The resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay yesterday not surprisingly has led to substantial commentary. Yours truly noted an opinion piece in the NY Times by Bret Stephens indicating that the problem was Harvard had selected someone as president who wasn't a top scholar.* I'm not sure the modern major university president has to be a great scholar, contrary to Stephens' view (although engaging in plagiarism is a disqualifying Bad Thing). University presidents have to raise money and represent the university in the larger community including among the political authorities, whether their campuses are public or private. They have also to be sensitive to the internal academic community.
UC president Clark Kerr said the job was to deal with parking for the faculty, football for the alumni, and sex for the students. He omitted the political realm in his listing, the realm which ultimately got him fired. Typically, presidents have what amounts to a chief operating officer to manage the day-to-day affairs of the institution while they deal with the various constituencies and interest groups. Gay at Harvard wasn't up to the job on various dimensions as both events on campus and at the congressional hearing demonstrated, although reportedly she did well in previous positions. There is the old saying about a tendency to be promoted to your level of incompetence. Maybe that's what happened.
Beyond Harvard's problems, however, there is bound now to be a rethinking about university governance more generally and the role of the chief officer. The degree to which universities and their top leaders are responsible for student actions keeps coming up, intensified by the Israel-Gaza War, but not beginning with that event. To the extent that universities provide student groups with official recognition and compel all students to pay fees to support various student organizations needs to be rethought.** Otherwise, the university IS responsible, at least to a degree, for what happens within those organizations. The recent uptick in union activity, including the high-profile student-worker strike at UC, suggests a need to revisit the current university labor model.
There may be a temptation by university leaders to keep their heads down and hope and pray that no further issues arise on their watch. An alternative, however, would be to set up a process to examine such touchy issues as changing public opinion about higher ed, concerns about speech, diversity of viewpoints, etc. Will any UC campus leaders do it? Will the Academic Senate? Will the Regents?
All is not well. Harvard's problems are not unique.
====
*https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html.
Apart from the Bret Stephens piece, you can find the letter of resignation at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-resignation-letter-harvard.html.
A statement from the Harvard board that oversees the university is at:
A CNN chronology of the event is at:
No comments:
Post a Comment