University of Virginia Reinstates Ousted President - New York Times

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Facing a torrent of criticism, the University of Virginia trustees made a stunning turnabout on Tuesday, voting unanimously to reinstate the president they had forced to resign over concerns that the university was not adapting fast enough to financial and technological pressures.

The decision by the governing Board of Visitors capped an extraordinary 16 days since the ouster of President Teresa A. Sullivan was made public. The turmoil that led to it opened a window on the pressures public universities face nationwide, as they grapple with shrinking state support, rising tuition, the growing availability of college-level courses online and pressure to shift resources from traditional liberal arts programs to education in business and technology.
As it weighed how to address those challenges, one of the nation’s pre-eminent universities suddenly and unexpectedly forced out a popular leader after two years and with little explanation, spurring students, faculty members, administrators and alumni to unite in her defense, demanding that the board reverse itself. Even the interim president selected by the Board of Visitors said he disagreed with Ms. Sullivan’s removal, and then, as protests grew louder, said he would not fill his new role as long as there was a chance she might be reinstated. After insisting for days that the affair did not involve him, Gov. Bob McDonnell was also drawn into the fray, first criticizing the board’s secrecy — though not its decision — and then, last Friday, demanding that it resolve the matter quickly, or he would ask all of its members to resign.
The board took less than 20 minutes at Tuesday’s special meeting to reinstate her by a vote of 15 to 0.
Ms. Sullivan emerged on the steps of the university’s white-columned rotunda afterward to address a whooping crowd gathered on the central lawn, and quoted something that Thomas Jefferson, designer of the building and founder of the university, wrote upon being elected president: “It is pleasant for those who have just escaped threatened shipwreck to hail one another when landed in unexpected safety.”
The dispute exposed fears about the murky future of higher education at a time of deep cuts in state support and an intensifying debate about whether colleges should run more like businesses. At the same time, expectations are high for a rapid transformation — through costly technology — to online instruction.
In particular, some members of the Board of Visitors, most of whom are business executives, appear to have been shaken by the way prestigious institutions like M.I.T., Stanford and Harvard have dived into the online realm, and wondered if the University of Virginia was being left behind.
Ms. Sullivan said she perceived the many threats to the university, but favored addressing them in a collaborative, incremental way, not the more aggressive, top-down approach favored by the head of the board, or rector, Helen E. Dragas, and the former vice rector, Mark Kington, who were the driving forces behind the president’s ouster.
They organized the move out of the public eye, never raising it at a board meeting, but speaking to board members one at a time, making the case to remove Sullivan. On June 8, Ms. Dragas asked for the president’s resignation, and Ms. Sullivan gave it.
Two days later, the news broke, surprising nearly everyone associated with the university, and the board’s executive committee, with just three of six members present, voted to accept the resignation. The first woman president of the 193-year-old university would also turn out to be the shortest-serving.
At first, Ms. Dragas cited only “philosophical differences.” Later she spoke of the need for bold change, which many people here interpreted as code for budget cuts, but the reasoning offered publicly remained vague.
Ms. Dragas, a real estate developer from Virginia Beach, conceded Tuesday, as she had last week, that she had handled the matter poorly, in particular by not debating the president’s standing in a public board meeting, and then by not adequately explaining the sudden change.
“Into that vacuum there were stories with conspiracy theories and other inaccuracies, and the situation became more dramatized,” she said.
Some of those theories involved politics, though no clear partisan alignment or involvement by political leaders ever emerged; the governor said he had no role in the matter.
The board’s 16 voting members were evenly split between those appointed by Mr. McDonnell, a Republican, and those named by his two Democratic predecessors.
Ms. Dragas was a Democratic appointee. Mr. Kington, a fund manager from Alexandria, was first appointed by Mark Warner, a Democratic governor and now senator, then left the board, and was appointed to it again by Mr. McDonnell. Last week, Mr. Kington resigned from the board, and he has not yet been replaced.
The terms of Ms. Dragas and three other Democratic appointees expire on July 1, and Mr. McDonnell has not said whether he will reappoint any of them.
Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge fund manager and major donor to the university, wrote an article for the local newspaper, The Daily Progress, praising the removal of Ms. Sullivan, fueling speculation that he and perhaps other wealthy contributors had orchestrated it, an assertion that Ms. Dragas flatly denied.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Ms. Dragas argued that what had happened was for the best, because it had “keenly focused the attention of the entire university community” on problems that must be addressed.
“It is unfortunate that we had to have a near-death experience to get here, but we should not waste the opportunity at hand,” she said.
In a sense, Ms. Sullivan agreed, and appealed to alumni, administrators, state lawmakers and faculty members alike to pitch in. “I am not good enough or strong enough or wise enough to do everything that needs doing,” she said.
The two women met before the board meeting, and in a public display of unity, walked together, side by side, to the rotunda.
Still, the officials had a difficult set of options. Ms. Sullivan could return to work with trustees who had wanted to be rid of her, possibly blunting the changes they had hoped to make in the university. Or the board, by sticking to its guns, could continue to weather protests, risk that disaffected professors would make good on threats to leave the university, and embark on a difficult search for a new president.
“I think they understand that they would have an incredibly hard time getting anyone else to take the job after what’s gone on,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, chairman of the media studies department.
Only two board members addressed the matter at hand during the brief meeting: Ms. Dragas and W. Heywood Fralin, the immediate past rector and head of a nursing home company, who moved to reinstate Ms. Sullivan. Mr. Fralin said that while the issues raised by Ms. Dragas were legitimate, he had disagreed with the removal of Ms. Sullivan, and with the process that led to it.
In the near future, he added, the board should “make the changes necessary to prohibit the utilization of this process when dealing with matters of such major importance.”

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