Ann Cudd’s Disrupted Presidency

The tables facing the stage were filled, plates of food sitting next to cans of flavored seltzer water. Even more faculty stood behind them, abandoning their welcome-back conversations to hear what Ann Cudd, who is beginning her second year as Portland State University’s president, would have to say at the annual faculty convocation.

The crowd listened courteously as Cudd punctuated the start of her speech with a bold proclamation: “Welcome to fall term 2024 and what I would like us to consider to be the beginning of Portland State University’s next great era. We stand on the edge of tremendous potential — our students have never needed PSU more, our city has never needed PSU more, we have never needed each other more.”

There was no applause to greet her pronouncement. No shouts of acclaim. Cudd quickly moved on. When she concluded, the crowd gave her polite applause as she left the podium.

Last year, Cudd entered the presidency — her first — with a clear problem to solve: The university’s enrollment and finances were sliding downhill. She would be the one to enforce cuts, guided by a strategic plan. That didn’t happen. The strategic plan and budget cuts were swept away by a wave of protesters who stormed a board meeting, occupied a library, and chained themselves to an administration building. Decisions about the college’s future were replaced by more pressing imperatives, like if and when to send armed police into the library to forcibly remove protesters.

So Cudd left the podium on that mid-September day, effectively one year behind on a solution to budget woes. The lukewarm reception contained a swirl of anxious questions about what lay ahead: Will protests once again roil the campus? Will budget cuts devastate the academic enterprise? Will Cudd survive as president?

There’s no scientific measure for the health of a college presidency. Leaders arrive in a rush of optimism, and often depart in a cloud of ambiguity — promises unfulfilled, constituencies exhausted. Presidents like Cudd occupy the in-between, ejected from her honeymoon phase yet fighting to determine whether she’ll be known as a president who remade Portland State or one who spent her five-year contract as a caretaker.

The start of this academic year is a new beginning, a fresh start for a president who saw her first year slip away. But the first impressions have been made. Faculty are nervous, and some students are angry. “We have to build trust with them,” Cudd says, but it’s an uphill battle. She believes the fate of the university, and even the region, depends on her success.

“This is a place that has to exist,” she said during the convocation. “The city needs us, our students need us, yet we are having tough times. There’s no way around that.”

“I think it was a trial by fire,” Cudd told The Chronicle of her first year. “I’m not burned up or burned out. I feel like I’ve been able to establish that I’m a decent person who is trying their best.”

Cudd’s office is on the eighth floor of the administration building, with large windows looking out on downtown Portland. On a clear day like this fall Monday, Mount St. Helens is visible. But Cudd, freshly changed out of her tennis shoes, isn’t gazing out. She’s working on finalizing the strategic plan, going over the goals and how to measure success or failure.

One of the goals: increase community engagement. How do you measure that? “How about the number of galas the president has to attend?” Cudd says, drawing laughter from her chief of staff.

Had things gone well last year, the plan would already be done. It was a directive from the board, made explicit during the hiring process. “We didn’t keep that a secret from any of the candidates,” said Benjamin Berry, the board chairman. The plan would then guide cuts to get the university on firmer financial footing.

Portland State is relatively young. Founded in 1946, it moved to downtown Portland from a neighboring town in the early 1950s after a flood wiped that town out. Today it’s one of the largest landowners in the downtown area, occupying about 50 acres on the southwest edge.

Cudd came to Portland State from the University of Pittsburgh, where she was provost. She replaced Stephen Percy, who was elevated from dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs to interim president in 2019, when Rahmat Shoureshi was forced out. Shoureshi’s departure followed investigations by local media into his mistreatment of staff and spending habits.

During both Percy’s and Shoureshi’s tenures, Portland State struggled with enrollment declines. Percy, who became the permanent president in 2020, told the student newspaper in 2022 that the university had lost students every year during the previous decade.

