The Wall Street Journal praises Hank Brown, departing president of the University of Colorado.
Mr. Brown proceeded to oversee a complete examination of Mr. [Ward] Churchill’s work, and the ethnic studies professor was eventually fired because of fraudulent scholarship, not his politics. Mr. Brown then initiated a complete review of CU’s tenure policies, making it easier for his successors to get rid of deadwood. He also took on the equally sensitive subject of grade inflation, insisting that the university disclose student class rank on transcripts. If a B average puts a student at the bottom of his class, future employers will know it.
That all sounds like a good day’s work to me. Meanwhile, the selection of incoming president Bruce Benson has ruffled some feathers. From The Denver Post:
The 69-year-old oil executive was a controversial choice from the moment he emerged as the lone finalist for the job, despite his long history as an advocate for education.
He has only a bachelor’s degree, raising concerns about his academic qualifications to lead a research university. That might have been overlooked, but he made remarks during forums at the university that raised the anger of an already skeptical audience, among them a suggestion that climate change could be an unproven theory.
We will have to wait and see how this appointment works out. Benson’s lack of academic credentials puts him at a disadvantage. On the other hand, we are now told that most college courses are being taught by non-tenure-track faculty and the majority of full-time higher-education employees are administrators, not faculty.
Universities have become top-heavy bureaucratic nightmares, and college presidents are forced to spend an inordinate percentage of their efforts on fundraising. In this environment, the regents may be justified in placing more weight on management and fundraising skills than a record of scholarly achievements.
Unfortunately, the criticism of Benson from faculty seems to degrade rapidly into complaints about his political views – not that he is partisan, but that he supports the wrong political party. This, along with Benson’s questioning of liberal orthodoxy, leads faculty to charge that the university has sold its soul to the devil.
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Does it matter to you that the person who wrote the two posts you link at the end – that would be me – is a) not a Democrat and b) not a member of the CU faculty?
I thank Dr. Slammy for his comment. And yes, I find it reassuring both that he is not a Democrat and that he is not a member of the CU faculty. I apologize if I have implicitly slandered him on either account, but he presses the arguments of the CU faculty rather well. As he points out, his article “Has the University Sold Its Soul to the Devil” paraphrases the “indictment” of Benson by faculty member Margaret LeCompte. Since his article presents faculty criticism, I think it is fair for me to attribute such criticism to the faculty.
The other article by Dr. Slammy, while it does not purport to represent the views of the faculty, clearly labels the Republican Party as the cause of the University’s problems. This is in keeping with LeCompte’s criticism of Benson’s history as a Republican activist and news accounts, such as “Faculty Says ‘No’ to Benson,” in which faculty members complain of Benson’s ties to the Republican Party.
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