“The presidential selection process is a classic conflict between the right of individual privacy and the public’s right to know.” This observation, from the American Association of University Professors’ “Presidential Search Committee Checklist,” is in line with our recent research, which suggests a related conflict between the increasingly confidential nature of searches and the due diligence conducted by search firms and higher-education institutions.
As Jan Greenwood, a longtime search consultant, noted in 2013, “The number of closed searches at public institutions has steadily grown over the past two decades.” The anecdotal reasons offered for this trend include presidential candidates’ fear of being fired should their governing board find they are seeking employment elsewhere and the institutions’ losing a major gift should a donor learn the president may be leaving.
Greenwood suggests that anxiety among candidates fearing that their names will become public has resulted in a substantially increased workload for search committees and consultants attempting to recruit top candidates. To combat this, she said, committees and boards now must find “a way to ensure some level of confidentiality.” Our research indicates that they have been quite successful — perhaps more so than is in the interest of faculty, students, staff, alumni, and the public.
In two previous columns for The Chronicle, we reported on findings from our study of 61 contracts between public institutions and search firms for presidential and provost positions advertised in the fall of 2015. For this column, we reviewed the solicitation documents, proposals, and agreements between institutions and search firms for the 26 public-university presidential searches among those contracts, to identify and examine references to “confidentiality.”
In about two-thirds of the searches, one of two types of confidentiality requirements was formally stated in the solicitation, proposal, and/or final agreement. The first type involves general language, what some would call “boilerplate.” This language is not necessarily specific to the search itself but seeks to protect the general interests of either party. We found such terms in nine of the searches, primarily in documents created by the universities.
The second type was specific to the particular search. This language typically involves keeping the names of candidates confidential, if not secret, through some specified point in the search or in time. We found these terms in 10 of the searches. In five of them, specific language was initiated by both the university and the firm.
Almost 60 percent of the searches required committee members or search-firm staff members to sign some form of confidentiality agreement. Nearly equal numbers of the university-initiated documents required those forms from either their own committee members or the search-firm staff; none required the forms from both. Only one of the search-firm documents required the forms from their staff and the institution’s committee; the rest required the forms from committee members only. Of those that required a confidentiality form, half included explicit penalties — being removed from the committee, for example, or facing criminal prosecution — for violating the agreement.
Our findings give rise to two fundamental questions: Who are governing boards protecting with these confidentiality requirements? And what is gained or lost in promising confidentiality?
The most common answer to the first question, based on the documents we reviewed — especially proposals from search firms — is that confidentiality is necessary to recruit the best candidates. This is most often cast in terms of a candidate’s right to privacy. As an official of one of the best-known search firms wrote in 2010, “It is a simple fact that some of the best candidates refuse to participate in a search if their names are to be made public, especially in the earliest stages.” He goes on to say that it is the candidates who “insist upon search processes that protect them and their privacy unless and until they are selected as ‘the’ candidate.”
This so-called right to privacy increasingly has become the norm in presidential searches. However, it is based on a premise for which we can find no empirical support. Rather, we are forced to rely on “evidence” provided by those who stand to benefit most from secrecy — the successful candidate and the search firm that is paid to find the candidates. This degree of confidentiality seems to be at odds with standard practices for hiring other public executives, as well as contrary to the core values of a university.
As for the second question, candidates gain three things from confidentiality. Obviously, they avoid the potential embarrassment of not being selected. Related to this is that unsuccessful candidates need not present themselves in future searches as having failed in a previous search. And confidentiality can provide successful candidates with leverage in contract negotiations, since they can stay where they are with little chance of public disclosure.
Search firms, too, gain from confidentiality. With the ability to “recycle” candidates without disclosing their participation in past searches, the firms decrease their workload. And confidentiality may result in searches’ being completed more quickly, which improves the firm’s bottom line.
These advantages come at a cost to colleges and universities, most notably by potentially compromising the due-diligence process. If candidates for a presidency are subject only to the vetting process that a search firm is contractually obligated to perform, there may be reason for concern. Any language regarding confidentiality that puts the interests of the candidates above those of the institution may have the unintended consequence of preventing relevant information from being considered — information that could keep the college from making a mistake.
In fairness, we must consider the candidates’ rights to privacy. It may be quite understandable that they do not want their names known in the early stages of a search. In fact, it is at those early stages that the search firm may be most helpful to the institution.
Here’s a compromise that would meet the needs of the candidates for some degree of confidentiality as well as the needs of the university for transparency: Maintain a closed search through the initial phases, but announce the names and other pertinent information about the final candidates, who will visit the campus, make presentations, and meet and greet those whom they hope to serve in the future.
Judith A. Wilde is chief operating officer and a professor, and James H. Finkelstein is a professor emeritus, in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.