When Percy stepped down, his provost, Susan Jeffords, began an academic-program review, an evaluation of the university’s offerings that often precedes cuts. That left faculty in an “anxious” mood about what the new administration might do, said Emily Ford, president of the faculty union.

All this was swirling around as Cudd and her husband left Pittsburgh and headed west on their own version of the Oregon Trail. On the trip, she solidified her decision to make a major move early in her tenure.

On her first day in office, in August 2023, she announced Jeffords would be leaving the university and appointed a replacement. The former provost had lost the trust of the faculty, Cudd said, and the new president felt Jeffords’s policy on remote learning and remote work had been overly permissive.

Cudd spent her first fall trying to meet everyone she could. She quickly realized all eyes were on her and her every move. Among her tasks: Start the strategic-planning process. Replace several senior leaders and direct staff, including her chief of staff and six deans. “It’s an opportunity to build a new cohort of deans, and we were able to diversify the deans,” she said.

She even tried unconventional ways to introduce herself. The university produced a video of Cudd working out with the football team, finishing a dead lift while players went crazy behind her, mean mugging from inside a helmet as she led the team onto the field in full uniform. It went viral, with several million views across TikTok, Instagram, and X. Local media chimed in with lighthearted coverage.

The next time Portland State got that much exposure, it wasn’t for anything nearly as fun.

The day after Cudd huddled with her chief of staff over the strategic plan, she heads across downtown for a new groundbreaking. Wearing a black pantsuit and a green scarf, Cudd walks with the quick athletic stride of a runner, her short hair bouncing as she motors along. A couple of staff members are alongside, as is a plainclothes policeman, who will trail her all day. The first big campuswide event of the year — the convocation — is this afternoon, so the protection plan that begun during the spring protests is back in place.

As Cudd approaches the building site, a university staffer directs her down a path. A few minutes later she’s shaking hands with deans, donors, and politicians under a large white tent.

The new Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design building was paid for by a major donor and more than $80 million in bonds from the Oregon Legislature. Speakers take the podium to talk up the new structure and its role in revitalizing Portland, which has been haunted by a slide in its national reputation in recent years, due in large part to a portrayal of lawlessness stemming from the 2020 protests and of a city overrun by homeless residents.

The university is also in talks with the city to build a new performing-arts center. In August, Cudd told the City Council that the university had “a vested interest in reclaiming downtown Portland as a world-class destination.”

Business leaders welcomed the sentiment. “We need investment from Portland State for the continued success of our economy and to help draw people from all over the world to see what Portland is about,” said Andrew Hoan, president and chief executive of the Portland Business Alliance and the Portland Metro Chamber.

The university’s slogan is repeated at every turn: “Let knowledge serve the city.”

It is a reminder of the stakes of Cudd’s presidency, and it gets referenced over and over again during the event. The health of a city, not just a university, is on the line.

After a reception, Cudd and her provost, Shelly Chabon, walk to a new-faculty luncheon, trailed by the plainclothes policeman. On the way they pass the Branford P. Millar Library, turning their heads to look at it.

Five months earlier, Cudd spoke directly to the students occupying that library. Wearing a Portland State Vikings green quarter-zip pullover, Cudd looked straight into a camera and told them to leave.

The protests had started in January, when a group stormed a board meeting, demanding that the university, among other things, divest from weapons manufacturers, specifically Boeing. Cudd was surprised. The university’s ties to the Seattle-based aerospace giant were limited to a donation from Boeing to name a classroom and just under $30,000 a year for scholarships. “I thought, surely I’m not hearing that correctly,” she remembered months later. “It didn’t make sense.”

Moreover, she was taken aback by the intensity. “The masking and the violence of the first one took me by surprise,” she said, recalling how students used the siren function of a bullhorn to stop the meeting and then shouted into it before board members retreated from the board room. Board members were also blocked from leaving a parking structure.

The protests accelerated in April alongside others nationwide when Columbia University forcibly broke up an encampment there. Days later, Portland State protesters repeated their demand. Cudd responded with a concession: The university would pause its relationship with Boeing.

