On the Politics of Non-Politics at the University of Wisconsin

Avoiding “university politics” is under normal circumstances a wise move by non-tenured professors because of how vicious such politics can be. Perhaps if more scholars who take on administrative positions with considerable power were more passionate about learning more in their respective fields of knowledge, the power itself would not be used so much to settle scores (i.e., retaliate). As Jesus says in the Gospels concerning God and money, a person cannot serve two masters. When the president of a university system is a lawyer rather than a scholar holding a doctorate, a passion for acquiring academic knowledge cannot be relied upon to keep the occupant of the high office focused on the essentials rather than on “extracurricular activities.” When the Board of Regents fired Jay Rothman, a lawyer who had been the presiding officer of the University of Wisconsin system (i.e., the main and branch campuses) on March 7, 2026, the fact that he was not oriented as a scholar—he had earned two undergraduate degrees—was arguably part of the reason for the firing, given the salience of politics both in his conduct while in office and his firing.  

The full essay is at "On the Politics of Non-Politics at the University of Wisconsin."

Amid Scandal and Political Protests: A University President Goes Down

Beyond legitimately taking credit and assuming blame for a myriad of things, a university president ought first of all to be an academic scholar, which comes with the credential of a doctorate in a field or school of knowledge. Rather than a specific body, or school, of knowledge subject to research (and thus growth) being directly applicable to the position, I contend that the process, which includes being enculturated in academia as a scholar, of getting a doctorate is valuable and thus should be requisite to a candidate being selected to lead a college or university. In short, a university president is not just a manager. It would be expedient, in line with committing the “sin of omission,” to have a corporate executive, or, even more expedient, a lawyer, run a university. The governing board of Northwestern University in Illinois committed this “sin” in hiring Michael Schill, a law instructor, as president of that university. Just three years after assuming the position in September, 2022, he abruptly resigned. A memo to that board upon his resignation announcement could read: “Memo to the Board: Yale Law School trains lawyers, not university presidents.”

The full essay is at "Amid Scandal and Political Protests."

On Universities Cancelling Classes on Some Minor Holidays for Ideological Purposes

Higher education is not valued equally in the various American states. Where academia is not particularly valued, other things can intercede as priorities even at the universities themselves at the expense of academics. In such places, even the universities themselves may value being academic institutions too little by allowing other societal agendas to eclipse the distinctly academic mission. Indeed, even academic administrators may be infected with an ideology currently in fashion societally, and insufficiently academically minded to thwart the interlarded non-academic values that seek hegemony even on academic campuses.

The full essay is at "Universities Cancelling Classes."

Yale : A Private Police-State on Steroids

Academia is its own sort of community, with its own distinctive culture. A university campus is not akin to a small town. To treat a campus as such, and thus to allow universities to have their own police departments rather than security guards, evinces a category mistake and presents issues of political legitimacy. The U.S. Constitution gives police power to the state governments, rather than to private companies and non-profit private organizations. Secuity guards, not police employees, belong to the categories of companies and non-profit organizations, both of which being qualitatively different than governments or states. Hence the matter of legitimacy should be raised when one organization, such as Yale, presumes not only to have its own private police force, but also to use it (and its security guards) to enforce local laws and university regulations off campus. When a university, again referring here to Yale, saturates its campus with police cars with emergency-alert blue-and-red lights blazing on top and headlights constantly and pensively on, and adds security guards on virtually every corner as if according to a military-style command coverage of the entire campus and beyond, the passive aggression and tacit message of deep distrust subtly undercut academic pursuits and the related psychological stamina of students, faculty, and even alumni who are auditing courses or conducting research as scholars "in residence." The saturated presence of pensive guns and distrustful staring eviscerates an anademic atmosphere of peace and tranquilly, and thus subtly eclipses academic learning and teaching. An academic atmosphere is vital to a college and even a large university so students and faculty can feel free to take ideas to their limits without fear of intimidation and being distrusted so. A pathological weaponizing of distrust is harmful even though the victims don't realize that they are being victimized. I contend that the unbiquitous, constant surveillance is unethical, and furthermore that university administrations that unfairly inflict such an aggressive culture of distrust should be held accountable externally by governments and internally through boards of directors and pressure from alumni.  Paranoia is at the root of this type of dysfunctional organizational culture, such as existed at Yale as of 2023. The extreme distrust backed up by hostile staring, flashing lights, and even guns ought to be flagged as toxic and unethical. 

