Kenneth Feinberg gives papers to UMass as window on social change
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AMHERST - A University of Massachusetts Amherst alum best known for overseeing a compensation program for families of Sept. 11 victims and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill is donating all of his historic papers to his alma mater.
Kenneth R. Feinberg hopes the materials - a "treasure trove" of some 2,000 boxes spanning his 40-year career - will give students, researchers and the general public insight into one of this country's most unusual times of social change.
"I leave my papers in the trust of UMass knowing that UMass, better than any other place I can think of, not only deserves the papers for all it has given me and my family, but that it will take care of the papers and hold them as valuable resources for present and future generations," Feinberg said at a Monday news conference announcing the donation.
A native of Brockton, Feinberg has built an international reputation as a lawyer who specializes in complex mediation, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution.
Feinberg earned his undergraduate degree in history from UMass in 1967 and later graduated from New York University School of Law. After clerking at the New York State Court of Appeals, he worked as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and then as an administrative assistant and later chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.
His collection covers four decades of professional and public service, including a 32-month pro bono tenure as special master for the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund. That fund distributed $7 billion to more than 5,000 victims and families of victims.
Feinberg is currently serving as the independent administrator of a $20 billion fund set up by BP Oil to compensate victims of the 2010 Gulf disaster. That fund has handed out $6 billion to 250,000 people.
The Washington lawyer also administered the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, set up for the benefit of victims' families in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, and most recently was President Barack Obama's special master for executive compensation, or the so-called "pay czar."
University officials said they were honored to receive Feinberg's collection. Provost James Staros called the gift an invaluable opportunity to study Feinberg's unprecedented role in the life of the nation.
"Ken's far-reaching, substantive work on the critical issues of our time includes grappling with the thorny concept of how to put a value on human life," Staros said.
He later added, "His legal work and writings have raised fundamental philosophical and ethical questions that continue to reverberate."
Jay Schafer, director of the UMass Libraries, said that scholars, academics, students and the public at large will benefit immensely by having access to this resource as part of the Special Collections and University Archives on the library's 24th floor.
"Kenneth R. Feinberg is one of these contemporary leaders whose career and sphere of influence will intrigue future scholars as they strive to bring historical perspective to the late 20th and early 21st centuries," he said.
Feinberg's collection comprises an estimated 2,000 boxes of materials documenting his career. He said the collection contains internal memos, emails and personal correspondence with historical figures including presidents, attorneys general, and members of Congress.
It also includes letters and other correspondence with victims. Much of that material will likely be sealed for now, he said.
"All of those documents, I now commit to deliver to the university so that hopefully future generations, especially students, but also academics, faculty, administrators, the public and researchers will be able to go and examine these papers," he said.
In his remarks, Feinberg said the creation of compensation funds in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and natural disasters was an aberration, and would not become a common alternative to action through the American legal system.
"They are unique, one-off responses by policy makers to very unique situations in American history, and I try and explain to people all the time that these programs are a precedent for nothing," he said.
He hopes the papers will explain why policy makers chose compensation programs for some tragedies and not others.
The gift comes with a financial donation that will enable the library to hire a professional archivist, who will spend at least the next two years sifting through the materials. Schafer said it could be that long before the papers are ready to be viewed, and even then some documents will remain sealed.
"We are trying to get his papers while they are still intact," Schafer said. "Even if some of them aren't opened for 50 years, they will still be here ... that's the value of getting a growing, living collection now."
Already in place are some 200 boxes chronicling one of Feinberg's first high-profile cases, involving a class action of 250,000 Vietnam veterans and their families against the manufacturers of Agent Orange.
The rest will arrive later and will include materials relating to each of the major cases in which he has been involved. In addition to the more recent cases, Feinberg has also served as mediator for a string of other notable cases, including some of the nation's biggest asbestos-damage suits and a $2.5 billion settlement for women suing over a defective contraceptive device.
Others at Monday's announcement called the donation a significant contribution to the university's collection. They said the papers will provide insight into a unique time in America's history.
"The history of 9/11 and America's response to 9/11, a good part of that history, is going to be in those papers," said Sheldon Goldman, a professor of political science and one of Feinberg's former teachers.
Those resources, in addition to the other papers, will be of interest to historians, politicians, mediators, sociologists and psychologists, to name a few, Goldman said.
He said his former student's integrity and principled nature and his ability to listen to people are what make him successful.
"He's always conscious of being fair and that's the bottom line," he said.
Feinberg's collection will be the second largest donated to the library. A year ago, the university received its largest collection of papers from the late Mark H. McCormack, the founder of IMG, the largest sports management company in the world.
Feinberg said donating his material to his alma mater was just a small way of giving back. And though he joked that Schafer and Rob Cox, head of Special Collections and University Archives, should be commended for their ongoing "years of trying to explain why the papers should only be here," Feinberg said it didn't take much in the way of convincing.
"I get much more out of this university than I gave to this university," he said. "The least I could do in my career in public service is to give back to this school what it gave me."
