Under Fire on 2 Fronts, U. of Colorado Chief Resigns

Elizabeth Hoffman, the president of the University of Colorado, has weathered an exceptional amount of controversy in the last 14 months. In January 2004, allegations of sexual assaults linked to the football team landed the university in the national spotlight. A year later a Colorado professor became the focus of widespread outrage over an essay in which he compared victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to a notorious Nazi.

But the first week of this month was too much even for the crisis-seasoned Ms. Hoffman, who announced her resignation on March 7. Ms. Hoffman will step down on June 30, or whenever her successor is named.

Before her announcement, Ms. Hoffman, 58, had faced perhaps the most challenging week of her five-year tenure, as both the football scandal and the furor over Ward Churchill, the incendiary professor, were newly stoked. Her leadership was now being questioned by Colorado lawmakers and the news media, who accused Ms. Hoffman of responding tentatively to demands that she fire Mr. Churchill and officials in charge of the football program.

“I believe that it was important for me to take questions about me off the table,” Ms. Hoffman said in an interview with The Chronicle.

She said her resignation was not in response to outside pressure. But she acknowledged that the heat she was facing had become a “distraction” from pressing issues, such as negotiating proposed tuition increases and state support from Colorado lawmakers.

“I believe I made the right decisions,” Ms. Hoffman said of the 14 months of crisis management. “At some point you have to say, What’s more important -- the future of this university or the future of Betsy Hoffman?”

Her supporters agreed that she had probably made the correct decision in stepping down.

“Betsy realized that she was becoming the focal point of these controversies,” said Jerry G. Rutledge, chair of the Board of Regents.

The crumbling of Betsy Hoffman’s presidency is a testament to the snowballing power of bad news in increasingly rapid, Internet-fanned news cycles. It is also indicative of the enormous pressure on public-university presidents, who find themselves supporting unpopular professors while seeking to blunt budget cuts from those whom the college employees offend.

“She had strong support” from the board, Mr. Rutledge said, “and yet at the same time support was waning.”

A Rough Week

The University of Colorado’s recruiting scandal had been in the news since January 2004, when Colorado’s governor, Bill Owens, a Republican, jumped on accusations that the university used sex, drugs, and alcohol to recruit football players. Ms. Hoffman accused Governor Owens of using the scandal as a publicity stunt to further his political career.

The university subsequently began what Ms. Hoffman called a “full-scale restructuring of the Boulder campus in relation to its athletics program.” But she was criticized for not firing the head football coach, Gary Barnett, or other university officials who were found by an investigative panel to have failed to properly oversee the football team’s recruiting process.

This month the scandal was again thrust into the spotlight when details from a sealed grand-jury report were leaked to a Denver newspaper and television station. The grand jury reportedly found that an assistant football coach had sexually assaulted two female athletics trainers. The document also raised concerns about improper use of funds by the athletics department and by an independent fund-raising group for the university.

Ms. Hoffman quickly issued an extensive response to the leak, in which she said the university had complied fully with all requests from investigators and that grand-jury reports include “one-sided, unchallenged, and misleading allegations based on secret evidence and testimony.”

The continuing controversy over Mr. Churchill has received as much if not more attention as the football scandal. In February Governor Owens and other politicians called for the ouster of Mr. Churchill, whose suggestion in an essay that people killed in the World Trade Center were not innocent civilians but “little Eichmanns” earned him the scorn of Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly and others. Shortly thereafter, the university began an examination of Mr. Churchill’s writings and speeches to determine whether he had “overstepped his bounds as a faculty member, showing cause for dismissal.” But the investigation, the results of which are expected in a few weeks, did not quiet demands that Ms. Hoffman fire Mr. Churchill.

On March 3, during the week of the grand-jury-report leak, Ms. Hoffman held a discussion with faculty members in Boulder. Barbara A. Bintliff, a law professor and chairwoman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, said the hourlong presentation was wide-ranging and included an update on the university’s budget. However, news coverage of the event focused heavily on discussions of Mr. Churchill, with the Rocky Mountain News quoting Ms. Hoffman as saying that “the group of people that went after Ward Churchill now feel empowered. I’m real concerned about that.”

The next day, Joe Stengel, a Republican and the minority leader in the Colorado House of Representatives, and The Denver Post called on Ms. Hoffman to resign. Ms. Hoffman “is overwhelmed by the series of controversies facing CU and is unable to right the ship,” Mr. Stengel wrote.

