Sad, But Not Cheated
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/nyregion/january-6-capitol-riot-prosecutors.html
The concept “all things must pass” did not originate with George Harrison, but rather has deep historical roots in Buddhism, Greek stoicism, and the New Testament (Matthew 24:6-8). Man’s works and deeds are characterized by impermanence.
This blog has written about how what I and the BW built as leaders of parts of MD Anderson have been completely dismantled. This makes us sad, but does not make us resentful or feel cheated for we had the chance to do the building and in one’s life, you can ask for little more than to be allowed to be creative.
This was first brought home to me by the late, great Rabbi Samuel E. Karff, our rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel when we arrived in Houston. Toward the end of his life he said, “I feel sad, but I do not feel cheated.” He had had the chance to build something great at Beth Israel and in Reform Judaism and for more than that one cannot hope. If you can build something in your professional life, that in itself is a great accomplishment. You had your chance and you took it.
As is said in Hamilton, “I am not throwing away my shot.”
I read the attached article from The New York Times and thought about how relevant Rabbi Karff’s sentiment is today as the federal government is itself dismantled as is the culture of scientific excellence at MD Anderson. In both cases it is the befuddled leadership of these institutions causing the problem.
Mr. Trump’s behavior is characterized by this quote from Law and Order when an assistant DA was questioning a defendant who had written a memo justifying torture of prisoners after 9/11. The DA says to the witness,
“What is it about this country you don’t understand?”
Mr. Trump may understand the sentiment of MAGA America, but not that of the Founding Fathers as is described in the Constitution.
The article relates the current purge of the Department of Justice of any trace of those who prosecuted the January 6 Capitol assailants. Those being fired or who have quit can know that they did their jobs and did them well even as all of that work is being undone by the Trump Administration by going so far as to pardon men and women found guilty of crimes they committed that day in 2021.
The Trump Administration is attempting to rewrite history and convince the public that January 6 was just a normal form of civil disobedience caused by the obvious 2020 election fraud. I know smart people who actually believe this nonsense. Not only that, these people try to convince me that over half of the country believes that the 2020 election was fraudulent despite countless judicial cases stating the opposite and Attorneys General of states concluding that their elections in 2020 were kosher in every way. A prime example was in Georgia where Mr. Trump tried to talk the Secretary of State into finding him more votes. The Secretary of State would have none of it.
Let’s be clear. Joe Biden was elected President of the United States in 2020 by a fair election. The people who entered the Capitol, fought with police, and hunted down members of Congress are felons. Those in the Department of Justice who successfully prosecuted these men and women did their jobs and did them well, even as the Trump Administration pardons these felons.
These federal prosecutors were doing their jobs and doing them in a non-partisan way. To those “many” people who believe that Joe Biden did not win the election in 2020 and that the riot on Capitol Hill was citizens just expressing their right to protest, I suggest they go back and look at the judicial record and at the film from the day when Congress men and Congress women had to run for their lives and some of these convicted and now pardoned people threatened to harm (and did harm) the Capitol police and ransacked congressional offices.
The Trump Administration cannot rewrite history because those who worked in the DOJ before being fired by the Trumpers have the records of the truth as do countless courts. They can feel sad at having been dismissed, but they cannot feel cheated. They did their job and put away the felons even as Trump lets them out and appoints them to federal committees.
At MD Anderson, I am sure there are many people like the BW and me who see the untoward development that have happened to the place—the professionalism nonsense, the end of the Faculty Senate, and a dearth of leadership with vision. That’s okay. We were allowed to make our mark. All of us built something whose reputation persists. MD Anderson is still viewed as the number one place for cancer care. But is the laboratory science what it was at the turn of the century? Are faculty leaders directing clinical research that will change the treatment of cancer or is the direction of clinical trials at Anderson all coming from Big Pharma? And most importantly, is MD Anderson still the best place to grow an academic career in cancer research or clinical investigation?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that I will always be grateful that I had the chance to make my small contribution to both laboratory and clinical research—first as laboratory investigator and then as a research administrator. I may feel sad about what I see happening at Anderson, in the UT System, and in American academic medicine. I feel sad, but I don’t feel cheated. I do not know what the young faculty of today will feel when it is their turn to retire, look back, and assess what they built.
