INTERNATIONAL
‘Political donors lacking academic experience’
Uni Pres ousted in power play S
hocking dramatics in the leadership of the University of Virginia (UVA), one of America’s oldest and most prestigious public universities, have made national headlines. The popular and recently appointed President, Teresa Sullivan, was ousted by an opaque power play from the Board of Visitors and its Rector, real estate developer Helen Dragas.
The UVA Board of Visitors includes a coal company magnate, a Wall Street professional, a lawyer for General Electric, a nursing home executive, a beer distribution entrepreneur and other business elites. Only four have professional experience in higher education. The decision has been universally condemned, and yet the Board continues to meet in secret and refuses to give even the simplest justifications for their actions. Sullivan stepped down after just two years in office, citing ‘philosophical differences’ with the institution’s governing Board of Visitors. Yet a plot to force her out had been building in secret for months, according to emails released by UVA at the request of the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper. ‘Members of the board,’ report Zach Carter and Jason Linkins in the Huffington Post, ‘steeped in a culture of corporate jargon and buzzy management theories, wanted the school to institute austerity measures and reengineer its academic offerings around inexpensive, online education... Led by Rector Helen Dragas, ...the board shared a guiding vision that the university could, and indeed should, be run like a Fortune 500 company.’ For some university staff, the controversy is emblematic of how the cult of corporate expertise and private-sector savvy has corralled the upper reaches of university life, at the expense of academic freedom and ‘unprofitable’ areas of study. ‘There is this sort of shift in the zeitgeist,’ says Tal Brewer, chair of UVA’s Philosophy Department. Brewer sees a new, heightened cultural ‘adoration of the business mind as capable of bringing clarity, organisation and efficiency to any kind of institution...I just think that’s a deep mistake.’ The Huffington Post reports that during her first two years at UVA, ‘Sullivan undertook 36
could be adapted to new Internet-based techniques. They did not appoint a commission to make recommendations or conduct a study of their own.’
Faculty responds
initiatives to bolster the faculty’s ability to teach more intimately, cede greater budget discretion to the academic departments, and attempted to close what many acknowledge to be a ‘reputation gap’ with graduate programs. Pushing for more budget control and better quality programs won Sullivan strong allies within the student body and faculty.’
Strangling innovation According to the emails obtained by the Cavalier Daily, the rationale for the leadership change is as strange as the secrecy. Dragas and Kington appear to have built their case against Sullivan from just a few media articles that offer vague praise for the use of online education. A Chronicle of Higher Education article, which Dragas sent co-conspirator Vice Rector, Mark Kington, characterised the traditional pursuit of academic excellence as something that ‘strangled’ innovation, and argued that ‘the pace of change is stuck somewhere between sluggish and glacial.’ Carter and Linkins believe ‘none of the emails between Dragas and Kington suggest that either read serious studies on technological opportunities in the classroom, or considered how UVA’s current programs
UVA staff and students rebelled against the coup fiercely and swiftly. Provost John Simon threatened to resign, the Faculty Senate passed a vote of no confidence in the board, and the school’s student-run honour committee accused the board of compromising the school’s ‘community of trust.’ The Cavalier Daily ran an editorial calling for the resignation of every member of the Board of Visitors. Kington stepped down on June 19. Despite her affection for cost-cutting, Dragas hired Hill+Knowlton Strategies, a crisis management public relations firm. According to The Hook, a Charlottesville weekly magazine, the bill for those services ‘will run from $50,000 to $100,000, and will be paid by the University of Virginia Foundation,’ a non-profit corporation that administers the school’s economic assets. But according to the Huffington Post, ‘the pricey PR has failed to quell the uproar. Much of the furor has been fuelled by the board’s continued refusal to publicly explain why its members felt Sullivan had fallen short.’
Update UVA Board of Visitors will consider reinstating President Teresa Sullivan at a meeting in late June, even as the board’s leader defends her actions in asking Sullivan to step down. A Source: Huffington Post Photo: Staff and students rally for Teresa Sullivan on Jefferson’s Lawn, UVA, 18 June 2012 © Jessie Chapman, Flickr NTEU ADVOCATE vol. 19, no. 2