A Friday news conference at the University of Mississippi to announce its new chancellor descended into pandemonium, then was canceled, after protesters disrupted the meeting and a few were removed from the room by police officers.
That just about sums up the dominant reaction to the news, first reported on Thursday by the local media, that Glenn Boyce would be the next chancellor of the university, whose main campus is in Oxford. On Friday the university confirmed that Boyce, who had been hired as a consultant for the chancellor-search process, was the new chancellor.
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A Friday news conference at the University of Mississippi to announce its new chancellor descended into pandemonium, then was canceled, after protesters disrupted the meeting and a few were removed from the room by police officers.
That just about sums up the dominant reaction to the news, first reported on Thursday by the local media, that Glenn Boyce would be the next chancellor of the university, whose main campus is in Oxford. On Friday the university confirmed that Boyce, who had been hired as a consultant for the chancellor-search process, was the new chancellor.
Boyce hadn’t submitted a formal application to the board of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, which oversees the state’s public colleges, and his appointment cut the search short. Students, faculty, and Oxford locals marched across the campus and brandished signs that said, “Not My Choice, Not My Chancellor” and “Joke of a Process.” Outside the news conference, they chanted, “No Glenn Boyce! We have a voice!”
A few of them, including Garrett Felber, an assistant professor of American history, were forcibly removed from the meeting by the police, Felber told The Chronicle. A livestream of the conference shows a police officer lifting and carrying a female protester out of the room as she struggles.
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If you’re going to make a unilateral decision about the university’s future, not only without community input, but in spite of it, you’re going to meet resistance, Felber said.
A news release announcing Boyce’s appointment said that he had enjoyed an “expansive career in secondary and postsecondary education” and has deep ties to the institution.
Boyce previously served as commissioner of the state’s Institutions of Higher Learning, whose board chose him as chancellor. After several candidates were interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday, Boyce was granted what’s called a “back door” interview, reported Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news outlet. That means the board and other search consultants reached out to him privately and included him late in the process.
Shortly after the interview ended, the outlet reported, citing several sources close to the process, a motion was made to appoint Boyce, who was president of Holmes Community College before he was the IHL’s commissioner. The University of Mississippi Foundation, the university’s fund-raising arm, had reportedly contracted with Boyce to meet with influential alumni about what they wanted in a chancellor, and to speak with candidates after Jeffrey S. Vitter resigned as chancellor, in 2018. (The IHL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
After news of Boyce’s appointment broke, the backlash was swift. Four years ago, when Vitter visited the campus, some doubted that the visit had any meaningful impact, the editorial board of the student newspaper wrote. But at least the IHL “pretended that student, faculty, and staff thoughts and experiences mattered.”
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“Choosing Tony the Landshark as a mascot was a more legitimate process,” the editorial read.
Anne Twitty, an associate professor of history, told The Chronicle she felt shock, confusion, and “tremendous frustration” when she learned of Boyce’s appointment. On Friday morning, Twitty said, she and her colleagues spent time just trying to figure out who Boyce is and what his priorities are. She said she was concerned about what type of chancellor would agree to take the job, knowing there’d been a lack of transparency.
It seems, to Twitty, like the worst possible way to start off a chancellorship — with everyone mad you were chosen in the first place.
Boyce’s potential shift from consultant to candidate had been rumored, at least in some local circles, for weeks. On September 5, during a public session, an Oxford businessman told the 12-member board that a “very disturbing rumor” was floating around that trustees would review all of the applicants and “nobody is quite going to come up to par,” so the job will be offered to a “former consultant” who was not an applicant. “I’m not here to disparage any particular person,” he said. “All I’m asking is that this please be a fair and legitimate process.”
That same day, Ford Dye, who led the board’s search committee, said he hoped to have a preferred candidate in late October who would visit both the Oxford campus and the medical center, which is in Jackson.
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In June the board had named a campus search advisory committee, made up of 39 faculty members, administrators, and alumni, to review candidates and give recommendations. Aimee C. Nezhukumatathil, a professor of English and creative writing, was on that committee. On Thursday she tweeted a gif of a Dumpster fire and wrote:
hi someone please tell me i didn’t waste hours away from my family for a job that was...utterly pointless‽ excuse me while i go scream into a pillow now. pic.twitter.com/DqAdwEIkim
Brice Noonan, an associate professor of biology and another member of the advisory committee, remembered meeting with Boyce last spring to talk about what he, and other faculty members, wanted in a chancellor. Noonan told The Chronicle he had stressed the importance of academic freedom because it was a live issue on the campus.
Noonan said that Boyce had seemed receptive in their conversation, though he had no idea he was speaking to the man who’d eventually be named as chancellor. Noonan said he was more disappointed not by Boyce as a person but by the board’s process in choosing him. The community deserves to understand its rationale, he said.
In recent years, conservative alumni have criticized the university as veering too far left, Mississippi Today reported. The university distanced itself from its former Rebel mascot, and faculty and student governance groups have presented a united front against a Confederate monument that’s now being relocated from the entrance of the campus.
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One conservative lawmaker saw Boyce’s selection as a win. Trent Lott, a former minority leader of the U.S. Senate and a Mississippi alumnus who infamously praised Strom Thurmond’s segregationist policies, told the Clarion Ledger that he liked Boyce because he can navigate the politics of the job, and “he appears to be a good ol’ boy.”
That good ol’ boy sentiment is “icky,” said James M. Thomas, an associate professor of sociology. It’s something that some people at the university have been working hard to move beyond. And regardless if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you can’t possibly feel good about this selection process, Thomas said.
He’s skeptical of the job that Boyce will be able to do. On Twitter, Thomas tweeted a quote that Boyce gave to the Ledger back in 2015, when Boyce was appointed as the state’s higher-education commissioner. At that time, the board was looking for a chancellor to replace Dan Jones.
“I can tell you it will be an open and transparent process,” Boyce said.
Correction (10/4/2019, 6:06 p.m.): This article originally stated incorrectly that Trent Lott resigned from the U.S. Senate after his pro-segregationist remarks about Thurmond. In fact, while he was forced to step down as minority leader then, he resigned five years later. The article has been updated.