As is now well known, on October 24, 2023, the New York Post submitted allegations to Harvard of plagiarism committed by Dr. Gay. The Harvard Corporation, the governing body of the institution, stated that it “promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work. On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results” which they claimed, “revealed a few instances of inadequate citation” (italics added). After additional plagiarism allegations were made by an anonymous source, Dr. Gay resigned on January 2. 

In light of several credible and well-documented press reports, ACTA believes that the Harvard Corporation conducted an irregular and hasty investigation in violation of the university’s established procedures. Therefore, ACTA is asking NECHE to determine whether Harvard has the capacity, policies, procedures, safeguards, and willingness to investigate and adjudicate allegations of academic dishonesty and research misconduct equitably, ethically, and forthrightly. 

ACTA’s complaint reads, “Additional evidence suggesting that Harvard University may be in violation of several provisions of NECHE’s Standards for Accreditation continues to appear. Harvard’s former president, Dr. Claudine Gay, admitted to multiple instances in which her published work and dissertation required corrections to her citations; instances of this sort would normally be seen as plagiarism according to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.” 

Dr. Steven McGuire, ACTA’s Research Fellow, said “Academic dishonesty offends against the very nature of the university as an institution devoted to the pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, it appears that Harvard has not followed its own policies or lived up to its motto—veritas, or truth—in reviewing the allegations of plagiarism against Dr. Gay. But it is critical that our elite institutions adhere to rigorous standards in such matters both for the sake of their own integrity and because the rest of higher education will follow their lead. Thus, we are asking NECHE to investigate this issue.”

To read ACTA’s complaint in its entirety, click here.

The post ACTA Submits Complaint to NECHE Calling for Investigation of Harvard Corporation’s Mishandling of Plagiarism Allegations by Harvard President Claudine Gay appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Gay resigned as president on Jan. 2 after facing multiple plagiarism allegations and pushback from failing to say whether calls for genocide violated the school’s code of conduct at a Dec. 5 congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. She was involved in a series of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on campus during her time as a dean and as president, including creating new DEI positions and creating a task force that recommended portraits of white men be taken down. 

Gay joined Harvard’s faculty in 2006 as a professor and became a part of the Harvard administration in 2015, serving as the dean of the social sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard, according to the Harvard Gazette. She then served as the Edgerley Family Dean of FAS starting in 2018 before ascending to the university presidency in July 2023.

Gay announced a slew of “racial-justice” initiatives as FAS dean in August 2020 following the George Floyd riots, according to Harvard Magazine. She created a “visiting professorship in ethnicity, indigeneity and migration” to “recruit leading scholars of race and ethnicity to spend a year at Harvard engaged in teaching our undergraduates.”

She also announced a “study of the hiring, professional development, and promotion practices that may contribute to the low representation of minority staff in managerial and executive roles,” according to Harvard Magazine. The study was designed to “identify concrete steps” Harvard can take “to increase racial diversity of senior staff.”

Gay also announced the addition of an associate dean of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, according to Harvard Magazine.

“Instead of enhancing polarization by subscribing to the far left of the political spectrum, academia should heal societal tension and represent the diverse set of views within American society. The students should witness dialogues where opposing ideas are debated on campus, so they can make their own choice. Faculty should not be afraid to speak their mind,” Avi Loeb, theoretical physicist at Harvard, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Gay also formed the “Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage” in 2020, a group designed to assess the imagery around campus for its effects on students, to “advance racial justice,” according to The Harvard Crimson. The task force recommended changing “spaces whose visual culture is dominated by homogenous portraiture of white men,” according to its report.

It called for the redecoration of the walls of Annenberg Hall, which in December 2021 contained 23 portraits, of which 20 were white men, according to the Crimson.

“While it’s unclear how much the DEI bureaucracy has contributed to this hostile environment for free speech, the rise of DEI on campus has certainly coincided with a devaluing of free speech principles at Harvard. Additionally, much of the censorship at Harvard is directed at those opposed to liberal and progressive ideas, which suggests that the DEI bureaucracy has influenced the culture of free speech on campus,” Zachary Greenberg, senior program officer for campus rights advocacy at Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told the DCNF.

Harvard is ranked last on FIRE’s 2024 free speech report of universities in the U.S.

“The components of DEI are often defined in ways that bring them into conflict with free speech. For example, many proponents of DEI believe ‘inclusion’ requires others to refrain from saying certain things that are deemed ‘harmful,’” Steve McGuire, Paul & Karen Levy fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, told the DCNF.

Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker, alongside 70 other professors at the university, announced the creation of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard in April 2023, which advocates for more free speech on campus, according to the Crimson.

“Many of the assaults on academic freedom (not to mention common sense) come from a burgeoning bureaucracy that calls itself diversity, equity, and inclusion while enforcing a uniformity of opinion, a hierarchy of victim groups, and the exclusion of freethinkers. Often hastily appointed by deans as expiation for some gaffe or outrage, these officers stealthily implement policies that were never approved in faculty deliberations or by university leaders willing to take responsibility for them,” Pinker wrote in a December op-ed for the Boston Globe.

Harvard Law Professor Mark Ramseyer said that DEI was partially to blame for the fall of free speech on Harvard’s campus in an email shared on X, formerly Twitter, by former Harvard Lecturer Carole Hooven.

“Better alignment of campuses with the diverse set of values within American society would have helped avoid the recent turmoil. It could also help universities recruit the very best scholars and students from all parts of the political spectrum and develop good relationships with both Democrats and Republicans,” Loeb told the DCNF.

