On His First Day as U. of Iowa President, Bruce Harreld Starts in the Hole

A T-shirt with a logo that looks a little like the one used by Starbucks hangs in the window of the Raygun clothing shop here in downtown Iowa City. “Univ Iowa Inc.,” reads the logo. “A corporate take on a liberal arts college.”

That satire sums up the fears of many faculty members and students at the University of Iowa since the appointment in September of J. Bruce Harreld as its president. Mr. Harreld, a former vice president at IBM, built his career as a specialist in corporate turnarounds and later taught part time at the Harvard Business School. That background, light on academic experience, has raised worries about the new president’s intentions.

“I don’t want him coming in here thinking this is more of a business than a place to get educated. That’s what it is, first and foremost,” said Tyler Batterham, a junior from Peoria, Ill., who is majoring in business and marketing.

Negative perceptions about Mr. Harreld are easy to find as he begins his official duties this Monday. Whether those perceptions become reality or not, they will pose a significant challenge to the new president’s ability to lead.

Nearly two months after the announcement, widespread concerns remain about how Mr. Harreld was selected. There are accusations that the entire process was engineered by the president of the Board of Regents, Bruce L. Rastetter, who is often labeled a Republican “kingmaker” in the Hawkeye State.

In addition, Mr. Harreld’s background and public statements have provided little evidence to show how he will succeed in his new role. Not only has he never held a job in academic administration or public policy, but his résumé lists no experience in raising money for a college or nonprofit organization — perhaps the most important job a college president must perform.

In the eyes of many critics, Mr. Harreld has been put in place as a caretaker for the Board of Regents, which had a rocky relationship with the previous president, Sally K. Mason, and has tried over the past year to shift state money away from the University of Iowa and toward the state’s other two public universities.

Through a university spokeswoman, Mr. Harreld declined repeated requests to speak with The Chronicle, though he conducted interviews with local reporters on Friday. He did not respond to a request sent to his university email account.

In a message to the university last month, titled “Why I Came to Iowa,” he sought to reassure his critics that he is taking the job with the best of intentions. And he promised to preserve the mission of the institution along with its commitments to shared governance, tenure, and other hallmarks of academic integrity.

“I’ve heard plenty of misconceptions about my vision and values, so let me suggest this: If you hear something that worries you, simply ask me directly. I’ll give you an honest answer,” Mr. Harreld wrote.

But the political drama, caused largely by a messy process, will make it very difficult for the new president to convince anyone that he is a strong advocate for the university who operates independently of the board, said Nicholas Johnson, a retired adjunct professor in the university’s law school who is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission.

“The regents have put him in an impossible hole,” Mr. Johnson said. To succeed, Mr. Harreld “has to win people over one at a time from the bottom of the pit and hope they’ll listen to him from 30 feet above.”

Reaching Out to Critics

The backlash against Mr. Harreld’s appointment has gone way beyond snarky T-shirts. Hundreds of faculty members and students protested at the October meeting of the Board of Regents, and another demonstration is scheduled on the campus on Monday, organized by a group calling itself Iowans Defending Our Universities.

Jeannette Gabriel, one of the group’s organizers and president of the union that represents the university’s graduate students, said the search had been illegitimate and should prompt Mr. Harreld to resign.

The university’s Faculty Senate and student government have approved votes of no confidence in the regents. The Faculty Assembly of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has voted to censure Mr. Harreld for inaccuracies on his résumé, including listing the name of his now-defunct consulting company and failing to name co-authors of his publications. The American Association of University Professors is investigating the process and may eventually censure the university.

Mr. Harreld has lost no time in trying to dampen the controversy. Beginning the day after he was named to the position, he began reaching out personally to the campus community, meeting with individuals and small groups of both administrators and faculty members.

Reviews of those meetings have been mixed, however, and even some who are trying to move beyond the controversy have a hard time coming up with a positive message about the new president.

Rachel Williams, an associate professor of both art and women’s studies, said she had initially been so upset after Mr. Harreld was named president that she began to look at ads for jobs at other universities. “I was disheartened for about 24 hours,” she said.

Since then she has met twice with Mr. Harreld. She found him personable and well-meaning, she said, but he seemed to lack a real understanding of the complexity of a research university — or of higher education in general.

