The Reactive Leader

When student complaints about racist posts on Yik Yak heated up at American University last spring, Cornelius M. (Neil) Kerwin did what a veteran college president might be expected to do. He wrote an open letter to the campus calling out the “bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance” of such messages and pledging to promote more-positive ways to “express our differences.” He held an open forum to seek solutions from the campus, and called for unconscious-bias training for administrators and faculty members, among other measures.

But the racist posts continued into the fall, and students “raised the question of whether or not the university administration, and in particular me, were responding adequately and quickly enough,” Mr. Kerwin says.

In the age of Yik Yak and Twitter, he may not have been. Campus controversies are nothing new, but social media has changed the stakes for college presidents and other academic leaders. What might have remained a campus issue a decade ago can now go viral overnight. And with most people seeing an endless stream of posts and responses on their smartphones, expectations have risen that leaders be just as quick, always ready to say and do the right thing.

Being reactive has long been considered a leadership flaw, but college leaders now must develop an ability to respond quickly and effectively to unexpected incidents before they get worse — and to avoid making them worse themselves. Events at the University of Missouri last fall point to the dangers of letting contentious situations fester. Complaints and protests over the racial climate there mounted over the course of the year, and black students became so dissatisfied with the lack of attention from Timothy M. Wolfe, the system’s president, that they began openly calling for his resignation. A graduate student went on a hunger strike, and members of the football team refused to play until he stepped down. Mr. Wolfe resigned in November, as did R. Bowen Loftin, chancellor of the flagship campus, at Columbia.

By appearing not to take activists’ concerns seriously for months, Mr. Wolfe made the situation more explosive, and by not responding more effectively once he did get involved, he made the situation worse, says Robert Moore, president of Lipman Hearne, a marketing-and-communications company that works with colleges. He calls Mr. Wolfe’s ouster “a self-inflicted wound.”

College presidents are not typically predisposed for crisis communications. Top leaders tend to come from within academe, which prizes deliberation, nuance, and taking the long view, says Adam Shapiro, a public-relations specialist who works with colleges. The quicker tempo and volatile nature of today’s social-media landscape require college leaders to adapt “a completely different set of skills to react on a dime,” he says.

One of the best ways to react more effectively is to be aware of as many potential issues as you can, says Mr. Moore. That means keeping up with conversations taking place among faculty, staff, and students, both in person and online. Top academic leaders can’t monitor social media every hour of the day, but they can have lunch in the dining halls periodically, or follow faculty leaders on Twitter. They have to make an effort “to swim with the fishes,” Mr. Moore says. “If you’re not doing that, then suddenly you find yourself confronted with an issue that you haven’t had time to think about.”

When a crisis arises, leaders have little time to think — at least not as much as they would probably like. “Effective communication in a crisis is all about time,” says Gene Grabowski, a consultant who handles crisis communications for colleges and is a partner at Kglobal, a public-relations company. Upset students can use social media to control the narrative if a leader waits too long to deal with an important issue.

While any response to a serious controversy must come from the top, it’s important that the president not operate in a vacuum. “The best way to avoid making a mistake is to have an effective sounding board to help guide you to some of those decisions when you’ve got to make the call quickly,” says James H. Newberry Jr., a lawyer who counsels colleges. Having a short list of senior managers and communications specialists to call on can make the difference between a response that helps and a response that makes the situation worse.

Last fall Rita H. Cheng, president of Northern Arizona University, coped with a shooting on the campus in which a student was killed. At the same time, she was facing unrelated questions about the university’s racial climate. In both cases, she found it important to be accessible and honest. If you have information or a ready solution, share it, she says. If you don’t have an answer, let people know that you’ll update them as soon as you do.

Mr. Kerwin, meanwhile, has offered a series of proposals for how to make American University a more inclusive community. He credits student activists with making it clear that the racial tensions on the campus could no longer go unaddressed.

He also credits the events of last year for improving how both he and the university monitor and respond to volatile situations.

American’s office of communications and marketing now uses software to monitor social media 24 hours a day, listening to what people are saying about the university, good and bad. If something posted online might require action, the university has refined its social-media policy to clarify how and when to react.

Keeping on top of the “ubiquitous and perpetual” scrum of online discourse is daunting and labor-intensive, Mr. Kerwin says. But it provides a valuable window into what is important to people on the campus.

“You may not like very much what you’re learning,” he says, “but it’s better to know it, by and large, so at least you’re given the opportunity to decide if some action is needed.”

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.