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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Just this past month, Washington College saw an invited speaker (ironically giving a talk titled “The Truth-Seeking Mission of the University”) halted by a heckler’s veto . As student protesters shouted down any attempts to continue the discussion, campus security took no action to stop what was clearly a direct violation of the college’s event policies as well as its core values of “curiosity, civility, leadership, and moral courage.” Incidents such as this (in which a school fails to live up to both its internal policies as well as its basic responsibilities as an academic institution) arise in part due to a failure of governance.

Running a college is a messy business at the best of times. With students, administrators, and faculty from various departments vying for limited resources, campus leaders are under immense pressure from wildly different entrenched interests. Enter the trustee. While individual constituencies are focused on their own limited role within the institution, boards of trustees are tasked with viewing the big picture and ensuring that all major actions taken by the institution are in line with its mission. A properly constituted board brings members together from multiple professions with diverse experiences, all of whom provide a rich, broad view of what students need for future success.

As unpaid volunteers, trustees are the only members of the community capable of acting as fiduciaries, tasked with placing their institution’s mission and community’s well-being above reputational or even financial expediencies. This unique position allows them to hold accountable any member of the community who would (whether intentionally or unintentionally) act in a way that violates the school’s mission or the rights of another campus constituency. Trustees, of course, under normal circumstances, do not act autonomously but rather partner with administrative and faculty leaders. They do this through the norm of shared governance , which calls for “shared responsibility and cooperative action among the components of the academic institution.”

Why, then, is it so rare for boards to be involved when a controversy unfolds on campus? The answer is both simple and sad: They are told it is not their place to act.

For decades, faculty and education leaders pushed trustees to adopt an “ eyes on, hands-off ” approach to governance. Where shared governance was first invoked by faculty and administrators to demand a seat at the table when discussing important topics such as resource allocation, presidential searches, and budgeting, it is now commonplace for trustees to defer to another constituency’s expertise completely in the name of shared governance. Faculty and administrators are effectively expected to self-police without trustee intervention.

Meanwhile the Association of Governing Boards, the nation’s oldest and largest organization focusing on higher education governance, even chastised “activist trustees” who dared request “independent sources of information” rather than relying on what was provided to the board by a school’s president. Boards are treated as little more than boosters, and their fiduciary responsibilities have been reduced to rubber-stamping any proposal that had been already vetted by other campus leaders.

Many of the problems facing higher education can be traced back to this push for passive trusteeship. When administrators proposed tuition hikes far beyond the rate of inflation, trustees ought to have considered the impact saddling a generation of students with $1.7 trillion in student debt would have on their financial futures. When faculty began to lower academic standards in the name of prioritizing completion rates, trustees ought to have ensured that students received the rich, high-quality education they needed to thrive. And when institutions began adopting blatantly unconstitutional “free speech zones,” trustees ought to have stepped in and reminded the campus community of their moral and legal responsibilities.

As confidence in American higher education has plummeted , it has become clear that this model of passive trustee governance can no longer stand. This does not mean that trustees should become micromanagers, only that they must live up to their proper role as engaged, informed stewards of their institution. In the words of the late Benno Schmidt, a past president of Yale University and the former board chairman of the City University of New York, “ Shared governance — which demands an inclusive decision-making process — cannot and must not be an excuse for board inaction at a time when America’s pre-eminent role in higher education is threatened.”

This article was originally published by the Washington Examiner on September 25, 2023.

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Mr. Ridenour has remained deeply involved with his alma mater, serving until recently as the chairman of the Miami University Board of Trustees. Previously, he held office as vice chair, treasurer, and committee chair. He also volunteers with Miami University’s Community Outreach and Recruiting Programs.

With a passion for service, Mr. Ridenour has served on the boards of many nonprofit organizations, including several independent high schools, Lourdes University, the Toledo Zoological Society, and Mercy Health Partners. He is the president of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Northwest Ohio Affiliate.

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The shift, outlined in a measure signed by Governor Spencer Cox in March, amended a previous law that established the structure of state higher ed governance. The new measure follows a 2022 audit that determined that the current governing body “does not fulfill its statutory authority to ‘monitor, control, and supervise’ the Utah System of Higher Education.”

Senator Ann Millner, who sponsored the proposal to streamline the board, said her hope was to establish a more nimble, agile governing body with greater clarity of its roles and responsibilities and increased accountability.

“The audit really gave us the capability of assessing how we were doing,” she said. “Our goal had been all along to have the board be more strategic, to provide governance and oversight at a much bigger picture level.”

The amendments also:

• Requires the board to provide the state Legislature an annual data report on the system’s quality, affordability, workforce alignment and operational efficiency.
• Expands the duties of the system’s Commissioner of Higher Education to “better assist the board” in executing its strategic plan.
• Instructs the board to establish shared services among the system’s colleges and universities to reduce spending on Title IX compliance, admissions, informational technology and human resources, and other services.
• Allows the board to consolidate or terminate programs deemed ineffective or inefficient following a review once every seven years.

Representative Karen Peterson, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said students would be better served as a result of these measures.

“By focusing on an efficient and streamlined system, students are benefited with lower costs and institutions whose programming allows for students to seamlessly move between them,” she said via email. “I want Utah’s system of higher education to be relevant, affordable, and an asset in meeting Utah’s economic and quality of life objectives.”

