Bruce Harreld, hailed as a corporate turnaround specialist, started his term as president of the University of Iowa five years ago with bold promises to help move the institution into a new era of innovation and an improved reputation.
He announced his resignation Thursday as the university deals with the deep state budget cuts and revenue losses due to the pandemic, facing protests over his decision to open the campus and cuts to the athletics department, with several top administrative positions held by interim appointments, and never having fully overcome the shadow of a controversial search process.
Harreld, who declined to be interviewed, is not leaving immediately, but will stay on until the state’s Board of Regents can find a replacement. The news comes just a year after the regents had extended his term until 2023. While Harreld had accepted that extension, he said in a written announcement that it was time to move on.
The decision could cost Harreld dearly. In walking away from his contract before June 2023, Harreld could sacrifice not only his annual salary but also $2.3 million in deferred compensation. That includes $1 million in deferred compensation from his original contract. If Harreld accepted a role as an instructor, though, he may still qualify for that money, according to a news report from The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids.
In an open letter to campus, Harreld said he loves the university and “will do everything possible to make the transition smooth and successful.” Staying on until a new president is announced “will allow the Board of Regents to focus its efforts on finding my replacement and allow the university to continue implementing its strategy without pausing,” he said.
Michael J. Richards, president of the regents, noted that Harreld’s successes include a nearly $1.2-billion cash payment into an investment fund made possible by leasing the university’s power and wastewater facilities to a private company. The board president also declined a request to be interviewed.
Under Harreld’s leadership, “the university has seen significant increases in research grants, increased graduation rates, implemented an open and transparent budgeting process, and added new health-care and academic facilities,” according to a news release from the regents.
In announcing his retirement, Harreld joins several other high-profile presidents — including those of Indiana University, Florida State University, and the University of Chicago — in setting the stage for new leadership as it becomes clear that the pandemic and its effects will define the next several years in higher education. But he did not cite the historic challenge of Covid-19 as the reason for stepping down, even as the institutional stresses on the university have mounted.
About 2,000 students and faculty members have tested positive for the virus, and Harreld has been the target of protests over his handling of the crisis. The university chose not to test students before or immediately after moving to campus and only encourages people to get tested if they are symptomatic — an approach criticized by public-health officials because asymptomatic carriers of the virus can still spread it.
But what has defined Harreld’s tenure for many faculty and staff members was the search process that brought him to campus five years ago. Faculty members were outraged when Harreld, a former vice president at IBM, was named one of four finalists for the job — the only one without a doctoral degree or any experience in academic leadership.
Harreld holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Purdue University. His previous experience in academe consisted solely of teaching executive courses at Harvard University from 2008 to 2014, and one year as an adjunct instructor at Northwestern University in the 1990s.
As a candidate to lead Iowa, Harreld’s was ridiculed for saying at an open forum that he had looked up information about the university on Wikipedia and for errors on the résumé that he submitted. After Harreld was hired, emails revealed that the then-president of the regents, Bruce Rastetter, had arranged secret meetings between Harreld and members of the regents who were not on the search committee.
Harreld had also talked with the state’s then-governor, Terry Branstad, a Republican, and had been brought to campus to speak to staff at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. That visit had been arranged by Jean E. Robillard, then the university’s interim president and chairman of the committee that was conducting the search.
The search process sparked a faculty no-confidence vote in the regents, a sanction from the American Association of University Professors, and a failed lawsuit charging that the regents had violated the state’s open-meetings laws.
Harreld, by nearly all accounts, is personable and has some successes to claim for his time at Iowa. Late last year, the university announced a 50-year deal allowing the university to lease its power plant and water-treatment facilities to the energy company Engie and its global investment partner, Meridiam.
The university estimates that will result in an annual payout of $15 million for the next 50 years, some of which could help fund academic projects.
The university also announced record-breaking increases in grant and research dollars this year, and both the four-year and six-year graduation rates for undergraduates improved during Harreld’s tenure.
Harreld is also credited with moving the university toward a “responsibility-centered” budget model that requires academic units to balance their revenues and expenses each year. While this model has become widespread in academe, it has been criticized as “a system of values that prioritizes infighting and manufactured scarcity.”
The president has also endured several controversies and criticism not so much for the challenges themselves but his response to them.
After announcing that the university would eliminate a scholarship program in 2017, to offset state budget cuts, Harreld had to reverse the decision when state lawmakers objected and students filed lawsuits.
Protests also followed a 2018 decision to cut off university funding to several academic units, such as the Labor Center, which provides programs on “practical industrial relations, labor and employment law, occupational health and safety, labor history, communications and leadership, and economics and public policy.” After an outcry, the university allowed the center four years to find other sources of revenue.
Harreld’s biggest challenge may have been his inability to fill and keep key leaders at the university. The institution has not had a permanent chief diversity officer since 2017. TaJuan Wilson, hired in June 2019 to fill that role, stepped down after just six weeks, though the university continued to pay his salary until he found a new position. In all, the university paid Wilson more than $170,000 including $25,000 for his relocation to Iowa City.
More recently, Montserrat Fuentes, hired as provost in June 2019, was forced out of her position in July without explanation. She remains a special assistant to Harreld and retains her salary of $439,000 a year until 2021 when she could join the faculty. In addition to her salary, Fuentes received $50,000 for her moving costs.
Just two weeks later, the university reassigned Steve Goddard, then dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, for unspecified violations of the university’s code of ethics. Goddard had also been hired in June 2019 at a salary of $382,000. The university paid him $15,000 to move from Nebraska. He is now a faculty member in the department of computer science, earning more than $250,000
The search fees for Wilson, Fuentes, and Goddard totaled more than $417,000 according to university figures.
Despite missteps, the regents last year extended Harreld’s contract until 2023, with an annual salary of nearly $600,000. Harreld, however, has taken a 50-percent cut in his annual salary as part of measures to offset losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
What the regents now must focus on is replacing a president whose tenure was so strongly associated with a flawed search.
Iowa’s faculty senate released a statement thanking Harreld for allowing the regents time to pick a new president, but noting that the process cannot be handled the way it was five years ago.
“The Senate officers understand that a presidential search often generates a mix of excitement and trepidation,” said a prepared statement from the senate’s officers. “These feelings would be natural for any search, but they take on added potency at Iowa given the controversial circumstances that surrounded President Harreld’s hiring by the Board of Regents in 2015.”
In particular, the faculty senate expects the regents to follow a set of best practices developed by the university and faculty leaders as part of an agreement to remove the AAUP sanction in 2018.
Richards, the president of the board, said in the news release that search “will be conducted fairly and transparently.” More details about the process will be discussed at the board’s meeting on October 5, he said, but will include “an inclusive and diverse search committee,” as well as meetings with faculty members and students.
“As in the past, names of finalists recommended by the search committee will be made public, and candidates will attend open forums where they can address the university community and answer questions,” Richards says in his statement.
Harreld, who has rarely discussed his own role in the search that named him president, also acknowledges the importance of a sound search process. That’s the reason, he said in a university news release, that the board should take their time and get it right.
“I believe institutions suffer when they rush the search for a new leader,” Harreld is quoted, “and that a smooth, deliberate process positions the new president and the university for success.”
