James T. Brady resigned his post as chairman of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents on Thursday, marking another turn in a chaotic week for an institution that has descended into crisis over the board’s handling of an athletics scandal.
Brady’s resignation came amid criticism that the board had pressured Wallace D. Loh, the president of the College Park campus, to retain the Terrapins’ embattled head football coach or risk his own swift removal as president. But Loh essentially called the regents’ bluff on Wednesday, firing DJ Durkin, the coach who has been under scrutiny since June, when one of his players died after an intense team workout.
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James T. Brady resigned his post as chairman of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents on Thursday, marking another turn in a chaotic week for an institution that has descended into crisis over the board’s handling of an athletics scandal.
Brady’s resignation came amid criticism that the board had pressured Wallace D. Loh, the president of the College Park campus, to retain the Terrapins’ embattled head football coach or risk his own swift removal as president. But Loh essentially called the regents’ bluff on Wednesday, firing DJ Durkin, the coach who has been under scrutiny since June, when one of his players died after an intense team workout.
Loh’s action was a clear indication that the tide was turning at Maryland, and Brady acknowledged in a statement on Thursday that the board itself had been divided on whether Durkin should go.
“In my estimation, my continued presence on the board will inhibit its ability to move Maryland’s higher-education agenda forward,” Brady said in a written statement. “ And I have no interest in serving as a distraction from that important work.
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“Accordingly, I will step down from the Board of Regents immediately.”
Brady’s resignation appeared to demonstrate that Loh, who has said he will retire in June 2019, had gained the upper hand in what has become a fierce governance battle waged in the court of public opinion. Lawmakers, faculty members, students, and donors have excoriated the regents for meddling in a coaching decision and holding Loh, rather than Durkin, accountable for an abusive culture within the football program.
Loh has been criticized for failing to rein a dysfunctional athletics department, but that criticism had been more muted in recent days as attention turned to the regents’ actions and the principles of campus-level autonomy.
In a separate statement, attributed to the board, the regents affirmed that “it is the university president’s responsibility to operate the campus and to make any and all personnel decisions.” The board’s recognition of this widely accepted fact had been in serious dispute.
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Loh, who has been reserved in his public comments, has worked behind the scenes with faculty members and administrators, who became ever-more emboldened in both their criticism of the regents and their advocacy for the president. In a scenario that seemed highly unlikely days ago, there is an increasing push for the regents to allow Loh, who is 72 and in his eighth year as president, to retire on his own terms.
Loh’s appointment is open-ended, but he receives five-year performance reviews, the next of which is not scheduled until 2021.
In an open letter on Thursday, the provost and deans at College Park expressed “dismay and deep concern” about the regents’ actions and raised the spectre that their overreach could lead to accreditation problems.
The leaders of the University Senate issued their own letter on Wednesday, condemning what they described as the regents’ micromanagement. The Senate has called an emergency meeting for Friday.
The Senate meeting will be the first open forum for faculty members, students, and others to express their displeasure with the regents, and it could set the stage for a more formal condemnation, such as a no-confidence vote, in the near future. It remains unclear, however, whether Brady’s resignation and the board’s acknowledgement of the president’s autonomy will mollify the campus.
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The Senate’s leaders met privately with Loh in his office on Wednesday, just a few hours before the president announced Durkin’s firing. Christopher S. Walsh, the Senate chair, said Loh appeared confident and urged the Senate to act quickly if it hoped to assert itself in the crisis.
“This was really weighing on him, but yesterday he seemed a lot more energized,” Walsh said in an interview on Thursday, before Brady resigned. “He did say if we were going to do anything, it was important to do it this week.”
Loh’s sense of urgency suggested that he was monitoring the news cycle and conscious of the temporal politics of the situation, which were tilting heavily in his favor. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said on Thursday that he was “outraged” by Durkin’s reinstatement and that Loh had taken a “big step” forward by defying the board and firing the coach.
The frenetic pace of the crisis at Maryland does not comport with the often-deliberative style of academe. In the Senate leaders’ meeting with Loh, Walsh expressed concern that the Senate did not have a regularly scheduled meeting until next week — a veritable lifetime in the cycle of a story that had twisted by the hour.
After Loh announced his intention to retire on Tuesday, Walsh mostly withheld criticism of the board. He said he wanted to take the temperature of the Senate and not get out ahead of his colleagues but in short order realized that there appeared to be uniform dissatisfaction with the regents.
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“Nobody was happy with the situation,” Walsh said. “I didn’t get any letters saying the board did the right thing.”
Correction (11/2/2018, 12:35 p.m.): The faculty on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus is represented by the University Senate, not the Faculty Senate. Christopher Walsh is the Senate’s chair, not its president. The text has been corrected accordingly.