Gay came under fire after staying silent after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, after which over 30 student organizations signed a letter blaming the “Israeli colonial occupations” for the attacks. The university created an antisemitism task force in November, however one of the members of the group, Rabbi David Wolpe, quit on Dec. 7 and argued that it was infected by Marxist ideology.

“The system at Harvard, along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil,” Wolpe said.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce opened an investigation into several universities following its hearing in December. After the resignation of Gay, the committee said they would not be halting their investigation and expanded it to include DEI on campuses.

Harvard University and Pinker did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comments. Gay could be reached for comment.

This post appeared on Daily Caller on January 11, 2024.

The post Claudine Gay Had A History Of Adding To Harvard’s Diversity Bureaucracy Before Stepping Up To The Presidency appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

When Harvard University president Claudine Gay stepped down on Jan. 2 amid swirling plagiarism charges, it was a win for her conservative political opponents and a blow to her many supporters.

Gay cast herself as a victim of right-wing forces that pushed her out for political reasons, taking minimal responsibility for the flawed scholarship, ineffectual leadership and bungled performance at the congressional hearing on antisemitism that contributed to her downfall.

While some of her conservative critics crudely took credit for the takedown, Gay’s decision to resign over plagiarism charges follows what has largely been the trend for presidents accused of such actions—even when those claims are not accompanied by a political sideshow, as hers were. Some scholars have suggested that plagiarism allegations are being weaponized against college presidents, but Gay did what many of her peers have done in the past when confronted with similar accusations: she resigned.

Now, in the wake of her exit, questions abound about Harvard’s vetting process for Gay, how institutions should assess a presidential candidate’s academic work during the search and how plagiarism may be deployed as part of the culture war between liberals and conservatives.

Before Gay resigned, she submitted corrections to several past articles, despite disagreement about whether the work qualified as plagiarism, as her critics have argued, or simply academic sloppiness, as others have claimed. Harvard has also come under scrutiny for its opacity on the issue; now the institution must answer to Congress for the way officials handled the plagiarism claims.

Whether issues with Gay’s scholarship should have been caught during the presidential search is unclear. Harvard has remained silent on the matter, and Gay’s work was peer reviewed. But given the highly public nature of the scandal, search committees have surely taken notice—though it’s too early to say what that means for future presidential searches.

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, believes the evolution of presidential searches is “inevitable and salubrious for higher education,” especially at a time when public confidence in the sector is low and many institutions are struggling to attract students.

Poliakoff described the Harvard issue as a “reputational crisis within a reputational crisis.”

To avoid the same fate, he urged governing boards at other institutions to do their own due diligence in presidential searches, rather than delegating those responsibilities or relying too heavily on search firms.

“The academy needs to restore public trust, and one of the ways they can do this is by taking all steps to ensure that its members—faculty and administrators—are operating at the highest ethical standards. It should not be that difficult to find people who are worthy of that trust,” he said.

But evolving the presidential search processes will likely be neither easy nor cheap.

Larry Ladd, a senior consultant at AGB Consulting, noted that candidates for college presidencies are already subject to extensive background and reference checks. Colleges and search firms review academic credentials, work history, legal records, credit scores, research records and more to ensure that candidates don’t have skeletons looming in their closets.

“It’s a pretty thorough background check. Whether that background check might extend to the content of academic research, we don’t know yet. If it does, it will be very time-consuming,” he said. He questioned whether “the technology is sufficient” to police academic integrity.

To illustrate the challenges of identifying such issues, Ladd pointed to Stanford University, where former president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned last year after an institutional investigation into research misconduct determined that he “failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record” related to articles he had co-authored dating back to the early 2000s.

The investigation lasted eight months, Ladd noted.

“It takes a lot of work, even with improvements in technology,” Ladd said.

As politically motivated as the charges against Gay may have been, the claims were valid enough to force corrections from the short-lived Harvard president. A look at other cases of alleged plagiarism by college presidents from the past 20 years show that such accusations were often career ending.

In more than a dozen instances where presidents were accused of plagiarism, the outcomes followed similar patterns. In some cases, the presidents were cleared of the charges. But when plagiarism was proven, presidents retired or resigned, or their contracts were not renewed; some decamped for another job.

After Gay, the most high-profile presidential plagiarism case in the past few years is arguably that of Robert Caslen, who stepped down from the University of South Carolina in 2021 after he admitted to swiping a quote for a commencement speech without proper attribution. (Caslen was already under fire for mistakenly congratulating “University of California” graduates in a commencement speech.)

Similarly, Gregory J. Vincent resigned as president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 2018 after the institution opened an investigation into claims he had plagiarized his dissertation.

Those who didn’t have their contracts renewed include West Liberty University president W. Franklin Evers in 2021 and LeMoyne-Owen College president Andrea Lewis Miller in 2019—though both were also plagued by other issues.

And some presidents simply retired when accused of plagiarism.

Malone University president Gary Streit retired in 2010 “in response to recent concerns about the use of unattributed materials in some of his speeches,” the university announced at the time. Blandina Cárdenas retired as president of the University of Texas–Pan American in 2008, making no mention of a plagiarism investigation into her academic work. Central Connecticut State University president Richard Judd also retired in 2004 after his superiors determined he had plagiarized an op-ed for The Hartford Courant. Both Cárdenas and Judd emphasized health issues in their respective retirement announcements.