The full essay is at "Yale: A Private Police State on Steroids."

Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders: The Case of Paterno at Penn State University

In January 2011, the illustrious football coach at Penn State University, Joe Paterno, learned that prosecutors were investigating his longstanding assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, for sexually assaulting young boys in the football team’s locker room. Paterno even testified before a grand jury on the matter that month. He had been informed of the rapes back in 1998, yet he had kept the pedophile on even though additional boys would be at risk in doing so. 

That same month—January 2011—Paterno also began negotiating to amend his contract that would not expire until the end of 2012. By August 2011, Paterno and the president of Penn State reached an agreement in spite of the fact that both were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation. “Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.” 

The university’s board was kept in the dark. Directors who raised questions were “quickly shut down.” In the end, the board gave the family virtually everything it wanted. The board even threw in free use of specialized hydrotherapy message equipment at the university for Paterno’s wife. In other words, Paterno (and his surviving family, following his death in January 2012) got an even better deal as the scandal came to include Paterno himself.

 Joe Paterno, head football coach at Penn State, viewed by a student as "Pa" in PA        Matt Rourke/AP

The full essay is at "Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders."

The University of California: University Governance Gets an “F” on Trust

As part of the government’s 2017 audit of the University of California’s president’s office, California’s auditor, Elaine Howle, sent surveys to administrators at the university’s 10 campuses. The president’s staff directed administrators at the Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Irvine campuses to remove criticism of the office and give higher performance ratings in key areas. The interference was blatant, as it included even a systemwide conference call. As a result, Howle disregarded all of the results as tainted. The audit also uncovered $175 million in undisclosed reserves being held by the president’s office. Janet Napolitano, the U.C. president and former head of the U.S. Homeland Security Department, had betrayed the trust vested in her. The ineptitude likely ran higher, and lower. That is to say, the university’s governance itself was culpable.


The full essay is at "The University of California Flunks Trust."

When a University Loses Its Way: Business as Usual

A university is clearly functioning sub-optimally when its departments operate with scant regard to any obligation to contribute to the good of the whole (organization). A university’s administration makes matters worse by viewing the university through the lenses of a business firm—seeking to remake what is innately academic in the guise of private enterprise. Fundamentally, when an organization’s management loses sight of the distinct basis of the organization, it is bound to founder from the confounded identity. I had the privilege of attending Yale, whose administration values and protects uniquely academic norms and mores. Unfortunately, university administrations far away from lux et veritas can lose sight of even the distinct academic basis of a university, preferring instead to remake it into something else—a business or, even worse, a conglomerate without a functioning headquarters. In this essay, I discuss one example of such a university, far, far away from the heart and soul of academia, yet where managers take advantage nonetheless of its good name.

The full essay is at "When a University Loses Its Way."

On the Spread of Private Governments in a Democracy: Should Churches and Universities Have Their Own Police Forces?

In mid-April, 2017, Alabama’s Senate approved a bill that would authorize Briarwood Presbyterian Church to create a police department. At the time, the church hired off-duty police employees to provide security-- “a common practice among nonprofit organizations.”[1] With 4,000 congregants, a K-12 school and thousands of events on its land each year, church officials had difficulty finding enough off-duty cops who were available. More important than being able to make up for any shortages, the proposed law “would empower a religious group to do a job usually performed by the government.”[2] That the group is religious in nature whereas police power is governmental (i.e., “church and state”) is less important than that the “job” had come to be viewed societally, as per the quote from The New York Times, as usually performed by government. In other words, the slippery, subtle slope is itself a red flag.

