Are College Presidents Now Political Appointees?
Two university leaders exited suddenly last week, in a sign of the volatile times.
Last week, two college presidents at big research universities abruptly left their jobs. In both cases, politicians from one party accused the other of ousting the president over political differences.
In
Virginia, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, suggested that the state’s Republican-appointed Board of Visitors had forced out Virginia Tech’s longtime president, Timothy D. Sands. And in Wisconsin, Republican state lawmakers accused the state’s Board of Regents — all of whom were appointed or reappointed by a Democratic governor — of doing something similar to Jay O. Rothman, the president of the University of Wisconsin system.
While all the details aren’t yet known, the leadership upheaval seems to some observers like a vivid signal of public higher ed’s hyperpartisan era. College presidents are effectively becoming political appointees.
“People just don’t value higher education being independent from politics anymore,” said Barrett Taylor, a professor of higher education at the University of North Texas. “Partisans want higher education to do what that party wants it to do.”
To be sure, this isn’t a new playbook. As the country’s politics have become more divisive in the last decade, political actors — mostly on the right — have sought to make their mark on the sector. A
2020 Chronicle analysis showed that 70 percent of board members at public universities were appointed in processes controlled by a single political party. In many cases, that resulted in ideologically aligned presidents.
But two in one week? It’s a demonstration of the volatility of the college presidency and the power boards are willing to assert when they have it.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly applied pressure to remove college leaders they did not believe were enacting their agenda. As Kaine noted in his statement last week, the presidents of the University of Virginia and Virginia Military Institute were ousted while under scrutiny from Republican board appointees, and George Mason University’s president seemed destined for the same fate, though he remains in office. Republican lawmakers in
Texas took credit for the resignation of Texas A&M University’s flagship president, while those in
Arkansas ended a would-be law dean’s tenure before it began.
Nowhere has this move been more apparent than in Florida, where at least five public-college presidents are former Republican politicians. An earlier case in North Carolina involved Thomas Ross, a Democrat, who was asked to step down from the university-system presidency. Ross
told The Chronicle that a member of his Republican-dominated board had told him that if he changed his party affiliation, he might keep his job.
Democratic lawmakers and affiliates haven’t ousted presidents en masse during this period. One reason is that they haven’t had nearly as much power to do so:
The Chronicle’s 2020 analysis showed that Republican-appointed board members outnumbered those appointed by Democrats two to one.
But when Rothman was fired by the Wisconsin system, Republicans immediately pointed fingers,
accusing the Democratic appointees on the board of political maneuvering.
Rothman had been chosen in 2022 by a board whose majority was appointed by Scott Walker, the state’s former Republican governor. Last month, Rothman wrote in letters shared with reporters that his board chair, Amy B. Bogost, asked him to resign. When he asked Bogost for a reason the board had lost confidence in him, he wrote, she did not give an answer. Last week, the board voted unanimously to fire him.
Wisconsin Republicans quickly called on Bogost to testify, and she told state senators that Rothman had been misleading the public about his termination. Though she said she could not be specific because of Rothman’s confidentiality rights, Bogost said the president had threatened to resign many times during his tenure. The board’s reasons for firing him were “substantial,” she
told the senators.
Bogost said in a statement shared with
The Chronicle last week that she had conducted Rothman’s annual review and given him clear and direct feedback.
“President Rothman was not without notice, nor was this process sudden,” she said.
Still, some lawmakers were not satisfied with the lack of concrete information.
“I was dismayed that they were unable to provide any documentation whatsoever — not so much as a meeting note — on the performance reviews that they repeatedly cited as leading to Rothman’s termination,” State Sen. Rob Hutton, a Republican, said in a statement. “Even the smallest of private businesses must keep extensive documentation on similar personnel matters.”
Some of the tension between Rothman and his board had spilled out into public view. In 2023, he struck a deal with state lawmakers that had the campuses eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in exchange for state appropriations. The regents narrowly voted down the deal, only to reverse course and later approve it. At the time, Rothman said he might have to resign over the drama.
While more details may emerge about why the board lost confidence in Rothman, the fallout has become its own political battle that will loom over the search for his replacement.
Continued...