A rare few have managed to continue their presidencies despite plagiarism allegations.

William Meehan was hit with plagiarism accusations in 2007 and again in 2009 when he was president of Jacksonville State University, a position he held until he retired in 2015. Saint Louis University’s president the Reverend Lawrence H. Bondi was accused of borrowing significant portions of a homily he delivered in 2005, only to shrug off the allegations and serve until 2013.

Ladd noted that presidential resignations over plagiarism claims are typically about doing what’s best for the university, given the potential for reputational damage.

“When you see presidents resign, sometimes it’s fair to the president and sometimes it’s not fair to the president, but it’s always in the best interest of the university,” Ladd said, emphasizing that instances of academic dishonesty by presidents are fairly rare.

In any case, presidential plagiarism allegations don’t always stick.

Weymouth Spence, president of Washington Adventist University, was accused of plagiarism in 2019 but later cleared by the Board of Trustees after an outside investigation. Glenn Poshard, who served as president of Southern Illinois University from 2006 to 2014, was accused of plagiarism in 2007. A faculty panel found Poshard was careless with citations but ultimately stopped short of declaring him a plagiarist.

Some scholars and news organizations have warned that the attack on Gay’s scholarship is likely just the beginning of the coming plagiarism wars. Bill Ackman, a billionaire Harvard graduate who repeatedly called for Gay to step down over her citation issues, has signaled an appetite for toppling other academics over similar missteps.

Ackman threatened to review the academic work of the entire faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor, was exposed as a plagiarist.

“We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT faculty members, President [Sally] Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism,” Ackman wrote in a social media post on X earlier this month after his wife’s work was exposed. Ackman also threatened to review the work of reporters at Business Insider, which published the story on Oxman.

Jonathan Bailey, founder of the website Plagiarism Today, who has served as an expert witness in plagiarism cases, argues that weaponizing such allegations has a long history. But he believes the plagiarism war is changing, moving away from metaphorical guns and into its nuclear phase, in which the tools are used primarily to advance a political agenda.

“Plagiarism has been weaponized for as long as there’s been plagiarism in politics. Because when you’re calling someone a plagiarist, you’re fundamentally calling them a liar. You’re calling them someone who can’t be trusted. It’s a convenient way to disparage an opponent’s name,” Bailey said.

To illustrate his point, Bailey referenced plagiarism allegations leveled against Barack Obama, John McCain and other public figures accused of lifting various materials. But he noted that those charges rarely derailed campaigns or altered careers. Yet in academe, as Gay’s experience shows, “plagiarism is often a career-ending sin.”

Still, Bailey is skeptical of Ackman’s threatened review, noting the sheer amount of time and money investigating MIT’s faculty would require, even with a billionaire’s resources; the website lists 1,080 faculty members as of fall 2022.

Bailey also stressed the need for clear policies so institutions can deal with such allegations when they arise. In the case of Harvard, he suggested the initial review of Gay’s scholarship was not thorough enough, given the continual drip of plagiarism allegations.

“One thing I would encourage schools to do when they get [plagiarism] allegations is to find someone independent of the school to examine them,” Bailey told Inside Higher Ed. “Someone who is not beholden to that individual or president in any way should be the ones examining the claims and making a decision about whether or not the claims are valid, whether they point to any corrective action as needed, and whether they point to the need for a further investigation.”

In the end, he argued, everyone will benefit.

This article appeared on Inside Higher Ed on January 12, 2024.

The post When Presidents Plagiarize appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Gay announced Tuesday she would resign as president after only five months on the job and return to teaching at the Ivy League institution, blaming in part “racial animus” for her decision in a statement that ignored controversies that engulfed her presidency over the last three months.

Harvard’s first black, female president resigned after shrugging off the deadly terrorist attacks that targeted Israeli civilians Oct. 7 and the rabid antisemitism on campus that followed, then telling a congressional committee in December that calls to annihilate the Jews do not necessarily violate Harvard’s codes of conduct.

In recent weeks it came to light that Gay’s scholarly work contains dozens of instances of plagiarism, and what’s more, the Harvard Corporation, the 13-member board in charge of the nation’s most prestigious institution, was likely complicit as university brass tried to cover it up by threatening the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit and claiming an investigation found the plagiarism did not amount to academic misconduct.

The months of controversy has cost Harvard a parade of billion-dollar donors who have pledged to stop giving money to the scandal-plagued school.

That fact has not gone unnoticed by observers and watchdogs who say members of the corporation are ultimately responsible for the entire affair, first for hiring Gay despite her mediocrity to advance a left-wing agenda and then for allowing an attempt to cover up her shoddy research and scholarly dishonesty, which in late December after everything came to light prompted a congressional probe.

“The Harvard Corporation that so recently appointed her president should resign,” famed civil liberties attorney and Harvard alumnus Harvey Silverglate told The College Fix on Tuesday. He called the entire situation a “disaster” and said he will continue his efforts to be elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers to clean house.

“Claudine Gay’s problem was that she was never suited to be president of Harvard,” Silverglate said via email. “Her career has been mainly that of an academic bureaucrat. She famously devised programs to inculcate students and even faculty members in the mantra of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ in which students would look different but think alike.”

Silverglate isn’t the only one who argues the buck stops with the Harvard Corporation, which the New York Times reports is a cadre of rich and influential progressives, mostly wealthy business owners, attorneys and philanthropists.