She hoped to draw protesters to the bargaining table, to have a discussion about what they wanted. They weren’t interested in those discussions, Cudd said. “That seemed like the adult thing to do,” she said of pausing connections to Boeing. “It was a small but meaningful thing. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake because it gave me no leverage. They seemed to think I was just doing it as some sort of trick.”

Protesters then set up tents in a city park. When those were cleared, they took over the library. They barricaded themselves in, using furniture to block doors and scrawling graffiti on the inside and outside, including “Free Gaza” in large green letters on windows in the middle of the building.

Some of the graffiti repeated chants and demands used in previous protests: “Abolish Israel” and “From the river to the sea.” Others were cruder and personally directed at Cudd, according to a list she shared with the Faculty Senate, including “Fuck Cudd” and “Death to Admin.”

“That was hard,” Cudd recalled. “It made me feel like it did earlier when I would be on the street and people wearing masks would scream at me. My heart would race and I felt like I had to defend myself.”

She said she knew in her head that she wasn’t in danger — and she got lots of messages of support — but it didn’t stop her emotional reaction.

“I felt lonely,” she said. “I’m new in the city. I don’t have a huge group of friends here other than my work friends. It was hard to have refuge from the onslaught.”

Videos of the library shared with local media show tents set up near circulation desks, tables and other furniture jammed against doors and in hallways, some broken apart. A big red medic sign painted on a wall pointed those inside to an improvised medical area. Across the floor someone painted: “Property will never be above a life. Free Palestine. Glory to the martyrs.”

On April 30, Cudd addressed the protesters by video, glancing down at her prepared remarks and back to the camera. “I’m willing to talk to you, to enter into a constructive dialogue with you,” she said, pumping her fists for emphasis. “We cannot, however, allow the continued occupation of the Millar Library. That’s just plain and simple. We’ve asked the Portland Police Bureau to help us remove the occupiers from the library. It’s not safe for our students, and it seriously hampers our ability to serve our students and fulfill our academic mission. … We want you to come out of the library.”

Portland State closed its entire campus for three days and repeatedly warned those inside the library that they were committing criminal trespass. Cudd huddled with city leaders about what to do. Hanging over their talks was the aftermath of the George Floyd protests in Portland. Tensions ran deep about the city’s response, which included the deployment of federal officers. Leaders weighed the risks of overreacting against the safety risks posed by the occupation.

Cudd offered those inside the chance to leave by 1:30 a.m. on May 1. Some did, but not all. So around 6 a.m. the following morning, Portland police began broadcasting messages over loudspeakers urging all to leave and moved to clear the library shortly thereafter. Some protesters ran out the front door, and others were arrested.

When the police left, some protesters went back into the library, prompting another clear-out. But that wasn’t the end of the protests. A few weeks later, a group of protesters chained themselves to the administration building on campus. As police tried to forcibly remove them, Portland State’s police chief collapsed from an apparent medical issue. Portland State said protesters tried to block medical aid from getting to him, and police shoved protesters out of the way. Some protesters have filed lawsuits against the university.

Cudd had had enough. “This cannot continue; it is not a campus atmosphere that can sustain any of us at Portland State,” she wrote in a statement to campus. “I will continue to enforce rules that I believe keep the campus safe in the long run.”

The next day, Cudd and the head of the student government issued a joint statement: “First, we are heartbroken over the devastating loss of innocent civilian lives in Israel and Gaza, and the horrific, ongoing suffering in Gaza,” it read, going on to support calls for a ceasefire.

Cudd had made concessions — the university announced it would host a Palestinian scholar in 2025 and create scholarships for students affected by the war in Gaza — but she had also drawn a hard line.

That impression, particularly the decision to call in Portland police, created tension with the faculty. Days after the occupation ended, Cudd defended herself before a meeting of the Faculty Senate. How long should she have tolerated the fire hazard, the destruction of the library, and the hateful language, she asked the group, according to the meeting minutes. What other options did she have?

