Leaders must have followers

The right-wing attack on higher ed is making it impossible

The latest front in the right-wing attack on higher education is Texas A&M where university regents and the former President sabotaged the hiring of distinguished journalist Kathleen McElroy from the University of Texas to start a new journalism program. Much has been written about this, and I gave some quotes to an excellent reporter at the Texas Tribune where there is extensive coverage. I didn’t have to think too hard to do that since I had given many of the same quotes to other reporters during a very similar debacle at the University of North Carolina where more or less the same thing happened with another outstanding, Black woman journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

There’s tons of news stories out there about this that don’t need to be rehearsed here. President Kathy Banks ended up resigning because she dishonestly tried to pull a work-around that blew up. But there are a couple of important points about what this is doing to make these institutions dysfunctional, as I said in the article. The first is about the role of the board in granting tenure, which both boards balked at doing for McElroy and Hannah-Jones. The board’s role in granting tenure is not to make their own judgments about whether a candidate deserves tenure. In fact, no one does that except the outside referees and the faculty in the department. The subject matter experts that are the candidate’s colleagues make the academic evaluation, and then everyone else in the chain is there to make sure the process is followed and that objective decisions were made. When it gets to the board, they approve the decision to express their confidence in the process and the administrators who carried it out - not to make an academic judgment. Text messages revealed at Texas A&M show that the board members were making their own, unqualified academic judgment. Both McElroy and Hannah-Jones are highly qualified journalism faculty (and both got tenure at other great places).

The second thing is that campuses with tens of thousands of people on them are not places you can run by fiat. (Large corporations aren’t either - just ask Bob Chapek.) That many people have to be led by attracting followers, by cajoling, by accumulating political capital, by communicating. You can’t bark orders at 30,000 people and expect them to get on board.

When I was a provost, I used to tell the board that I was like the chief financial officer, except I managed political capital, not money. And when we were about to spend more than we had, it was my job to tell them. And when there was an opportunity to accumulate some, we needed to take it. I was fortunate that the trustees at WashU got that, and we were able to get a lot done. The presidents and provosts in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina are not so lucky. Every time they are forced by the boards to go against the campuses, they burn more capital than they have on the balance sheet, and they lose followers. When you run out of followers, you can’t lead - and you can’t get things done.

Just ask Kathy Banks.