Uproar At UVa As President Is Forced Out. Whither UVa.

Teresa Sullivan, who has served as president of the University of Virginia for the past two years, was forced to resign this week.  As Brian Leiter notes, this has relevance for legal academics in part because Sullivan is married to Douglas Laycock.  He also articulates the broader concern for the law school and every other part of the university - that Sullivan was too academically oriented for the Board of Visitors' taste.  Interesting stories from the Richmond Times-Dispatch are here, here, and here.

The story is plainly complex, but the Board is plainly guilty of engaging in an opaque process that failed to garner input from all the important academic stakeholders.  Whenever events like this occur, I wonder whether the Board members have considered both the potential reputational damage and the potential recruiting challenge generated by these decisions.  Whatever their risk assessment, the widespread opposition to the decision - which appears to be unifying academics of very different world views - has made this a deep embarrassment for the Board.  At the same time, it is possible that these eruptions may become more frequent as resources shrink and the cost of education rises.  As boards press for cheaper means to deliver education - whether that be reducing the size of research faculty, increasing teaching loads, or putting pressure on tenure itself - faculty can be expected to push back.   

UVa presents a particularly interesting case.  The university is a cusp super-elite.  All community members - faculty and students alike - have a huge stake in maintaining the (costly) choice of staying on the high side of that divide.  But Virginia taxpayers may not share that same passion.  For the law school, the answer was easy: raise prices and privatize.  Now UVa may be forced to decide whether the entire institution should follow suit.  In-state undergraduate tuition at UVa is undert $12,000.  Plainly, that price point cannot sustain a super-elite university in the absence of massive state subsidy.  

Comments

[Bob Strassfeld]

I've been surprised at the deafening silence on this post, given the large number of U.Va. alum that there must be among Faculty Lounge's readers. Perhaps, like me, most of us have been struggling to understand what the Board's real motivations were. They have not made it easy, hiding behind the usual dodge of unwillingness to discuss personnel decisions. I understand how those can be sensitive, and that there might be reasons for circumspection when the basis of a personnel decision is either misconduct or bad performance. None of that has been alleged by the Rector or the Board of Visitors, however. Instead we are told there were philosophical differences (along with pace of implementation issues--which given President Sullivan's short tenure seems odd) that prompted the firing. Why those cannot be publicly aired defies logic and defies basic academic values of openness (along with concern about faculty governance and other university stakeholders).

I am a law school alum. I am deeply thankful for the terrific legal education that U.Va. gave me. I was fortunate enough to attend at a time when the Commonwealth was still committed to funding public education, so I also was blessed with an education that I could afford. Before attending U.Va. Law, I was something of a refugee within the U.Va. history department. At the time, I was a history graduate student at the University of Rochester, but had been transplanted to Charlottesville, where I would start and abandon a dissertation. The history department was warm and welcoming. My connection with them, along with the experience of various relatives attending U.Va. has solidified my bonds with the University as a whole. I am deeply saddened by recent events, and I see it as yet another instance of the assault on higher education by a msiplaced faith in corporate monitors and corporate models, or pseudo-models, of governance.

For an interesting discussion of the U.Va. coup, take a long at: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2012/06/teresa_sullivan_fired_from_uva_what_happens_when_universities_are_run_by_robber_barons_.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2. (hat tip to Brian Leiter for spotting this). The author is Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies (apparently with a secondary appointment in Law) at U.Va.

[CBR]

There's a nice summary of the situation, timeline of events, and discussion here: http://www.metafilter.com/117063/Trouble-in-the-Old-Dominion