For more than a year now, Illinois’s flagship campus has sought to move past its national image as the institution that revoked a job offer to Steven G. Salaita.
But the decision not to hire the controversial professor has dogged the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which has drawn criticism and boycotts from scholars, along with censure from the American Association of University Professors. Phyllis M. Wise, the chancellor, announced her resignation last week, citing “external issues” that had arisen over the past year. After tumult over the terms of her departure, including a proposed $400,000 payout, the Board of Trustees on Wednesday rejected a resignation deal, named an acting chancellor, and began formal dismissal proceedings against Ms. Wise.
To all of that, add criticism the university is now taking for failing to make public work-related emails that Ms. Wise and other top officials exchanged over private accounts, questions about the institution’s treatment of athletes, and controversy over the employment of a scholar who spent time in prison for his role in a fatal bank robbery in the 1970s. Taken together, what has this year of turmoil cost the university? Where does it go from here?
State leaders warned this week that a change in direction was urgent. Trey Childress, deputy governor of Illinois, pressed the university’s board chairman to reject the resignation deal for Ms. Wise to “send a clear message” that the university will protect both its reputation and its mission.
“We believe the university can and will play a tremendous role in shaping the future of Illinois. It is vital to our state,” Mr. Childress wrote to Edward L. McMillan, the chairman, on Tuesday. “That said, the university is facing many challenges and needs to begin charting a new path.”
The recent spate of headlines has made for the kind of strife and media scrutiny that no university weathers easily. But the reputation of a nearly 150-year-old research university is a formidable thing, and not one that is easy to tarnish in any lasting way, many higher-education analysts said. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is also a member of the Association of American Universities, a prestigious group of 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada.
Mr. Salaita’s case and the subsequent fallout is “unfortunate,” said Stanley O. Ikenberry, a former president of the University of Illinois system and a scholar of higher education. But the real work of the university — changing students’ lives and advancing knowledge — continues despite controversy, he wrote in an email. “Universities have a strength and continuity that transcends events and personalities.”
Limited Harm
Scholars and others who work in higher education have been consumed by a broad debate about academic freedom and professors’ rights in the wake of the university’s decision about Mr. Salaita, but most prospective students and their parents have not. Those families are more likely to see the past year’s saga as “an academic dust-up,” said Gene Grabowski, a crisis-communications consultant for colleges and partner at KGlobal, a public-relations company. The scandal, he said, is unlikely to hurt enrollment.
The Salaita controversy also is unlikely to have any long-term effect on fund raising, said Sue Cunningham, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A temporary drop in support is possible, she wrote in an email, but the relationships that universities form with alumni who donate are for the long term, by definition. A university’s dedicated supporters, she wrote, understand that every organization faces challenges from time to time.
Sometimes, controversy can even work to rally the university’s most-loyal alumni to give more, if they view a situation as an attack on their alma mater, said Robert Moore, president of Lipman-Hearne, a branding and communications company that works with colleges. At Illinois, for example, alumni who believe Ms. Wise and the Board of Trustees took appropriate action on Mr. Salaita may be more inclined to give than they were before the uproar.
University officials did not make anyone available to comment about the effects of the past year, despite multiple requests for interviews.
Elsewhere, recent crises seemed to do little to affect universities’ bottom lines. In the years after a child-sex-abuse scandal involving a former football coach at Pennsylvania State University, enrollment and fund-raising totals went up. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has been dogged by scandals over widespread cheating among athletes over many years, announced on Wednesday that it had received $447 million in gift commitments for the 2015 fiscal year, a record for the university.
‘We Will Improve’
For the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, restoring its reputation among academics and improving morale on the campus are the biggest challenges.
Faculty recruitment has been “completely disrupted,” according to one professor and member of the university’s Senate who asked not to be identified because he could not speak in an institutionwide capacity. He said several searches to fill positions had been called off because of a lack of qualified candidates in the applicant pools. The censure by the American Association of University Professors has been a deterrent to drawing professors who want to work at Illinois, he said, and getting that lifted will be important for improving the prospects of luring top candidates in the future.
Gay Y. Miller, a professor in the department of veterinary pathobiology and chair of the executive committee of the Senate, said that soul searching is in order. The campus is going through a process of examining its policies and procedures, she said, and “anytime we undergo such examination we will improve.”
Ms. Wise’s resignation is but the latest in a series of contentious leadership changes in recent years that have left the university’s reputation vulnerable to dings. Richard Herman resigned as chancellor and B. Joseph White resigned as system president in 2009 in the wake of an admissions scandal. Ms. Wise clashed with Michael J. Hogan, Mr. White’s successor as president. He stepped down under pressure in 2012.
Despite the turmoil, the tight job market could lead promising scholars, or candidates for administrative positions, to overlook concerns over academic freedom eventually — especially given the prospect of joining a prestigious flagship campus.
The Salaita affair is certainly an issue for candidates, said Jan Greenwood, a partner at Asher-Greenwood, an executive-search firm for colleges. But it is not an issue, she said, that she believed would stop people ultimately from deciding to work there.
Ms. Greenwood said she expected events at the University of Illinois over the past year have inspired presidents across the country to examine their own hiring processes and communications policies. “I probably have a conversation per week with candidates who ask me if their private email is confidential,” she said. “That part is a question that’s really on people’s minds.”
One thing that may aid the university in restoring its reputation is that the increasing frequency of college scandals that go viral makes the Salaita case, as unique as it is, seem like one of many, with more sure to follow. Administrators and scholars may learn lessons from it, Mr. Grabowski said, but “this isn’t the last time this will happen.”
Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and assorted other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.
