Alena Selezneva
Years ago, I sat in Faculty Senate and raised my hand to vote no confidence in a president.
That president had been hired at our university with a previous no-confidence vote at another institution. Nearly the entire faculty had favored the interim person, a beloved internal candidate. Reports of screaming from the closed-door board meeting were widely circulated.
So, this new president came in with stacked odds. Then did some really good things. And then did some not-so-good things (nothing hinky—just stuff we didn’t like). And then made the wrongest possible move: got defensive and angry. Early on, in Senate, I argued not to be rash and to allow more time. But time passed and eventually we voted no confidence nearly unanimously.
Possibly there was no way to repair the vexed relationship, as both sides dug in and carried on with resentment and bitterness. The years that followed included the ugliest, most uncivil meetings I’ve ever attended. Now, we are—like everyone—in a position where we must make big changes, and I’m not sure we’ll be able to work together to get there because the culture is so broken and trust is nowhere to be found.
At the time, as a regular faculty member, I didn’t know much about the situation beyond our campus, and because, like most of my Senate colleagues, I’ve only ever been tenured faculty at one place, I voted for what I thought was right at the time.
Now I believe I was wrong. I believe we were wrong.
If someone is corrupt, they should be removed. No question. But if they’re making hard decisions I don’t agree with but for reasons that have an institution’s best interests in mind, reasons they’ve thoroughly and transparently explained, well, that’s why they have their job and I’m lucky to have mine. We must believe we’re playing on the same team and recognize that we’re not all captains. Shared governance notwithstanding, I am still an employee, and the ultimate boss is the president, who serves at the pleasure (or not) of the board.
When I began talking to presidents three years ago, I realized how much I’d missed. And in fact, if I had just stayed in my faculty lane, I would have never been able see the bigger picture, especially in terms of the complicated finances of running these operations. I’ve learned, among other things, about structural budget deficits, restrictions on funds, deferred maintenance, the demographic cliff and that you can’t just drop football and give all that cash to academics.
These are things some faculty think they know about but may never take the time to really understand because they are more complex than Einstein’s theory of general relativity. That’s why I am going to recommend everyone on campus who cares about shared governance and is willing to take responsibility for that important work read a new book by Mike Nietzel and Chuck Ambrose called No Confidence: When College Faculty Turn Against Their Presidents.
If you’re a normal person (that is, someone as nosy as me) you will first turn to appendix to see if your president is among those whose no-confidence votes are discussed. But you would do well to, you know, be a good student and read the whole thing.
If you’re a normal faculty member (that is, someone as exhausted as me) and don’t have time/energy to read, I’ll give you a gloss.
First, faculty should think about what’s at stake, something I missed early on but that hit hard when I talked to a former president. Because I know her to be outspoken and never pull punches, I asked if she’d ever received such a vote. She said to her surprise, she hadn’t. But then she told me the story. When things got tense at her campus and she had to make necessary changes, she faced her faculty and said, “You can get rid of me, but you’ll just end up with someone taller, thinner and male. They’re going to see exactly these same issues.”
The authors say that while no-confidence votes can force the removal of a leader, that can come with a big, fat price tag: Depending on the institution and how well a president negotiated when they got the job, there can be a lucrative severance package and an expensive search for a successor. In the end, you can get a tall guy coming in with the expectation that he’s going to have unpleasant colleagues and he should be ready to go to war. If he’s smart, he will have negotiated himself a sweet exit package from the get-go.
The authors also argue there can be reputational damage to the institution. Fundraising and recruitment can take a hit. If the faculty don’t trust the college, why should anyone else? If tuition-dependent budgets were a problem before, this sure doesn’t help with enrollment.
Presidents who survive may see their stature reduced in the eyes of the faculty but now have a boss (their board) with even less sympathy for faculty and increased skepticism about shared governance. The campus culture reeks with resentment and forward motion stalls. This is a real problem when so many institutions can hardly keep the lights on. And, as I’ve learned from hearing the things presidents can never say in public, all too often the boards are where the problems come from. They are mostly beyond anyone’s control, and faculty voting no confidence in a board is like a kid screaming “I hate you” at their parents.
While many of us faculty still believe we’re doing the Lord’s work, the public isn’t buying it. The authors write, “No-confidence votes in campus leaders have undoubtedly played some role in the erosion of the public’s trust in higher education.” We have opened the doors to the haters among our elected officials, including those in our own alumni rosters.
Sure, some of these votes are warranted, like when a president has an affair with someone seeking university resources, say, or enters into relationships with creepy donors for personal gain. But those have mostly gone the way of smoking in the office. Though it’s kind of nice to have those quaint scandals remind us that our industry is no different from the rest of the world.
But when presidents must make hard decisions to keep their institutions out of the financial soup and faculty don’t want to be part of the solution, well, read the news. It’s not a mystery. Can you say “financial exigency” when all bets are off? Do we need to keep providing lists of all the recent closures and mergers? They are readily available.
While it’s helpful to read the case studies, the real meat of the book comes in the last chapter, with actionable recommendations. Here is a SparkNotes gloss. Maybe ask your president to buy copies for every member of Faculty Senate.
- Have faculty representatives serve as full voting members of university governance boards.
- Provide institutional orientations for new governing board members and newly hired faculty that are conducted jointly. (And create even more contact between administrators, boards and faculty.)
- Conduct annual and comprehensive presidential performance evaluations that include formal feedback from other administrators, faculty, students, alumni, staff and community leaders with feedback that is summarized publicly. (More than just anonymous Survey Monkeys.)
- Provide internal communications that help faculty, staff and students understand key aspects of institutional performance (that aren’t just about football).
- Encourage active participation by faculty and staff in annual budgeting process (in ways that engender shared responsibility).
- Establish a clear framework for the role of shared governance with respect to academic policies and other institutional matters.
- Presidents should report on major campus developments and issues at every meeting of Senate or similar governance body. (Show up, speak up and rumble it out.)
- Maintain a commitment to adherence to effective principles of shared governance (after spelling out exactly what it means).
Some presidents have begun wearing their no-confidence vote as a badge of honor, a raised middle finger to the faculty who, like Miniver Cheevy, are growing lean while assailing the seasons. If leaders have the backing of their boards, they can afford to care less about the cries of the children of scorn.
Or if they literally don’t need the job. Arthur Levine came out of retirement to be interim president at Brandeis. He then took on the job for realz and is making big changes. When asked about using what may be a risky strategy with transparency in pricing, he was quoted in a New York Times article saying, “I sort of don’t care because it’s the right thing to do.”
Most presidents admire and respect their faculty and have a hard time recovering from these public spankings. It’s not just that their feelings get hurt (news flash: They do have human feelings). They just may decide it’s not worth the trouble and often are, unlike many faculty members, in positions to walk away and do something else.
We are driving good people out of academe at a time when we can least afford to lose them. We have real enemies with their boots on our necks (read the news). A civil war isn’t going to help our institutions figure out how to survive this financial crisis. Sure, we may be able to oust a president, but we risk losing our own jobs and our students’ futures in the process.
