In my previous post on leading on college campuses I suggested that – given the recent turmoil at Columbia University – the president of the university, Nemat Shafik, was likely to have only two choices. One of these was to quit, to resign from her post as president. Just 48 hours later this option was being openly discussed. Yesterday morning, the New York Times informed its readers that “the university faced a swirl of doubts over the future of its president.” And yesterday, no less than the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, visited the Columbia campus and called for Shafik to resign unless she could “immediately bring order to this chaos.”
This is not to say that President Shafik will resign or should. It is, however, to point out how remarkably quickly her position became strikingly, humiliatingly, tenuous. It is also to stress how vulnerable campus leaders are to their followers. Ten days ago, the president of Columbia University seemed reasonably secure in her post. Now her power has been greatly diminished, her authority has been reduced to near vanishing, and her influence is no greater than that of many other Columbia stakeholders who a couple of weeks ago would’ve been expected simply to follow where she led.
Having leaders so easily and frequently undermined is a recipe for disorder. But guess what. People don’t like disorder. We might briefly be interested and even amused by it, but in short order disorder wears thin. It wears thin even on college campuses where issues such as free speech have suddenly become fraught.
It’s no accident that even as some American colleges and universities have been unsettled by unrest, most have not. Most campuses are quiet despite what is happening in Gaza, with administrators, faculty, and students each playing their designated parts. They are quiet not because their leaders are so remarkably effective – though some are – but because in the main disorder is distasteful, especially if it is prolonged or threatens to turn violent. So, overwhelmingly, campuses are peopled by administrators who want to administrate, by instructors who want to instruct, and by students who want to study at least enough to graduate.
If there is a single wise man in higher education, it’s Derek Bok. He was president of Harvard University from 1971 to 1991 and again, on an interim basis, from 2006 to 2007. Now 94 years old, he is widely respected by those who know him, and know of him. Therefore, in the wake of the abrupt resignations of the presidents of Penn and Harvard, late last year and early this one, he wrote an essay that was published twice.* It explored the “public shaming” of several university leaders, and the tide of antagonism toward some of America’s best schools, with Bok suggesting how some of the problems might be alleviated.
He acknowledged that “changes in the larger society” played a role in what was happening. Specifically, elite universities became “more vulnerable to public opinion and government intervention,” making them liable to attacks from “both ends of the political spectrum.” He also pointed out that for years trust in all American institutions has been steadily declining. Hence his question, “Why aren’t elite leaders doing more to protect themselves?” He muses that perhaps they think that their “institutions are too valuable to suffer much harm.” Or perhaps they believe that the “danger will pass before real damage is done.”
Whatever the answer to his question – which now anyway is moot; we know for a fact that President Shafik, for example, has been sensitive for months to the political climate both on her campus and in Washington – Bok had some suggestions on how “elite leaders” might respond to the challenges they faced. These included: immediately correcting mistaken impressions, hiring conservative faculty to correct for the liberal bias of current faculty, identifying instructors who try to indoctrinate their students, providing students with a civic education, and helping them to become proficient in moral reasoning.
Impossible to quarrel with any of the wise man’s wise ideas, several of which would, however, take years to have an effect. Moreover, implementing each might be necessary, but whether they would be sufficient to address the problems he himself idenifies is another matter.
Of course, Bok is hardly the only one to address the question of how campus leaders should lead. Steven Brint, for instance, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of California, Riverside, pointed out that in the old days college and university presidents were expected to be superior scholars and competent administrators. Now, though, they must, absolutely must, be good communicators. They must be able to “provide the public with straight talk and with concrete examples illustrating why their institutions make a difference and are worthy of public support.”
Because context matters, leaders with predecessors who were pushed out are given a period of grace. Case in point: Harvard’s interim president Alan Garber, who succeeded Claudine Gay after her sudden resignation in January. Garber served as Harvard’s provost for many years, so he is deeply familiar with the university he now heads. Still, he has his work cut out for him, including on issues of extreme contentiousness such as free speech, institutional neutrality, and antisemitism. But at least for the time being, most, not all, but most, of Harvard’s stakeholders – the majority of faculty and students among others – have had enough. Tired of constant tensions, and leery of persistent disruptions, they are likely to bestow on their interim leader time to help their campus heal. Which does not of course – as President Shafik would be the first to testify – obviate the larger issue of how to lead on campus in the third decade of the 21st century.
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*Bok’s essay first appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education and then in Harvard Magazine.