The full essay is at "Private Police Forces."

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1. Ian Lovett, “Alabama Church Wants Police Force,” The New York Times, April 17, 2017.

2. Ibid.

Donations to Colleges and Universities: A Widening Inequality among Schools

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, colleges and universities in the American States received a record $37.5 billion in donations, which represent a 10.8% increase from the prior year.[1] Alumni giving increased 9.4% to $9.85 billion, with the average graduate gift up more than 25% to $1,535.[2] The top ten universities by amounts raised snagged 18% of the total ($37.5 billion), thus doing disproportionately better than even the schools in the middle stratum. What is behind this growing economic inequality, and can anything be done to reverse the trend?

The full essay is at “Donations to Colleges”

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[1] Melissa Korn, “Harvard Tops Record Year for College Gifts,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

Exclusivism Eclipses Veritas at Yale

Michael Simons, head of the cardiology department of the School of Medicine, made unwelcome sexual advances in writing to Annarita Di Lorenzo,  a researcher 18 years younger at the school in 2010. Simons wrote that he wanted to kiss the woman’s lips, and every part of her “body in every continent and city of the world.”[1] Referring to Frank Giordano, the woman’s boyfriend at the time and subsequently husband, Simon wrote that the woman was choosing the wrong man.  Simons would keep Giordano from important meetings and assignments. The relationship between the two men became so difficult that Jack Elias, the chairman of medicine, took over the direct supervision of Giordano to protect the untenured instructor from Simon.

Nevertheless, Yale’s provost, dismissed a university committee’s recommendation that Simons be permanently removed from his position in favor of an 18-month suspension. Faculty members claimed that Simons’ success in snagging $5 million annually from the U.S. Government in grants in 2012 and 2013 had been a factor, as well as the fact that the provost had been chair of the economics department, where Simons’ wife was a faculty member. The monetary element would not be lost on virtually any academic administrator at any university, but the “old boys club” sticky web of connections at the elitist Yale could mean that “outsiders” suffer considerable abuse there; the Provost’s dismissiveness of the university committee’s recommendation is but one indication of how distorted the moral compasses can be among the most powerful in the “club.” 

The complete essay is at "Exclusivism at Yale"

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1. Tamar Lewin, “Handling of Sexual Harassment Case Poses Larger Questions at Yale,” The New York Times, November 1, 2014.

Target Intimidating Customers by Impersonating Police: Nietzsche on Weakness Seeking to Dominate

In the PBS series Downton Abbey, the Victorian countess, magnificently played by Maggie Smith, delivers a reverberating line as fit for my hometown in the second decade of the twenty-first century as for a village in Britain a century earlier. Referring to the local physician, who had just been raised to the position of military manager of convalescent centers during World War I, the countess remarks in frustration after a rejected request, “We give these little people power and it goes to their heads like strong drink.” This poignant quote fits like a glove in the case of the typical store manager and assistant managers, especially in my decaying hometown in the U.S. a century after World War I. In this essay, I apply Nietzsche's philosophy to a rather distinct pattern that I discovered there decades after I had left for college.

The full essay has been incorporated into (or swallowed up by) On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Business Culture Forming Higher Education

“Publish or perish” is the infamous mantra of those intrepid scholars who work at research universities and many prestigious Liberal Arts & Sciences colleges dotting the map of the world. The need to demonstrate regular output is perhaps nowhere more stressed (hence, stress) than in the United States. As if the declining number of tenure positions (amid increasing reliance on adjuncts, not coincidentally) at colleges and universities in the U.S. were not enough of a challenge for the newly-minted doctors aspiring to the intellectual freedom that goes with the protection of tenure, that the young scholars are increasingly being subjected to an "assembly-line" process wherein faculty administrators treat their junior colleagues' published journal articles like chocolates on a conveyer belt puts scholarship at odds with itself and thus is utterly self-defeating from the standpoint of society gaining new knowledge.