For example, she explained, during one meeting, Mr. Harreld pointed out rankings from U.S. News & World Report and Forbes to show areas where Iowa could improve. “I tried to explain to him that these metrics are not representative of what these schools do,” she said. “He’s not a bad person, and he’s not a stupid person, so that’s good, right?”

During his public forum, Mr. Harreld talked about competition from “new entrants” in the higher-education market, such as “community colleges and technical schools.”

“As we’ve raised our tuitions to a very high level, it turns out, as a number of my colleagues at the Harvard Business School talk about, they’re just good enough,” he said. Students “actually go to those alternatives and they get, for a much lower cost, they get a reasonable education.”

Sarah Fisher Gardial, dean of the university’s Henry B. Tippie College of Business, said success for any university president hinges on the leadership team around him or her — regardless of the president’s experience and knowledge of higher education. Even if the provost of another university had won the job, she said, that person would not have had experience running an athletics department, say, or medical facilities.

“There is a learning curve for anyone who steps into that job,” said Ms. Gardial, who was a part of the 21-member search committee that chose Mr. Harreld as one of nine candidates to be considered by the regents.

Ms. Gardial declined to answer questions about what convinced her that Mr. Harreld would be a good candidate for the position. Doing so, she said, would require her to divulge details of the committee’s confidential discussions.

Regents Blamed

While there is plenty of criticism of Mr. Harreld, much of the anger on and off the campus is directed at the state’s Board of Regents and its president, Mr. Rastetter.

Information revealed after Mr. Harreld was named showed that he had received deferential treatment, compared with the other three finalists for the position, including private meetings with several search-committee members and a majority of the nine-member board. Mr. Rastetter arranged for the meetings with board members as well as a phone conversation with Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican.

The revelations have even upset another board member, Subhash Sahai, who criticized the process during a recent meeting of the regents. Mr. Sahai also released a written statement acknowledging that the process had further undermined trust between the regents and the institution.

That trust had already been eroded through a long-running battle between the university and Mr. Rastetter. The board president graduated from the University of Iowa but, through his agricultural business, has maintained close and sometimes controversial ties with Iowa State University, in Ames.

Mr. Rastetter had a prickly relationship with Mr. Harreld’s predecessor, Ms. Mason, and in 2014 he championed a new formula for state appropriations that would have redistributed money from the University of Iowa. The plan was eventually rejected by state lawmakers.

“Mr. Rastetter is not someone who hears ‘no’ very well,” said State Rep. Vicki Lensing, a Democrat from Iowa City.

That sets up the key question now for Mr. Harreld: Can he say “no” to the group that hired him? Doing so, some observers say, is the only way he can move beyond the controversy over his hiring.

John Logsdon, an associate professor of biology at the University of Iowa, called on Mr. Harreld “to say something credible and critical of the regents,” starting with an acknowledgment that the presidential search was flawed. “Let’s admit mistakes were made instead of pretending they weren’t,” said Mr. Logsdon, who has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Harreld’s appointment.

Ms. Gabriel, president of the graduate-student union, went a step further. Mr. Harreld, she said, has to be an unwavering advocate for “full funding” of the university, which she defined as increasing state appropriations back to the levels they were in 2000, adjusted for inflation. Short of that, she said, “he can resign.”

Many members of the campus community doubt Mr. Harreld can stand up to the regents, but a few did express confidence in the new leader’s ability to act on his own, even if it means contradicting the board.

“As a CEO, if you’re a puppet of the board, your entity will not be as good as it can be,” said Gary F. Seamans, chief executive of the medical-device company IDx, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the University of Iowa Foundation. Mr. Seamans said he had already met several times with Mr. Harreld, and he believes the new president’s leadership skills can transfer from the corporate world to academe. “I think he will tell the regents what the university needs to do, rather than be told,” said Mr. Seamans.

Like many of her colleagues, Ms. Gardial, dean of the business school, wants the university to move beyond the controversy. But she is uncertain how that will happen.

“The question nobody knows the answer to,” she said, “is, What does healing look like and how long does it take?”

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.

Correction (11/2/2015, 1:05 p.m.): This article originally misspelled the first name of an Iowa legislator. She is State Rep. Vicki Lensing. The article has been corrected to reflect the change.