“There is no indication from either the Gay resignation letter or the Harvard Corporation follow-up that the university is moving away from identity-based scholarship, hiring, and admissions,” wrote scholar Heather Mac Donald for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. 

“…If the Harvard Corporation had learned anything from the Gay debacle, it would have left out that coded rhetoric of ‘inclusiveness.’ Unless the board itself undergoes a revolution, nothing at Harvard will change,” Mac Donald wrote.

University of Tennessee College of Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, on his personal Substack, wrote Tuesday that “Next to go should be Penny Pritzker, senior fellow (essentially chair of the board) of the Harvard Corporation.”

“The fellows of the Harvard Corporation hire the president,” Reynolds wrote. “Pritzker had a responsibility to learn if Claudine Gay had a history of plagiarism, and if she had the personal and intellectual qualities to lead a top university. (The answer to both questions is now clearly ‘no.’)”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni also weighed in, arguing in a statement posted Tuesday on X that the “whole sordid episode is not really about Gay and it isn’t over because she has stepped down; it is about the misguided governance at Harvard, the trustees who put her in this untenable position, thinking that they were inoculated against any scrutiny and criticism because … Harvard.”

“They have a lot to answer for.”

Billionaire businessman and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman agrees, writing on X in a lengthy statement Jan. 2 that Harvard’s embrace of DEI is behind the mess and the board needs to be completely revamped.

“The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done,” wrote Ackman, one of the wealthy donors who yanked support early on.

“…The new board members should be chosen in a transparent process with the assistance of the 30-person Board of Overseers. There is no reason the Harvard board of 12 independent trustees cannot be comprised of the most impressive, high integrity, intellectually and politically diverse members of our country and globe.”

This post appeared on The College Fix on January 3, 2024.

The post Harvard Corporation members should resign in wake of Gay fiasco, watchdogs say appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

On December 23, 2022, the Virginia Council of Presidents, a group of 39 college and university presidents in the state, released a statement affirming free speech. The first lines of the statement read, “As presidents of Virginia’s public colleges and universities, we unequivocally support free expression and viewpoint diversity on our campuses. Free expression is the fundamental basis for both academic freedom and for effective teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom.”

This was a welcome development. Despite producing two of America’s fiercest defenders of free speech, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson (the latter of whom founded the University of Virginia in 1819), Virginia’s higher education institutions do not always live up to their duty to protect constitutional freedoms. In April 2023, students disrupted a pro-life speaker at Virginia Commonwealth University, and two protesters were arrested on charges of simple assault and disorderly conduct. In the days before Mike Pence was scheduled to speak at the University of Virginia, posters advertising the speech were ripped down, and the editor of the university’s student newspaper chastised university leadership for allowing the event to proceed in an article titled, “Dangerous rhetoric is not entitled to a platform.”        

With its free speech statement, the members of the Virginia Council of Presidents recognized the serious free expression challenges afflicting Virginia’s campuses. In an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch announcing the new statement, higher education leaders Jonathan Alger, Shannon Kennedy, Katherine Rowe, and Timothy Sands wrote, “Our 39 public institutions are committed to action. Students, faculty and staff will see a renewed focus on participatory citizenship, free expression and the purposeful inclusion of disparate viewpoints.”

The state of Virginia has made admirable efforts to uphold free expression in public education. On November 28, 2023, Governor Glenn Youngkin addressed an assembly of higher education leaders, exhorting them to improve the climate for free speech on campus. And at ACTA’s 2023 Alumni Summit on Free Expression, Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera encouraged alumni to advocate for free expression and intellectual diversity on campus.

It is up to university leadership to make the spirit of the free speech statement a reality by implementing policies and practices that protect the First Amendment and foster open inquiry.

The post On This Day In Campus Freedom: Council of Presidents Commits to Protecting Free Speech appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

The opinion, issued last month, responds to inquiries from Youngkin, a Republican, about whether the boards of the state’s public universities are required by law to serve the institutions they represent or state lawmakers and the governor.

Miyares determined that the governing bodies of the universities, known in Virginia as Boards of Visitors, have a “primary duty” to the commonwealth.

“These institutions ‘are state agencies; they are statutory corporations created and empowered by acts of the General Assembly,’” Miyares wrote. “Although they extend services to non-residents, Virginia’s institutions of higher education exist to ‘fulfill the Commonwealth’s commitment to provide education to the students of Virginia.’”

The five-page opinion is unequivocal about to whom the boards should answer.

“It is evident that a board of visitors simply serves as the vehicle by which the General Assembly has chosen to exercise the Commonwealth’s control over its colleges and universities,” it says.

Youngkin’s office did not answer specific questions about the reasons for the inquiry or how the opinion will be applied. Instead, Macaulay Porter, the governor’s press secretary, sent a one-paragraph statement, via email, stating, “The governor’s inquiry reaffirms the primary duty of each board of visitors is to the Commonwealth, which ultimately controls our public colleges and universities. Board members play a critical role in ensuring that Virginians’ taxpayer money is efficiently utilized and that our students receive the best value and quality from our higher education institutions in the Commonwealth. The attorney general’s opinion is an important reminder of whom our institutions ultimately serve and was distributed to each board member and president for reference.”

A Board of Visitors orientation was held from Nov. 14 to 15, as required annually by state law. All new board members must attend the orientation at least once in their first two years of service. An attendee of the meetings told Inside Higher Ed that the role of the boards, as described in Miyares opinion, was discussed.