The full essay is at "Business Culture Forming Higher Education"

Corporate Hacks Dominate at Mr. Jefferson’s University

The University of Virginia was thrown into a bit of an uproar in June 2012 after the university's president, Teresa Sullivan, “a 62-year-old eminent scholar of labor-force demography whose appointment drew national attention in 2010, was forced out during a closed-door session of the Board of Visitors in which no official vote was taken. The June 10 announcement that she would resign blindsided Sullivan and ignited wide outrage and protests,” according to the Associated Press. This controversy showcases the contemporary “corporatizing” tendency that has been taking place in university governance more generally. For non-academics to trump scholars on matters touching on academic policy is at the very least counter-productive (if not illogical). In this essay, I discuss Sullivan’s ouster at Virginia in order to advance the proposition that faculty senates rather than boards of corporate managers should have the final say on policy at colleges and universities. At public universities, only a legislature or president should be able to over-rule a faculty (assuming there is a very significant proportion of public funding).

Regarding the controversy at the University of Virginia, the Associated Press reported that, “(f)or her part, Rector Helen Dragas publicly disclosed Thursday more detailed reasoning behind Sullivan’s ouster.” She “did acknowledge that the board mishandled Sullivan’s removal, and apologized. ‘In my view we did the right thing, the wrong way,’ Dragas said.” Her “six-page statement said Sullivan wasn’t acting quickly enough to address financial pressures facing higher education, the role of online learning, changes in the health care environment, the increased student-faculty ratio, fundraising, and other strategic challenges. The university lacks long-range plans on several of those fronts, it added. ‘No matter how you feel about our actions, these challenges represent some very high hurdles that stand in the way of our university’s path to continued success in the coming decade, and they are going to remain front and center for the next board and the next president over the coming years,’ the statement said.”

 For her part, Sullivan countered by saying, “Sweeping action may be gratifying and may create the aura of strong leadership, but its unintended consequences may lead to costs that are too high to bear.” Moreover, “Corporate-style, top-down leadership does not work in a great university,” she said. “Sustained change with buy-in does work.” The subtext here is that scholars don’t behave like corporate managers. Running a college is more like herding cats than managing by memo. Not being scholars themselves, the board and its chair at Virginia missed this vital distinction. According to the New York Times, “(m)any public university presidents, past and present, said that those on the boards of the leading universities — typically business executives without much experience in academia — do not always understand the complexities of leading a large research university, and the degree to which a president can succeed only by persuading. ‘Everybody thinks university presidents are hierarchical and top-down,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami . . . ‘But we are not corporate chieftains, and we cannot rule from the sky. We are more like tugboat captains, trying to get our ships aligned and pulling them in the right direction.’ The great research universities, she said, have achieved their dominant position in the world through shared faculty governance, and leaving faculty both academic and research freedom.” Such freedom does not compute from a corporate mindset. Whereas military-style “orders” are commonplace in the business world, scholars bristle at the prospect of a colleague barking out commands. "In the end," according to the Times, "the fundamental disagreement at the University of Virginia concerned the approach to change that the president should take — either incremental, with buy-in from each of the constituencies, or more radical, imposed from the top." That is, the ways of academic clashed with an interlarded corporate approach.

Indeed, the board at Virginia came from a very different world than that of years in a doctoral program followed by still more years working toward tenure. "Political contributions to our governors have become more important factors in the selection of our board members," said John Casteen III, who served as President of UVA for the 20 years prior to Sullivan's appointment. According to the Huffington Post, The UVA Board of Visitors included “a real estate developer, a coal company magnate, a Wall Street professional, a top lawyer for General Electric, a nursing home executive, [and] a beer distribution entrepreneur.” Lest it be presumed that the lawyer (or a physician) could substitute for a scholar, neither the first degree in law nor the first degree in medicine constitutes a doctorate. 

