.

Best,

John

No farewell, and not even an email announcing his departure beforehand. Did he do something on Friday that proved the last straw? And then the quixotic lawsuit against Levitt a week and half later over book published a year ago. This suggests that the AEI would not allow him to sue Levitt while he was still working for them.

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Comments

  1. #1 J-Dog
    April 12, 2006

    Yeah… Check the “time sent”… The time to take out the garbage is when it won’t interfere with smooth operations…

  2. #2 Rob
    April 12, 2006

    So where does Lott go now? Is he basically left with The Heritage Foundation?

  3. #3 caerbannog
    April 12, 2006


    So where does Lott go now? Is he basically left with The Heritage Foundation?

    Maybe the Discovery Institute???

  4. #4 Brian S.
    April 12, 2006

    I’d say Tim’s interpretation of Lott’s departure is generous. The other possibility is that someone at AEI discovered a Lott misdeed that even AEI couldn’t live with, and this is a negotiated outcome.

  5. #5 z
    April 12, 2006

    “The other possibility is that someone at AEI discovered a Lott misdeed that even AEI couldn’t live with, and this is a negotiated outcome.”

    Yeah, unfortunately given the track record, there may well be a back-breaking straw for the AEI camel, the details of which we may never know.

  6. #6 Chris Jarrett
    April 12, 2006

    Although Lott’s name is no longer on the list of “scholars” at AEI, he still appears on an AEI web page

    http://www.aei.org/scholars/scholarID.38,filter.all/scholar.asp

    How long will it take that page to disappear now that it has been mentioned on this blog? It’s there as of 7pm EDT on April 12.

    Will AEI purge itself of all of Lott’s articles? That might provide a clue about how he left. Or perhaps Lott will sue AEI some time in the near future.

    His lawsuit is just bizarre but it’s providing me with quite a few chances to give people something to laugh about.

  7. #7 KFL
    April 13, 2006

    Quotation:
    ” On February 26, 2003 President Bush was the key-note speaker at the American Enterprise Institute. He enthused that, at AEI,

    “Some of the finest minds of our nation are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed twenty such minds. I want to thank them for their service”

    (Quoted by J. Pilger (2004) the Case for Civil Disobedience in Tell Me Lies Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq, ed. D. Miller, Pluto Press, p25) “‘

    My remark:
    I suppose that President Bush also includes Mary Rosh in this laudatory speech.

    The quotation can be found in http://www.exxonsecrets.org/ . Look under American Interprise Institute.

  8. #8 Barry
    April 13, 2006

    z: “Yeah, unfortunately given the track record, there may well be a back-breaking straw for the AEI camel, the details of which we may never know.”

    What would it take for AEI to fire a right-winger?

  9. #9 Dominion
    April 13, 2006

    Well it looks as if they won’t be taking down Lotts page at AEI. But I did find this interesting…

    John R. Lott Jr.
    Former Resident Scholar

  10. #10 Chris Jarrett
    April 13, 2006

    Yea, I noticed the “former” addition to his page today. I guess it isn’t a total purge. Perhaps AEI is afraid of Lott bringing a lawsuit against them…

  11. #11 Chris Jarrett
    April 14, 2006

    I have a hypothesis about why Lott left AEI. I posit that he expected AEI to join him or back him up, and pay for, the lawsuit against Levitt and when AEI said no, Lott left in a huff.

  12. #12 Barry
    April 18, 2006

    It’s been pointed out that Lott will now be subject to discovery procedings. AEI might have told him to leave, so as to get whatever distance they could get, to limit the impact on them.