Miyares was scheduled to speak about “board requirements in the current legal environment” but was unable to attend. Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson spoke in his place.

Youngkin also made remarks on the first day of the orientation. A transcript of his speech, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, confirmed his emphasis on the role of the board.

“There is this myth, and I want to dispel it. This myth that board members are cheerleaders for the university and cheerleaders for the president,” Youngkin said. “That is not the way it works. You have a responsibility to the commonwealth of Virginia … I as governor appoints you [sic] to play that role as a responsible extension of the executive branch.”

Higher ed lawyers, leaders of associations representing college boards and college administrators have mixed opinions about whether Miyares and Youngkin’s interpretation of the law is valid or an overreach.

Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said the opinion is simply a reminder that boards have a duty to the state in which their university is located and its constituents, as well as the institutions the board members represent.

Others see the opinion as an intimidation tactic to get board members to fall in line with Youngkin’s vision for higher education. Claire Gastanaga, a Virginia lawyer, believes it is a threat to the autonomy of public institutions and fears it signals an attempt by the governor to justify the removal of board members whose actions don’t align with his priorities.

Several observers said the attorney general’s opinion alone is not worrisome, but when framed in the larger context of Youngkin’s other efforts to have more control over public institutions, there is cause for concern.

Some point to the highly politicized debates about higher education occurring in statehouses across the country as examples. Others cite legislation being proposed and passed by mostly conservative state lawmakers targeting policies and programs at public colleges and universities with which they disagree.

Several also wondered if Youngkin was taking a page from the political playbook of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican.

“Standing on its own, this opinion doesn’t do anything. It’s simply an opinion by the attorney general,” said Tom Hyatt, general counsel of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. “But it certainly leaves the mind of the reader wondering what’s next?”

Gastanaga, a longtime lawyer in Virginia with a specialty in nonprofit governance, sees the attorney general’s stance as “an overreach” and suspects it is an attempt to stack the boards in his favor.

Unlike many state agencies, Virginia’s universities operate as public corporations, greatly limiting the ability of the Legislature and executive branch to dictate policy to board members and administrators.

Under state law, higher ed governing board members can only be removed from their positions for acts of “malfeasance, misfeasance, incompetence, or gross neglect of duty.” But the law is broader for other state boards and commissions; it allows for removal for “conflict of interests” or “refusal to carry out a lawful directive of the Governor,” for example.

Gastanaga worries that Youngkin is attempting to justify removal of board members who don’t support his agenda and replace them with appointees who do. She said if the boards’ duty is to the commonwealth, then their duty is to Youngkin as “the personification of the commonwealth,” and he can decide when someone has grossly neglected their role.

“What he’s trying to do is erase the distinctions between the universities as state entities that are structured as public corporations and regular old state agencies,” Gastanaga said. “He knows that the statute doesn’t give them the same authority. So he’s trying to create it out of that language.”

Youngkin’s ability to act unilaterally and appoint new representatives that align with his agenda was likely hampered by the outcome of state elections earlier this month, which put both chambers of the General Assembly under Democratic control.

Ann Franke, a higher education consultant and former counsel for the American Association of University Professors, described the opinion as “lightweight” but somewhat suspicious given Youngkin’s education agenda so far.

“He could replace K-12 ‘parental control’ with ‘public control’ over the universities,” Franke said. “Why shouldn’t the governor or the Legislature, on behalf of the public, prohibit [diversity, equity and inclusion] and critical race theory or ban library books in the public universities?”

The Association of Governing Boards said in a statement via email, “We respectfully disagree with the Virginia attorney general’s position that board members’ primary duty is to the state government, and that a board is simply a tool for the legislature to enact its will.”

Hyatt, AGB’s general counsel, said he “can’t read the mind of the governor” and was hesitant to assume the governor’s intentions. But he did note that the opinion was “curious” and provides “a misguided reasoning … to the fiduciary duties of directors of public institutions.”

“The American higher education system is founded on the independent judgment of volunteer trustees,” he said. “Citizen trusteeship is premised on the belief that a group of individuals, with a wide range of expertise and backgrounds, and adhering to fiduciary duties, will govern a higher education institution more successfully than will direct government control.”

Miyares’s opinion creates a “false dichotomy” implying that focus cannot remain on the institution without also upholding service to the public, Hyatt added. He also noted that the opinion could violate accreditation standards that require boards have “protection from undue influence.”

Beltramini, of ACTA, said the group’s leaders were not troubled by the opinion and hopes it will “drive home to trustees that you do not simply serve the needs of your institution … but you represent the needs and the interests of the public at large.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that what the trustees ought to do is listen entirely to the Legislature and only seek to do what the Legislature wants,” he added. “It just means that the trustees are in a unique stance as public fiduciaries; they must be listening to all but beholden to none.”

Youngkin is not the first governor to try to exert more control over university boards.

Matt Bevin, Republican governor of Kentucky from 2015 to 2019, unsuccessfully attempted to replace the University of Louisville’s Board of Trustees in 2016 after his attorney general issued a similar opinion. A circuit court judge rejected Bevin’s actions, calling the attempt inconsistent with state law and an invitation to future abuses of power.

Miyares’s memo also mirrors an opinion by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, also a Republican, in 2010, which argued that higher ed institutions didn’t have the authority to include sexual orientation and/or gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies. That argument also gained little traction.