Accordingly, the board's motivation may have been rather pedestrian, or corporate (think of Fuld at Lehman Bros or Coyne at Bear Stearns), without due respect for the academic values and traditions particularly dear to the scholars who teach at the university. The Huffington Post reports that emails between the Rector and Vice-Rector “indicate that much of their motivation to remove Sullivan stemmed from three media articles, rather than professional or academic literature. One, a New York Times column by David Brooks, lauded online courses, as did a Wall Street Journal editorial, and an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.” In one email, the Vice Rector even suggests that providing a “modicum of candor” might be prudent. I smell a rat. 

The secrecy of the board’s decision alone—without even a formal vote being taken (and given the failure of the Rector to adequately explain her “board’s” decision after the fact to the faculty senate meeting behind closed doors)—suggests that the real reason could have had more to do with personalities than policy. However, if “philosophical differences” were at issue as Sullivan suggests in her public statement after her firing, I submit that it is scholars rather than political donors from the business world and that of the professions who have the wherewithal to make judgments regarding academic matters, as in determining whether (and how much) to expand on-line courses. According to the New York Times, Dragas had been "especially concerned about pushing ahead in online learning." Sullivan warned that online education was no panacea — and indeed, was “surprisingly expensive, has limited revenue potential and unless carefully managed can undermine the quality of instruction.” Scholars such as Sullivan are in a much better position to judge the academic suitability of such courses than is a beer distributor, a business executive, or a physician.

Pedagogy as well as learning can take a real hit if technology is relied on too much, especially at the doctoral level where the in-person aspect of seminars has real academic value. To assess that value, one must have experienced it oneself, rather than merely read about it online. Regarding the for-profit colleges that offer “on-line doctorates,” I worry that the doctoral degree itself is being rarified rather than protected. I have met students in such programs who somehow claim to know all about the alternative that they are missing. Of course, they are perfectly able to dismiss its academic value without even a suspicion that they could be wrong about something they have never experienced. Such a mark of closed ignorance among “doctoral students” is itself a red flag concerning where “higher education” in America is headed. 

In the case of on-line courses, the application to freshman and sophomore lecture classes is one thing, whereas the application to doctoral seminars is quite another. My point is that scholars who have lectured in large lecture halls and taught small graduate seminars are in a unique position (i.e., superior to non-academics on a university's board) to discern this vital difference. That a beer distributor would sit in judgment over a professor's judgment on such a matter is a bit like wandering down the rabbit hole only to expect things to be the same. To a scholar, the presumptuous entitlement of such overarching ignorance can only be emetic, not to mention downright insulting.

Generally speaking with respect to the academic and corporate worlds, what is of value in academic terms does not necessarily translate into financial terms (or value). A visiting scholar at a university who does research, for example, is likely a “zero budget item” (i.e., not paid by the university), yet he or she is of high academic status by virtue of having earned a doctorate (and perhaps even published a book, by which I don't mean one filled with simplistic bullet-points and overly-complex organizational diagrams).

To a business practitioner or professional (i.e., a lawyer, CPA, or physician), such academic status sans salary does not translate, and thus is of no value. In fact, the value would be negative, given the presumed opportunity cost (i.e., the money that could otherwise be earned by being bored in a mindless corporate cubicle). Lets be clear: that something has no value in corporate or business terms does not mean that it has no value. Even if a society allows its business sector to set societal norms, the realm of knowledge (i.e., scientia) is not so pliable, at least in principle. Perhaps the same could be said of the religious realm. How much value in business terms can be attributed to the Kingdom of God, for instance?

Showing its true colors, the “corporate” board at the University of Virginia evinced an utter lack of respect for the university's scholars by refusing even to provide the faculty senate with an explanation with a “modicum of candor.” To reduce scholars to a modern employee-classification (which is a given at least at for-profit "universities") ignores the academic status of scholars in academia. That is, it ignores the qualitative differences that distinguish faculty, staff, and students at a college or university.

Some staff try to get around basic clusters (i.e., faculty, staff, and students) by referring to themselves as "academic staff." To be sure, librarians are not exactly kitchen help, but neither do librarians hold a doctoral degree (e.g., the DBA, Ph.D., D.Sci.M., J.S.D., or Ed.D.). Hence, even the very laudable (and valuable) librarians working in academic libraries cannot be counted as colleagues with the scholars.