That didn’t quell the criticism. At the next Faculty Senate meeting, some professors submitted a formal question for Cudd, asking her to drill down on what speech she considered objectionable. “When there is a lack of clarity accompanied by a sense of fear or taboo, that is when speech is most effectively chilled — including political speech about oppression and injustice,” they wrote. They asked if Cudd thought sayings like “From the river to the sea” or “Free Palestine” were calls for genocide against Jewish people, or if they were calls against the genocide of Palestinians.

Cudd responded by reading from the list of obscene language scrawled on the library’s walls. She thought many were too obscene to read in the meeting, but she highlighted others. (Included on the list were “Long live the Intifada,” “Abolish Israel,” and “Zionists die.”) Several speakers then criticized her handling of the crisis.

Months later, the fallout lingers. But the library that Cudd and Chabon, the provost, regard while traversing the campus looks no worse for wear. Gone are the barricades. The graffiti has been scrubbed, and the windows are clean. Repairs cost about $1.2 million.

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'Cudd lied'

An encampment by pro-Palestine students on Portland State’s campus

John Rudoff, AFP, Getty Images

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Damage to the library

Graffiti and other damage at a circulation desk in the Millar Library

Portland State University

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'Glory to the martyrs'

Protesters scrawled this graffiti on the floor of the Millar Library

Portland State University

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Damage and debris

Remains of furniture and other objects against a window of the Millar Library

Mark Graves, The Oregonian

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Defaced books

A spray painted slogan on book spines in the Millar Library

Portland State University

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A chaotic scene

Repairs to the library cost the university about $1.2 million

Mark Graves, The Oregonian

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'Cudd lied'

An encampment by pro-Palestine students on Portland State’s campus

John Rudoff, AFP, Getty Images

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Cudd is one of the first to arrive at the faculty convocation, and she starts mingling. She occasionally pulls out her phone to show off her new puppy — a red-haired doodle named Walton for the iconic red-headed Portland Trail Blazers basketball player Bill Walton, who died in May 2024.

After the dramatic opening to her speech, Cudd nods to the challenges. War abroad. A polarizing presidential election. “At the same time, we at Portland State will continue to wrestle with our future as an institution, recommitting to our core values, assessing with clear eyes the needs of our students and focusing on redefining the institution as an enduring force for positive change for them, their families, our employees, and our region,” she says.

For the next several minutes, she outlines her vision for the future of the university that details what it will take to get to a Portland State in 2064 that is prosperous and bustling, wrapped around a city that is the same. “Our beloved city has leaned into its identity as a vibrant hub for living, playing, working, and learning — and Portland State University is its bright, beating heart,” she says.

The university is a long way from that vision. Once the largest public university in the state, it has lost about a quarter of its enrollment in the past 10 years, and another drop is forecast this fall. “We have a structural budget problem,” Cudd says. “We have to solve that or we are going to continue to be trapped in making cuts after cuts every year like we have been doing. We have to make serious decisions.”

The strategic plan was necessary, but its impact would be delayed; it wouldn’t be done by the time budgeting for her second academic year would need to begin. Cudd didn’t want to prematurely cut a program that the strategic-planning process would suggest investing money in, but she knew she couldn’t wait over a year to make tough decisions even if the goal all along was to make the major budget moves in the 2024-25 academic year.

So Cudd made one cut, ending the intensive English-language program and laying off 12 related people. There simply weren’t enough students enrolled to keep the program afloat, she said.

The decision didn’t sit well with the faculty. The union disputed the need for the elimination, saying that the program’s net revenue was trending upward and that it wasn’t given enough time to benefit from post-pandemic international enrollment.

Faculty in the program got word of the elimination the same day they were set to give input on the strategic plan, said Ford, the faculty-union president. And the cut was made over formal opposition from the Faculty Senate. That’s led professors to wonder whether the administration would follow shared governance in future cuts.