A section of Miyares’s opinion refers to a state law that outlines the role of “Governing Boards of Public Institutions of Higher Education.” He specifically highlights text that states that onboarding programs for new board members should include “presentations relating to: board members’ primary duty to the citizens of the Commonwealth.” But the word “primary” was only added to the legislation in 2019 and was nearly unanimously supported by a politically divided Legislature.

Senator Bill DeSteph, the Republican who introduced the bill, said he agrees with Miyares’s opinion, finds it “well thought out” and does not see it as an overreach. He views the opinion as promoting a duty to both the state and the institution, with the public being of primary interest.

“This really solidifies the concern and the problem that I was addressing at the time,” he said.

Gastanaga and others noted that the opinion is more worrisome in the broader context of Youngkin’s other actions related to state higher education.

They point to his nominees to the Commission on Higher Education Board Appointments, which advises the governor on college board appointments. Youngkin appointed Edwin Feulner, former president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, as chair of the commission in April 2022.

“If you put a guy who’s the former head of the Heritage Foundation at the head of the parade, you can be pretty sure what’s going to be in the parade,” Gastanaga said.

Youngkin also made the controversial appointment of Bert Ellis, CEO of a private equity firm and president of a conservative University of Virginia alumni organization, to the university’s Board of Visitors in February. Ellis was already the subject of a contentious incident on campus at the time.

“You’ve got a bunch of stuff swirling around, so when I look at this opinion, I think, ‘This is the marinade. I wonder what the main dish is?’” Gastanaga said. “They’ve got some stuff they’re putting in this marinade, and then when it gets ready, they’ll bring out the main dish, and we might not like the taste.”

This article appeared on Inside Higher Ed on November 30, 2023.

The post Who’s the Boss of Virginia’s Public University Boards? appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

While colleges may have hundreds or thousands of employees who interact with students daily, trustees operate largely behind the scenes to ensure the well-being of the institution and those it serves. They owe the institution fiduciary duties of loyalty, care and obedience, and are responsible for making decisions about major aspects of a school’s life, including areas such as the budget, tuition price, public image and student well-being. 

Trustees should stay informed about all aspects of their school, and their actions contribute to a school’s success or failure, experts say. Furthering a school’s mission sometimes means making or backing tough policy decisions that don’t please everyone, as governing in higher education may be more challenging now than ever. 

“Their unique role is to listen to every constituency, but be beholden to none,” says Michael B. Poliakoff, president and CEO of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, a nonprofit organization that provides extensive resources to help college and university governing boards function effectively. 

Although the trustee role is “not one that the public tends to understand,” Poliakoff says, “these are the people that are representing their interests. There’s often a misunderstanding that the trustees serve the institution. … They serve the public. They’re guardians of a public trust.” 

How Someone Becomes a College Trustee

Trustees of private colleges typically are elected by the existing trustee board members, and at public schools are most often appointed by state legislatures or governors. Some trustees are graduates of the school, and all serve without pay.

Terms usually are staggered for some continuity, rather than a complete board change at once. Boards most commonly range between 20 to 35 members, but sometimes have as few as 10 – or more than 50 for some elite private or very large schools.

Some colleges have student, faculty or ex-officio trustees with varying degrees of power and responsibility, as well as honorary and emeritus members. Depending on their classification, some trustees may not be voting members.

Typical Responsibilities of College Trustee Boards 

Here’s a partial list of some typical trustee roles and responsibilities:

• Making all legal and fiduciary decisions as the final authority for college business, although they may delegate some authority.
• Safeguarding the school’s mission, reputation and resources, including reshaping the mission when necessary and minimizing the risks of conflicts of interest and fraud.
• Formulating a strategic plan and holding the school’s president accountable for developing and implementing it.
• Selecting, setting pay for, advising, supporting and evaluating the president.
• Setting policies that govern the school while overseeing the school in general and upper management in particular.
• Approving the annual budget and setting major program fees.
• Raising money, leading in capital campaigns, overseeing the endowment, personally supporting the school financially and encouraging others to do so.
• Ensuring that use of the school’s assets aligns with legal requirements and the school’s mission.
• Recruiting, training, retaining and replacing their trustee ranks. 

The most basic responsibilities of trustees at nonprofit public and private colleges are “to make good-faith decisions in the best interest of the institution,” says Mary Papazian, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, commonly called AGB.
“Unlike in other countries where higher education is managed by the government, American higher education was founded on the judgment of volunteer trustees,” she notes. “It relies on the belief that a group of thoughtful individuals, adhering to their fiduciary duties, will govern a college or university more successfully than will direct government control.”

Trustees are accountable to other ideals and groups, including the values of higher education, the public trust and the various stakeholder groups invested in the institution, such as faculty, staff and students, Papazian says.

“So that means boards, working in partnership with their presidents and senior administrators of those institutions, have to be concerned with student access and student outcomes. Are students doing well? Are they graduating successfully? Is there equity in serving all students? How do boards ensure their institutions are offering programs of value and making it clear to students and the public they serve? And does the business model of an institution work to achieve its success, its vitality?”

How a Good College Trustee Board Functions

Trustee boards typically do most of their work in committees outside board meetings, with each trustee serving on at least one committee, often more. Examples of common standing committees are governance, student affairs, academic affairs, facilities, compliance, budget, finance, audit, advancement/development and risk management.

“The real work and generative thinking occurs on those committees,” says Dennis Morrone, national managing partner of Not-for-Profit & Higher Education Practices at Grant Thornton LLP, a major audit, tax and advisory firm.