At one large research university at least, a significant number of graduate students in doctoral programs in the liberal arts claim to be colleagues with their professors because those students teach too. They refer to the "undergrads" there as the students. "I'm not a student; I'm a graduate student" is the sort of illogical claim made as if with impunity by some of the more arrogant usurpers. Their teaching, by the way, is typically limited to discussion sections of their professors' lecture classes.

Lest there be any confusion, graduate students are not colleagues with their professors. That this rather basic academic point is denied or ignored when convenient is just another indication that modern academia is under threat even from within its ranks. The fact that university governance boards increasingly rely on people from outside academia suggests that academic mores and standards will not be protected even from the encroaching decadence within universities.

Referring to Sullivan's firing, a program officer at the American Association of University Professors laid out the basic flaw that has been allowed to fester in university governance. "More and more boards come from non-academic backgrounds, and one consequence of that is a lack of appreciation for and understanding of the academic enterprise,” said Robert Kreiser. He told the Huffington Post that "the UVA debacle is only the most extreme example of an ongoing phenomenon in which those ‘who don't appreciate what higher education is about and who are more concerned about corporate interests and corporate considerations’ come to govern academia.” Both the hegemony of corporate interests (and values) in corporate governance and the tacit lack of respect in the business sector (and American society more generally) for the vocation of the scholar should be (but sadly are not) recognized as red flags. At the very least, the priority belies any interest in the higher education of generations to come (i.e., your children).

Therefore, we should return to the classical notion that a faculty of scholars ought to have the final say in the running of a college or university. At the very least, a version of the business judgment rule in corporate governance (wherein managerial judgment on business matters trumps stockholder votes) should apply to a faculty's academic judgment trumping decisions of a non-academic board (and even a legislature or president in the case of a public university).

The university as an institution has been around, at least in the West, since the High Middle Age. Aquinas, for example, taught at the university in Paris. Applying a corporate mindset (or governance structure) on top of such a seasoned institution is bound to cause problems. I would not blame the professors at the University of Virginia were they more than just a bit annoyed at being relegated on their own turf, or campus (which literally means “field” in Latin), by people in the "real world." This expression itself is highly insulting, as it conveys a judgment of utter dismissiveness regarding the world of academia. The message is that the pursuit of knowledge is in itself inherently irrelevant (e.g., of "the Ivory Tower"). Let’s be clear: wanting to get something useful out of a university does not necessarily involve respect for its sui generis (i.e., unique) ways and values. Furthermore, to filter knowledge according to its contemporary usefulness and display the results as if a poll on power-point slides vastly misconstrues even what knowledge is. To presume to govern the enterprise from such an “understanding” is at the very least audacious, not to mention disrespectful and even reckless.

It is time, in other words, to return academia to the men and women who know and respect it on its own terms (i.e., rather than trying to turn it into a different beast). This is the real lesson coming out of the tussle at Mr. Jefferson’s university, where truth, at least in pinciple, is to be pursued no matter where it leads. Business managers and even the folks in the professional caste do not have this faith. They are thus utterly unsuited in their presumptive entitlement to govern academia as if business trumps knowledge. In other words, there should be some check within academia on the infiltration of the subverted societal values. What's good for GM is not necessarily good for the classroom. 

Fides de scientia: Lux et Veritas must be nurtured, pursued, and protected as ends in themselves, rather than squandered for sordid lucre or subjected to petty politics.

Sources:

Zach Carter and Jason Linkins, “Teresa Sullivan University of Virginia Ouster Led by Politcal DonorsLacking Academic Experience,” The Huffington Post, June 21, 2012.

Associated Press, “University of Virginia Board to Meet to Consider Reinstating President; RectorDefends Ouster,” The Washington Post, June 21, 2012. 

Tamar Lewin, "Public Universities See Familiar Fight at Virginia," The New York Times, June 25, 2012.