They’ve already started to get that answer, Ford said, as they sit at the bargaining table, trying to get a new contract. The current contract ends on November 30. The administration is seeking to change the process for layoffs, Ford said. “They are claiming they need flexibility,” she said. “It’s disrespectful and deeply demoralizing.”

Meanwhile, the union disputes the efficacy of a cut-first strategy. “The board cannot cut its way to stability,” Ford said. “There are viable enrollment-growth opportunities, and a thriving university is a fully staffed university.” In comments submitted to the board in September, the union said trustees were “too ambitious in expecting that programmatic cuts made this year will result in any immediate savings to campus” and weren’t reckoning with the unseen costs of cuts, like whether cuts to student services “will result in students being underserved.”

The strategic plan does call for investing in high-demand fields, and to make sure students understand pathways from programs of study to jobs. But it will lead to cuts. Adding more money to the budget in the hopes of sparking growth won’t make up the shortfall, Cudd said, in part because reserves will run out before results are seen.

“That’s an unrealistic view that we’re going to get back to the size we were,” she said, adding that she thinks Portland State is at the right size today. She thinks it needs to specialize in key areas where it can distinguish itself from other universities.

“We are still a university and are going to still be a university, but we aren’t going to be everything to everybody. Some of our colleagues will not have jobs at Portland State in a year.”

That can be a tough message for faculty to swallow, especially as public money is used for state-of-the-art buildings. They want to see administrators step up their lobbying for funding.

Cudd, an admitted novice in Oregon politics, has been learning the ropes. She made a splash in September, hiring Earl Blumenauer, a longtime Democratic congressman who is retiring from political life, as a presidential fellow and adviser.

Talk to people around campus, and they don’t mention appointments like these. Jill Emery, the Faculty Senate’s presiding officer, told the board last month that “collective trauma” still lingers. “Right now,” she said, “very few of us are feeling empowered or supported.”

Sloan Oakrest, a second-year graduate student in chemistry, has observed the same. “The first few months were exciting,” they said. “Then the protests started happening. Ann Cudd’s response was really aggressive really fast. Students wanted to occupy the library they pay for.”

Oakrest, a vice president for communications for the Graduate Employee Union, believes Cudd should have talked more and “shown more empathy,” especially for the “peaceful protesters.”

Oakrest also doesn’t believe deep cuts are necessary. “I sit across the [bargaining table] from people making half a million dollars, and they argue we need to cut.”

The campus has already felt the effects of austerity, they said. In Oakrest’s department, biology and physics graduate students are teaching chemistry labs because of staffing issues. “The morale is shitty,” Oakrest said. “Then they are going to start cutting our supports and diminishing our programs. Why are students going to want to stay? We already aren’t competitive [with other universities]. I don’t feel supported at all. I really want to have school spirit. I can’t.”

The clock is ticking. “The next six weeks are going to be the defining moment for the Cudd administration,” said Ford at the end of September.

The investiture ceremony for a new president is supposed to be a capstone event. Speakers and guests visit from all over the country. The pomp and circumstance are at their zenith. Optimism abounds. Presidents proclaim, in sweeping terms, the wonders that will occur during their tenure.

But with the nation’s news media streaming pictures of armed police battling with protesters from her campus, Cudd decided to cancel her mid-May ceremony.

The ceremony was rescheduled for the end of the first board meeting of the fall, in September. It would be a chance to celebrate Cudd and the start of her time at the helm.

But, because nothing could go as planned, Cudd got Covid. She attended the board meeting virtually. There was no pomp, no circumstance, just Cudd on screen from her house, promising to do her best in what promises to be a challenging year.

“I was determined to have an investiture of some sort and, in line with our operational streamlining, I think this is a very appropriate one,” she said, drawing laughs from the trustees.

Then she got serious.

“The first 14 months of my presidency has, at some points, felt like a trial by fire, but I’ve never lost my enduring optimism for the future of Portland State University.”