Breaking: Chancellor Wise Disavows Her Own Decision as Her Administration Unravels
From Illinois Public Media:
The chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana campus Thursday expressed regret about the way she came to a decision to withdraw a job offer to a professor who posted inflammatory comments on Twitter – a decision she said was “pretty unilateral.”
Chancellor Phyllis Wise said members of the Board of Trustees told her in July that they likely would not approve the appointment of Professor Steven Salaita. A week later, Wise sent a letter to Salaita rescinding the job offer.
“The judgment I made in writing him was to convey the sentiment of the Board of Trustees, it was not mine.” She said. “And I did it because I thought I was doing something humane for him.”
Humane, she said, because she didn’t want Salaita to move his family to Urbana only to learn his appointment was not approved.
Earlier today I reported on a meeting Wise had with students on Wednesday, where she said, “I, in hindsight, wish I had been a little bit more deliberate and had consulted with more people before I made that decision.”
But now she goes further, claiming her decision was “pretty unilateral.”
And then she drops this bombshell: that in dehiring Steven Salaita, Wise was expressing “the sentiment of the Board of Trustees, it was not mine.”
So not only did her decision not reflect any of the academic voices on campus; it didn’t even reflect her own opinion.
I’m speechless: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an administration, or a decision, unravel quite like this.
In other news, the department of anthropology and the department of comparative and world literature today took votes of no confidence in the leadership of UIUC. That makes for a total of eight votes of no confidence.
But with the Chancellor herself now seeming to take a vote of no confidence in the University’s leadership, including her own, I have to wonder whether the other side hasn’t simply outpaced us in their criticism and condemnation of their terrible decision.
Update (9 am)
Patchen Markell makes an interesting observation on Facebook:
Actually, it’s not the responsibility of the Board of Trustees to decide whether or not to approve the hire. Article 1, section 1 of the University of Illinois Statutes says: “The Board of Trustees formulates university policies but leaves the execution of those policies to its administrative agents, acting under its general supervision. It is the responsibility of the board to secure the needed revenues for the University and to determine the ways in which university funds shall be applied.” The relevant section about appointments says that “All appointments, reappointments, and promotions of the academic staff, as defined in Article IX, Section 4a, shall be made by the Board of Trustees on the recommendation of the chancellor/vice president concerned and the president.” As at most universities, what this means in theory is that the Trustees retain a kind of formal executive supremacy, but delegate substantive judgments in particular cases to the academic staff and the administration — sort of like the Hegelian monarch who “merely dots the i’s and crosses the t’s.” This is why, in practice, new faculty at Illinois ordinarily start teaching before even having their appointments signed and sealed: everyone knows it’ll go through, and there is no substantive review left. And that’s why, if this was in fact the result of a substantive judgment on the part of the Board, it is arguably an even worse crisis of academic freedom and independence than if the judgment had been Wise’s: it represents a breakdown of the division of labor between the business side and the academic side of the university that Article 1, section 1 carefully establishes.