These moves come at a time when state higher ed systems across the country are facing enrollment declines and are under pressure from state lawmakers to produce measurable student outcomes. Some state systems are also consolidating their campuses, while others, like Utah, are centralizing oversight of their systems.

The changes also are occurring against the backdrop of the increasing politicization of some governing boards by state governors and a growing public debate about the value and need for a college degree. Kevin P. Reilly, president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin system and a senior consultant for the Association of Governing Boards of Colleges and Universities, said he believes while politics can sometimes play a role in such decisions, Utah’s decisions are clearly being driven by prioritizing the workforce and economic development needs of the state.

“Any structure can work depending on what the state and its leaders, and hopefully the people of the state … want at any given time from their higher ed system” he said. “In some ways, it’s always a move toward greater or lesser power at the central level … depending on what’s happening in that state,” he said.

The Utah board was last revamped in spring 2020, when the state’s eight traditional degree-granting institutions and eight technical colleges, previously governed by separate boards, were merged under one system.

Although two overhauls in a relatively short amount of time is atypical, the general concept of re-evaluating and restructuring a governance system is not.

“Bottom line, this is not an unusual move by Utah. It’s in line with what’s going on in many other places,” Reilly said.

Mary Fulton, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States, tracks state restructurings nationally and developed a method to categorize their systems of governance in a 2019 analysis. She says the patterns aren’t necessarily straightforward with “nice, clear trends.”

“It’s common for policy education leaders to propose and sometimes adopt minor to significant post-secondary governance reforms for various reasons,” she said. “These reforms can be complicated and take time to implement.”

The state systems now in place have morphed over time, influenced by state history, politics, culture and the nuanced needs and desires of its constituents, she and others said.

“I think the key thing to know about the state of Utah is that by and large, and historically, we’ve been a very institutionally focused state, meaning that the institution has most of the power and decision-making,” said Paul Rubin, assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Utah.

Rubin said that although the recent restructurings were designed to establish more centralized authority, the board still doesn’t have as much day-to-day influence as institutional level decision-makers or the Office of the Commissioner.

He also noted that many of Utah’s institutions already prioritize state workforce goals.

“It fits very much with how Utah as a state has come to view higher education, and just views higher education generally, which is that it’s to support the economy and support the workforce,” Rubin said. “In some ways, this was a solution that they were trying to go for without actually having a problem to attach it to.”

John Ferguson, president of Utah State University’s Faculty Senate, said faculty members appreciate state lawmakers’ interest in improving higher education oversight, but they also hope the restructuring is viewed as an opportunity to ensure faculty have a voice in the process.

Faculty will continue to push for “more—really, any—faculty representation at these decision-making levels,” Ferguson said.

“We run into the problem where people who weren’t involved in higher education tend to default into seeing higher education as merely job prep, or trade school,” he said of board members and state lawmakers. “The function of higher education, many of us believe, is that it’s to prepare citizens and to prepare the next generation.”

The state audit does show there’s room for improvement on student outcomes, however.

When compared to peer institutions, the University of Utah, the state’s flagship institution, and Utah State University, its land-grant institution, consistently ranked below average in retention and graduation rates from 2016 to 2020, according to data collected by the auditor general. The two institutions’ low rankings reflect a pattern of performance below that of peer colleges and universities across the state, with the exceptions of Salt Lake Community College, which had a higher graduation rate, and Snow College, which had higher retention and graduation rates.

“It’s not enough to say, well, we have great access to people in the state of Utah,” Reilly said. There is an increased emphasis on questions like, “Do they progress in a reasonable amount of time, through your institution? Do they graduate from that institution in a reasonable amount of time? And do they get out with skills that are useful in the marketplace?”

Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, described many recent boards as “sleepy,” not actively in tune with institutional performance.

“It’s good to see that some of these boards are being poked and prodded to fulfill their institutional and their statutory, fiduciary responsibilities,” Beltramini said.

Utah’s efforts to improve system efficiency and promote economic development are not only reflected in changes to legislation, but also in the governor’s nominees.

Cox announced his 10 candidates, all of whom were new board members, in late May. Seven of the 10 have backgrounds in either business or tech.

All nine of the nominees were affirmed by the Senate Education Confirmation Committee on June 5 and by the full Senate on June 15. (There’s also a student nominee whose position does not require committee approval.) They are scheduled to take office July 1.

“It’s clear from the appointment of business leaders that the governor wants the board to focus on the state’s economic and workforce development needs,” said Tom Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

“From the governor’s perspective, a board overhaul provides a unique opportunity to appoint the full board instead of replacing one member at a time. This can lead to higher education priorities that are closely aligned his agenda.”

Beltramini said he sees Utah’s move as a bipartisan effort to strengthen higher ed, and “that’s exactly what we’d like to see.”

Reilly, the former president of the University of Wisconsin system, is more circumspect about what he sees as “unfortunate” increased involvement by governors in selecting nominees to state boards and said “higher ed has been caught out in the political division of the country.”

Fulton, the consultant for Education Commission of the States, said more board consolidations such as Utah’s are possible elsewhere, and she predicts the changes will likely be driven more by local workforce needs than politics.

“We possibly could see some additional examples of consolidation,” she said. “Utah has spent a few years really evaluating what makes sense for their state … and in the current environment … as they look down the road, it seems to be driven by the demographic changes that were happening in the state.”

This article appeared on Inside Higher Ed on June 16, 2023.

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This publication is part of The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Institute For Effective Governance.

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