“Without the committees, the board can be only so successful,” he says. “The days of the sleepy boards are over. It’s not just showing up at graduation – it goes far beyond that and requires a lot of hard work and discipline.”

Outstanding character and reputation are essential qualities for trustees, many of whom come from fields outside higher education – “and that’s the real power,” Papazian says.

“They’re engaged and caring citizen volunteers who are acting in the best interest of their institution to try to ensure that the institution is successful. They bring a different perspective, and that allows them to ask different kinds of questions. I think it keeps everybody honest. It is a critical part of what makes higher education in the U.S. very strong.”

Trustee boards should be composed of accomplished people with diverse perspectives, talents and skill sets, experts say.

“Having an active and qualified and well-rounded board ensures that the institution will stay faithful to its mission,” Morrone says. “And second of all, that they will hold the management team accountable for the right actions and behaviors. So as an independent, unpaid body, their only real responsibility is to ensure their duties of obedience and loyalty.”

While many common issues confront trustees across the higher ed landscape – demographic changes, access, affordability, value and public perception, to name a few – each school must also solve its own unique problems.

“The old adage is, ‘If you see one board, you’ve seen one board,'” Papazian says. “It’s very context-specific. We tell them that the key for really effective board leadership is for boards to stay engaged, ask thoughtful questions, be courageous and imaginative. It takes courage sometimes to not give in to pressure, but to keep the mission and the purpose and the vitality of your institution and the success of your students at the forefront.”

An Example of a Successful College Trustee Board

Although it’s common for trustee boards to occasionally struggle to fulfill their responsibilities, there are many that consistently show strong performance, experts say. The AGB provides numerous programs and services for trustee boards and annually recognizes stellar boards with the John W. Nason Award for Board Leadership.

One of the 2023 awardees, Xavier University of Louisiana, was honored for a range of initiatives to improve students’ lives and elevate the school’s legacy, including laying the groundwork to establish a graduate school of health sciences and a medical school. Xavier is the only historically Black and Catholic college in the U.S. and graduates more Black students who go on to become medical doctors than any other U.S. college.

Facility updates, data-driven approaches to student persistence and other efforts to improve the student experience have been underway at Xavier. Trustees also worked in advance to secure $65 million by November 2022 toward the $500 million fundraising campaign goal for Xavier’s 100th anniversary in 2025.

Trustee board chairman Justin T. Augustine III says the AGB recognition “shows that the body of work we’re putting in is getting noticed.”

Augustine, an Xavier alumnus, is entering his seventh year on the 27-seat board and his third year as chairman. After reviewing best governance practices, the board amended its bylaws to allow Augustine to serve longer as chair to promote continuity while rolling out important new initiatives, such as the university’s “pillars of success” missional objectives.

Augustine, a regional vice president for Transdev Services Inc., calls his board involvement a “labor of love” and says his board’s effectiveness is due largely to its strong committee structure and the diversity and creativity of experts from fields that align with the school’s mission.

For a trustee board and its school to succeed, “you have to listen to your student body,” Augustine says. “Schools need to adapt and constantly enhance the experience for the current student body.”

At the same time, it’s critical that students hear from trustees, he says. “We communicate with them. We may not be able to resolve everything right away, but we keep a running list and try to address things, including with the budget, to make sure they can see the results. And when they see the results, they know we’re listening to them and paying attention to them. And that’s important.”

This type of engaged work distinguishes the best-functioning governance boards, Morrone says. The paradigm has shifted from decades ago, when governing boards were seen as “alumni clubs” that got together for dinners and golf outings, he says.

“Now, they are far more structured in terms of their thinking and their focus on being more of a strategic partner and generative thinker to complement the management team. And more introspective about how things can be better. A trustee, one that really takes their role seriously, realizes that it’s tough work and really a responsibility.”

Resources to Help College Trustee Boards

In addition to training programs, seminars and conferences, here are some resources that Grant Thornton, AGB and ACTA provide to trustee boards that can also educate students and the public:

• Grant Thornton publishes and updates a guidebook for trustee boards.
• ACTA helped develop the “Governance for a New Era” report for trustees, a blueprint for forward-thinking higher ed governance.
• AGB’s self-assessment tool was designed to help strengthen relationships and trust among trustees for greater board effectiveness.
• The Governance IQ resource by Grant Thornton offers a webcast, guidebooks and articles that subscribing trustees can receive to stay abreast of relevant trends and best practices.
• ACTA’s “How Colleges Spend Money” online financial analysis tool lets trustees check their school’s spending and benchmark against peer schools.
• The “Gold Standard for Freedom of Expression” by ACTA helps boards lead in promoting a culture of free thought on campus. 

Poliakoff offers some boilerplate advice to all college trustees: “Don’t be shy. Don’t feel you shouldn’t ask questions, that you shouldn’t do appropriate investigation. The worst possible thing is embarrassment for the school because of failures that oversight could prevent. Too often trustees become passive, and that’s a deadly place for them to be nowadays.”

This piece appeared in U.S. News & World Report on November, 16, 2023.

The post What College Trustees Are and Why They Matter appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Kevin Guskiewicz, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Thursday he is ‘weighing’ the opportunity to depart for Michigan State University.

Guskiewicz sent a statement Thursday morning to WRAL News.

