One year ago, I wrote a piece about wanting to quit academe. By March, in a jocular exchange with Doug Lederman, whom I’ve known since we still “hung up” the phone, I asked if Inside Higher Ed needed someone to make coffee or clean the bathrooms. As it happened, Doug had been looking for a non-journalist to create a something—a newsletter that was not quite a newsletter—for higher ed leaders.
[If it’s not already clear, I am not a journalist. I may have been the only media person in the world who cheered when Janet Malcolm wrote that incendiary first sentence now a truism taught in J-school.]
For the last six months, I've reached out to people, chatted and Zoomed my head off, and assembled a wonderful kitchen cabinet to figure out what leaders might need, like, and weren’t getting. Former presidents who had time to respond to email and talk for hours tutored me. A number of current presidents and chancellors told me about their struggles. In consultants and executive coaches, I found a gold mine. Search company honchos, comms folks, chiefs of staff all gave me tips and contacts.
To create open dialogue, I ask leaders to trust me with their stories and assure them I will keep confidences. It’s a big ask. A president I’ve known forever said, “I’ll chat with you, but if you burn me, I’ll never talk to you again.” Roger that.
Mostly what I heard from current leaders was everyone wants to tell me how to do my job. And, until you’ve been in the role, you have no idea what it takes, so please go directly to hell.
We want to provide a platform for leaders to connect, not a place for finger-pointy venting. Except sometimes. Board members can be stupid-heads and faculty can be ridiculous and donors make wackadoodle requests. Ranting can be useful, especially if it’s funny.
As we wiggle our way into this new format, I want what many of you ask of applicants: please write in a way that allows us to see how you have faced challenges and what you’ve learned from failure. No one likes the narrator who is the hero of their own story.
Those who have read me for the last 25 years in The Chronicle of Higher Education know that I have been waging war against academic prose. In 1993, Patty Limerick diagnosed the problem: professors are the people no one wanted to dance with in high school. Nearly 50 years before that, Orwell showed how bad writing can lead to, well, totalitarianism.
Many presidents seem to have calcified into their role and find it hard to write and speak authentically (we understand why). Plus, most people suck at writing in the first-person personal. I see published articles and memoirs from presidents that read like typical college admissions essays, some even in the “I am a dynamic figure” genre.
I hope leaders who want to be candid and vulnerable about the challenges of their jobs—and feel the urge to help prepare the next generation—will reach out to me. I promise to work hard to get this conversation going, keep it vigorous, and make your reading time enlightening and entertaining. Because I want to protect identities, I’ll go one step further than a regular editor and massage your voices so no one can jump out with a “gotcha.” If you mention Doritos, you can be sure I’ll change that to Cheez-Its.
You may want to forward an issue about dealing with difficult board members to your most difficult board member and chirp, “I’m so fortunate I have you!” (Then encourage them to pony up and join because no one loves a freeloader.) Or perhaps you’ll gift a subscription to an excellent cabinet member who wants to become a president and needs to know what’s in store. Maybe there's a dedicated faculty senate leader who could be groomed to come over to the dark (i.e., administration) side.
We just added two new Insider reports: Institutional Rightsizing and Diversifying & Generating Revenue. In future issues of The Sandbox, we will be posting executive leadership jobs.
Oh, and please send us photos of non-human occupants of the president's house. Include their pronouns. I will try not to get their names wrong (sorry Emrys Casey!).
