The information on these pages about Chai Ling and Jenzabar, the software company she runs with her husband, Robert Maginn, contains excerpts from and links to articles about Jenzabar in The Boston Globe, Forbes, Business Week, and other publications, and is intended to provide the reader with additional information about Chai Ling, one of the most well-known and controversial figures from the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. These web pages are the sole responsibility of the Long Bow Group, and are in no way affiliated with or sponsored by Jenzabar, Inc.
About Chai Ling and Jenzabar | News Accounts: Chai Ling and Jenzabar, Inc.
Update 2009:
Twenty years after the events of 1989, Chai Ling and her company, Jenzabar, are attempting to censor this website. The Boston PBS station, WGBH, released a statement about the lawsuit, saying that it "poses first amendment issues and is a potential threat to all newsgathering, reportorial and academic sites."
Click the following links to read a summary of their lawsuit against the Long Bow Group, and to read an online appeal for support.
For independent coverage of the lawsuit, see the Guardian, Nov. 17, 2009: From Democracy Activist to Censor, the Boston Globe, June 7, 2009: Beijing Lesson Unlearned, The World (from the BBC, PRI, and WGBH), June 4, 2009: A Legal Dispute Over Remembering Tiananmen, the Times of London, May 4, 2009: Tiananmen activist Chai Ling sues makers of film about 1989 protest, and the New Yorker, May 7, 2009: The American Dream: The Lawsuit.
Much of the press attention given to Jenzabar focuses on Chai Ling’s role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and how that experience has informed her new role in leading an internet company. The following are excerpts from a few articles that reported certain concerns third parties expressed with respect to Chai Ling and Jenzabar.
For example, a 1999 Boston Globe article details a dispute between Jenzabar and the Harvard Business School over a claim on Jenzabar's website that "its 'core application' was 'developed by the technology leaders who also developed the award-winning Harvard Business School intranet system.'"That's quite a stretch, business school officials say.
'It's a collection of half-truths that ultimately portray something false and mislead the public,' a business school source said.
… A Jenzabar spokesman said the company acted promptly to correct any misimpressions, but business school officials said it was not until a few weeks ago - nearly two months after Harvard lawyers objected - that the questioned claims were removed from the company's Web site.
[Source: "Harvard Wars with Firm over Web Site," The Boston Globe, 25 July 1999, James Bandler.]Another Boston area school had a similar complaint about Jenzabar:…Bernard Gleason, associate vice-president for information technology at Boston College, says he is irked that both Jenzabar and MascotNetwork have claimed ties to his institution, and that Jenzabar appears to be taking credit for technological innovations at the college, in which it played no role.
'If they're this out of control in their marketing,' he says, he can't help wondering how well they police matters such as their privacy policy.
[Source: Colleges Get Free Web Pages, but With a Catch: Advertising, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 3, 1999, Goldie Blumenstyk.]Jenzabar was the focus of another article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:Jenzabar, a company that sells software for higher education, gave $300 cash cards to college presidents attending a dinner the company sponsored last month in San Diego. Although the company described the gifts as nothing unusual, some observers say it is uncommon and unethical for college presidents to accept such gifts.
Jenzabar invited 45 presidents to the January 5 dinner. All of them lead colleges that are Jenzabar clients…. Michael Zastrocky, vice president for academic strategies at Gartner Inc., a technology-consulting firm, said it was highly unusual for college presidents to accept gifts worth hundreds of dollars from technology companies.
College presidents, he said, 'would put themselves in jeopardy' by accepting such gifts. 'You're on display at all times' as a college president, he said. 'You'd be in real trouble.'
[Source: College Presidents Received $300 Gifts for Attending a Software Vendor's Dinner, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 13, 2004, Andrea Foster.]Is there a trend here? In 1989 Ling Chai, an unknown 23-year-old graduate student in Beijing, became an international heroine overnight as the most visible leader of the Chinese student rebellion in Tiananmen Square. She was the face of the dissidents, the 'chief commander,' a small, frail young woman in a T-shirt and jeans who rallied the students and taunted the soldiers as the world held its breath and watched the historic standoff unfold day after day on television.
Over the years the image of Chai as heroine has become decidedly mixed as onetime allies have blamed her and other student leaders for the deadly end to the protests, painting them as power-hungry and willing to sacrifice others for their cause. The harshly critical documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace captured that emerging view best in an interview that Chai gave in a Beijing hotel room: 'My students keep asking me, 'What should we do next? What can we accomplish?' I feel so sad, because how can I tell them that we actually are hoping for bloodshed, the moment when the government is ready to butcher the people brazenly. Only when the square is awash in blood will the people of China open their eyes.'Bailey also describes some of the problems Jenzabar was facing at the time:
In its press releases Jenzabar, a private company, boasts of record financial results. '2002 was a break-out year for Jenzabar and 2003 is shaping up to be the most successful in the history of our company,' Maginn said in a release just this week.