“I am focused on serving the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a special place I have lived, worked and loved for 28 years,” Guskiewicz said. “I am very proud of what our university accomplishes every day as one of the best public universities in the country. Through the years, a variety of professional opportunities have been presented to me. My family and I must weigh each one, and we are weighing this one.”

Guskiewicz has served as chancellor since February of 2019, after the university’s previous chancellor, Carol Folt, was forced out.

UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees Chair John P. Preyer provided a statement on the matter.

“We wish Kevin and his family well as they consider this important decision,” said Preyer. “In the meantime, our focus as a Board remains on the excellence and continued progress of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The success of our university and the promise of its future is bigger than any one person. The momentum and leadership of our state’s world-class university will continue.”

Public records show the base salary for the president position at Michigan State University pays $70,000 more than what Guskiewicz currently makes.

During the four years he served as chancellor, Guskiewicz faced his own set of controversies and challenges.

In February 2021, a group of professors at UNC called for Guskiewicz to resign. The local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) said there had been several breaches of trust and dishonesty displayed by the chancellor and his associates.

Part of the controversy was due to the UNC System’s plan to turn the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument over to the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which many faculty members believed was an immoral decision.

In July 2021, there were rumors that Guskiewicz would be fired and replaced by UNC System President Peter Hans, but nothing ever came of that rumor.

Since 1945, UNC has seen a total of 12 chancellors. There have been four chancellors since 2000 alone.

Guskiewicz has held his current role for four years. Before him, Carol Folt was in the role for six years, Holden Thorp for five years and James Moeser for eight years.

WRAL News spoke with Armand Alacbay, the chief of staff for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a non-profit focused on promoting academic freedom and accountability.

“A university CEO is probably one of the hardest jobs in America, period,” Alacbay said. “That’s why the average tenure is just under six years.”

Alacbay said selecting a new president or chancellor is the most important job for a trustee.

“A presidential search requires a governing board to take a hard look at its strategic plan and what its expectations are for the next 10 years of the university,” Alacbay said.

In July of this year, Guskiwiecz made the announcement that UNC would provide free tuition for incoming undergraduates whose families make less than $80,000 per year. Although several board members supported the decision, the announcement was also met with criticism from some members of the UNC Board of Governors.

The new policy starts in fall of 2024 for incoming students from the state.

The student newspaper at Michigan State University has reported Guskiewicz is the only remaining candidate for president after another finalist dropped out.

WRAL News reached out to the third-party firm helping with that search but has not yet heard back.

This article appeared in WRAL News on November 16, 2023.

The post UNC chancellor ‘weighing’ departure for Michigan State University appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

We will leave it to future historians to sort out how America’s institutions of higher education fell so far from their founding visions. The urgent question now is how to fix the problem. One aspect that lies within universities’ power to fix is the ineffective oversight offered by university boards of trustees.

“Too many [trustees] have seen their role narrowly defined as boosters, cheerleaders, and donors,” the American Council of Trustees and Alumni declares in “Governance for a New Era,” a 2014 document. Trustees too often are passive figures, intermittently “dialing it in” as they enjoy the status conferred by their appointments.

The first step to reforming boards of trustees would require universities to ensure that those appointed to their boards are not selected for self-serving reasons. Universities desperately need trustees who focus their institutions on equipping students with the knowledge and cognitive skills required to flourish. Universities can and must identify properly motivated trustees.

Second, universities should ensure that their boards have a firm grasp of why and how their university functions. Universities are complex operations. Trustees often admonish universities to run themselves “like a business.” This perspective has some merit, but universities are in the business of creating public goods and social value by generating knowledge and developing future leaders—both long-term goals that don’t always align easily with bottom-line thinking. Trustees need to understand this.

Ideally, each board member would offer a unique set of capabilities and perspectives. The board should include the voices of faculty, students, administrators, and alumni. Ensuring the board has representatives from each of these cohorts gives it insights into academic matters and on-campus issues. For example, all Florida state school boards of trustees include one faculty member (selected by peers as faculty senate president) and one student member (selected by peers as student body president). Of course, while a board can benefit from having such representatives, it also can be challenged by conflicts of interest and provincial concerns of these interested parties. It is crucial that boards balance these interests.

Beyond student and faculty members, boards should also include trustees with financial and operational skills. You may not be able directly to map the operations of a public research university with those of a private enterprise, but universities can benefit from the private sector’s knowledge of how to run a tightly organized business. Skilled business executives’ insights and financial knowledge could be valuable very helpful, especially given the byzantine, government-influenced financial systems in which most universities operate. A good board can make sure that financial monitoring and reporting systems provide timely and useful information to university management.

Finally, universities could appoint external faculty to their boards of trustees. External faculty bring experience from other universities, sometimes with more efficient, effective, and innovative processes. They may have dealt with key issues such as academic freedom, intellectual diversity, and setting educational strategies. The most desirable external faculty will have considerable experience obtaining grants and gifts for research and programs. External faculty trustees who come from out of state reduce the potential for board cronyism, provided they do not have in-state business interests.

Reversing the rot in higher education is analogous to getting a supertanker in the ocean to make the proverbial 180-degree turn—it will take time and energy. One place to start is making sure that the people on the bridge—the trustees advising the universities—possess the motivation and skill to see it through.

This piece appeared in the City Journal on November 1, 2023.

The post Shake Up the Boards appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Featured Panels

Speaker Highlights

For those interested in seeing the full event, click the link here to see the full broadcast.

The post Ohio Public University Trustee Governance Symposium 2023 appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.