Since 2009 the University of Oregon has had five presidents, including interim officeholders. It has gone through four athletic directors, and it’s now advertising for its fourth general counsel.
During that time the institution has endured an almost endless stream of controversies, involving athletics, governance, union contracts, and allegations that the administration mishandled reports of sexual assaults by three student basketball players.
Through it all, there’s been one constant: William T. Harbaugh. Mr. Harbaugh, a professor of economics, has chronicled every twist and turn on his blog, UOMatters—a project he began more than five years ago, he says, to shed light on an administration that many believe lacks adequate transparency.
The blog, along with his persistent requests for public records, has earned Mr. Harbaugh the reputation of a muckraker, a thorn in the side of the administration, and the sharp end of faculty discontent.
In a narrow sense, Mr. Harbaugh might appear to fill the role of a well-known stereotype: The cranky campus crusader who is never happy and rarely effective.
What sets Mr. Harbaugh apart is his ability to effect change through both the sharing of information with the university community and his work setting policy.
To get the information to fill UOMatters, Mr. Harbaugh has blanketed the university administration with requests for public information. Out of the nearly 1,300 such requests the university has fielded since June 2009, according to a list maintained by the university, almost 230 inquiries have come from the professor.
Mr. Harbaugh is also an active member of the University Senate, where he is credited with leading efforts to pass several pieces of legislation, including measures relating to faculty involvement in the hiring and review of administrators.
Administrators generally tell Mr. Harbaugh that they hate his blog, he says. Faculty members, by contrast, have mixed reactions. Some professors contacted by The Chronicle say they support Mr. Harbaugh, but they’d rather not be associated with him.
“The most common comment I get is: ‘I really appreciate what you do and your willingness to stick your neck out,’” he says.
Mr. Harbaugh’s neck may now be very exposed. Late last year he requested and received some 22,000 electronic documents from the university’s library archives—the digital records of four previous presidents.
Those documents have become a scandal unto themselves. Administrators aren’t yet certain, but they have warned that the data may contain information whose release would violate federal protections for student privacy and state laws that apply to faculty records.
The university has placed two library-staff members on leave from their regular duties, with pay, while it investigates whether they released the information “prematurely,” says Tobin Klinger, Oregon’s senior director of public-affairs communications. The university is also negotiating for the records to be returned, he says.
Many observers believe the archival material could also contain unflattering information about how the university has dealt with recent controversies. Mr. Harbaugh, for his part, isn’t providing details.
“My attorney has told me not to talk about it,” he says.
Like Father, Like Son
Mr. Harbaugh seems an unlikely figure to take on the role of a provocative journalist. His academic field is behavioral economics, with a specialty in the economics of charitable giving and the neurological impetus behind altruism.
The roots of his journalistic avocation may come from his father, William H. Harbaugh, a professor of history at the University of Virginia. The elder Harbaugh was known for his biography of President Theodore Roosevelt, who is credited with coining the term “muckraker.”
Even so, Mr. Harbaugh says he was not active in academic politics when he arrived at the University of Oregon, in 1995. That began to change by 2007, when he became interested in the university’s proposed affirmative-action policy, and the administration wanted to charge him $270 for documents related to the plan.
That experience spurred Mr. Harbaugh to take a deep dive into the university’s policies and compliance with open-records laws.
In 2009 he scanned and posted online the state’s 362-page public-records and open-meetings manual, in defiance of the state attorney general’s warnings that he was violating copyright laws.
At the time, the manual was available only at law libraries or from the state for a fee. (Since then the attorney general has made the manual available online free.) In 2012 Mr. Harbaugh won a “First Freedom” award from the regional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for putting the documents on his blog.
The blog, meanwhile, has become a must-read for the region’s journalists—and for anyone else who is hungry for the unofficial version of the university’s actions. And there has been no shortage of material for the professor to skewer.
Andrew Lubash, a senior at the university and a member of the student government and the University Senate, says the information posted by Mr. Harbaugh is widely read by politically active students on the campus.
“There are some that disagree with his methods, and he is sometimes inflammatory, but it’s important to keep the administration accountable,” says Mr. Lubash, who is studying political science and economics and has been awarded a Truman Scholarship for graduate school. “The university has demonstrated again and again that it lacks transparency,” he says.
Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology at the university and an often outspoken critic of the administration, also supports Mr. Harbaugh.
“What Bill has done, to his everlasting credit, is talk about things that the university administration doesn’t want to talk about,” he says.
Leaked Memoranda
Not everyone has been as supportive. Mr. Harbaugh has been threatened with lawsuits by a former university president and the university foundation, he says.
In September, Oregon’s interim general counsel, Douglas Park, wrote that Mr. Harbaugh was harassing him by including him on emails regarding public records.
“No one else in the world cc’s me on their public-records requests: only you,” Mr. Park wrote. Mr. Harbaugh’s conduct was “so unique and unusual,” the general counsel went on, that he concluded “it is intended to harass (because it serves no other purpose and no one else does it).”
Mr. Harbaugh’s response was true to form: He posted the message on his blog.
That he is likely to make such exchanges public often serves as a sort of protection from backlash, Mr. Harbaugh says.
And he enjoys prodding the administration while entertaining readers.
“When you write a blog, you have to make it interesting to your readers,” he says. “My feeling is, if I want to have some influence at the university, I have to make it interesting. Of course, it’s a little fun to be a little bit provocative. That’s part of being effective.”
It’s not clear what protection Mr. Harbaugh will have from the leak of the archived materials, or even if he’s done anything wrong.
A few documents from the archives have already shown up on his website. Among them is a memorandum from one of the university’s former general counsels, advocating the elimination of the University Senate and largely diminishing the role of faculty members in setting any policy. The title of Mr. Harbaugh’s post on the matter: “The UO administration’s secret plan to abolish the UO Senate.”
Mr. Harbaugh says the university has strong free-speech protections for faculty members. He feels confident in his legal position.
And he’s unlikely to back down quietly.
“I love the university and the state,” he says. “They’re not going to get me to leave here; I’m going to make this a better place.”
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.