Here is what Jenzabar does not want you to know. While the company was polishing its image in public, its chief financial backer was trying to oust Chai and Maginn and saying that Jenzabar had defaulted on its loan agreements. That backer, Pegasus Partners, a Greenwich, Conn., private equity firm, was also pushing to sell Jenzabar, according to court documents.
A lawsuit filed in March is the latest in a series of suits against the company… Jenzabar has denied the claims and resolved some of the disputes.This Globe column was written in 2003, and goes on to state that “Five former executives have sued Jenzabar…” However, in two letters sent to the Long Bow Group in February and March 2007, the Assistant General Counsel of Jenzabar informed us that they "are aware of four suits brought by former executives, not five,” and, "Only one suit, brought by Joseph DiLorenzo, the former CFO of Jenzabar, accused Ms. Chai and Mr. Maginn of illegal actions. Mr. DiLorenzo later voluntarily dropped his claims against Ms. Chai and Mr. Maginn without receiving any settlement payments to do so, admitted that he had no basis for them, and issued [an] apology." Furthermore, Jenzabar states the Globe article "falsely and misleadingly suggests that [three other proceedings involving former executives] had merit."
In his letter to the Long Bow Group, Jenzabar’s Assistant General Counsel also included a copy of Mr. DiLorenzo’s letter of apology, which was dated September 22, 2006. In the interests of full disclosure, we are including copies of these letters and our responses in their entirety. We are unaware of any retractions or corrections printed by The Boston Globe with regard to their reporting about Jenzabar’s legal problems.
The Globe column concludes:After Tiananmen, Chai detractors said her hero's image did not square with her hardball tactics. Now her critics are saying much the same again, this time about her corporate life. Meanwhile, Chai continues to sell her story of the Tiananmen heroine-turned-American-entrepreneur. 'Today, I am living the American dream,' Chai told Parade magazine in June.With Ling Chai, distinguishing the dream from the reality has always been the hardest part of all."
[Source: "American Dream," The Boston Globe, Aug. 8, 2003, Steve Bailey.]Chai Ling has spent years trying to cash in on her heroism at Tiananmen Square. But so far her web company has brought in little money and lots of lousy karma.
Chai Ling would like total control over her biography. In her version, she risks her life leading student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, escapes China stowed in a crate and is twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Then she moves to America and marries a millionaire venture capitalist who bankrolls her promising internet startup. Alas, the market crashes before the company can go public, and it is unfairly besieged by lawsuits from former executives….
"You're not going to write about that, are you?" Chai says, when asked about the suits. "Do you really have to mention those things?" Chai's seeming naiveté is a little out of character. She has frequently scored points in the press by recalling her glory days as onetime "commander-in-chief" of rebel students in Beijing.With respect to Jenzabar’s launch in 1998 by Chai Ling, Forbes reported:
Jenzabar's mission was to develop internet-based portals that college students could use to register for courses and check homework assignments. By early 2000 a few colleges were testing its software, but nobody was paying for it.
So Maginn, 46, and Chai, 36, who were engaged in 1997 and married in 2001, cooked up a new plan in which Jenzabar would gain customers by acquiring them. In April 2000 Maginn quit his job at Bain and joined Jenzabar, raising $40 million from investors, including his own New Media Investors. Jenzabar bought four barely profitable companies that made administrative software for colleges. Yoking them to Jenzabar's portal, Chai reckoned she could offer a single vehicle to handle all aspects of campus life.
As the market for internet companies crashed, managers of the four acquired outfits bickered over which products would survive. "We had a lot of upheaval," says Chai.
... Where does this leave Jenzabar? Depends on whom you ask. "It's been a little chaotic," says Chai. "But 2002 was our turnaround year. In 2003 we have our house in order and will start to grow and take market share." Perhaps. But nabbing new clients isn't easy in the $2.7 billion market for higher-ed software, which is growing at only 2.7% annually, reports IDC.
Recently Maginn and Chai hired an investment bank, a move that prompted rumors of a sale. "If a giant company were to come along and make a great offer," he says, "we would consider it." In 2000, Chai says, investment bankers told her that Jenzabar could be worth $1 billion in a public offering. In those days a good story could go a long way. Today it might get you just enough money to pay off your debts.
[Source: "Great Story, Bad Business," Forbes.com, Feb. 17, 2003, by Daniel Lyons.]
This web page is the sole responsibility of the Long Bow Group, and is in no way affiliated with or sponsored by Jenzabar, Inc.