Mr. Churchill said in an interview that political pressure over calls to fire him probably led to Ms. Hoffman’s resignation. “The academic-freedom issue and her unwillingness to equivocate on it was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

Many longtime observers of the university, even those who believe Ms. Hoffman has handled herself well in the last year, said she had been irrevocably linked in the public’s mind to the football scandal and to the furor over Mr. Churchill.

“The press beats on you long enough, pretty soon the perception becomes reality,” said Bruce Benson, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate who recently helped run a $1-billion fund-raising campaign for the university.

In the wake of Ms. Hoffman’s announcement, most higher-education insiders in Colorado said they thought she faced a nearly impossible task in handling the onslaught of controversy, and very few said her mistakes were grounds for dismissal. But one critic, Regina Cowles, president of the Boulder chapter of the National Organization for Women, said that Ms. Hoffman’s persistent denial of a climate of violence against women at the university contributed to her undoing.

“Under crisis she has not behaved well,” Ms. Cowles said. “She avoided the core issues.”

While there is widespread agreement that political pressure led to Ms. Hoffman’s resignation, two Democratic legislators in Colorado say that lawmakers’ criticism of Ms. Hoffman was fueled chiefly by disputes over the university’s budget, not over the recruiting scandal or Mr. Churchill.

State Rep. Alice Madden, a Democrat, said the timing of the leak of the grand-jury report was “suspicious” and may have been intended to wound the university during its contentious budget negotiations with state lawmakers. And John V. (Jack) Pommer, a Democrat who represents Boulder in the House of Representatives, said Ms. Hoffman’s role as the university’s chief advocate for state support “put her right in the cross hairs of people who don’t want to fix the budget.” Ms. Hoffman’s public-relations errors notwithstanding, an “ulterior motive” drove her critics, Mr. Pommer said.

“She was the one who really brought to our attention that higher education was going to go first,” Mr. Pommer said, referring to the cuts the university faces as lawmakers debate how to cover a $260-million shortfall in this year’s state budget.

‘She Ran Afoul of Lawmakers’

If Ms. Hoffman made mistakes, there were politicians who were eager to pounce on them. Aims C. McGuinness Jr., a senior analyst at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, located in Colorado, and a veteran observer of the university, said Ms. Hoffman was “one of the most experienced, competent presidents CU has had for a while.” He said she ran afoul of lawmakers who micromanage the state’s universities, particularly on academic freedom and curriculum development.

“It’s one of the most negative political cultures in the country for higher education, without a doubt,” Mr. McGuinness said.

Ms. Hoffman and members of the Board of Regents say the continuing budget tussle with state lawmakers is the university’s top priority. State contributions to the University of Colorado System, which includes three general campuses and the Health Sciences Center, have been slashed by $79-million over the last four years, and the university now receives only 8.6 percent of its financial support from the state. In contrast, the University of Wisconsin and the University Washington get about 30 percent of their money from state sources. Ms. Hoffman said her resignation would help give her a stronger voice in negotiating with lawmakers for the remainder of her tenure as president. “I’m not going to back down in the least bit,” she said.

Mr. Rutledge, the chairman of the Board of Regents, said Ms. Hoffman would continue to be a “tremendous leader in dealing with the budget.”

“She will do everything in her power to go out strong,” he said.

Others were less optimistic that Ms. Hoffman can continue to have sway in Colorado’s capital. “I’m worried that because she submitted her resignation, it will be easier to marginalize President Hoffman,” Representative Pommer said.

In addition to losing Ms. Hoffman as a budget advocate, there are indications that her role as a fund raiser will be missed. Tom Marsico, who gave $5-million to the university in 2003, said his gift was a direct result of Ms. Hoffman’s leadership. William T. Coleman III, a software executive who, with his wife, Claudia Coleman, gave $250-million to the university in 2001, also touted Ms. Hoffman’s abilities and integrity.

The university “will be at a great loss to see her leave,” Mr. Coleman said.

Critics had cited purported drops in donations as a justification for calling for Ms. Hoffman’s resignation. But Mr. Benson, himself a major donor, said Ms. Hoffman was a “fabulous” fund raiser. Ms. Hoffman oversaw the 2003 completion of a seven-year, $1-billion fund-raising campaign, and has helped the university secure $680-million in donations since she was hired in 2000. The university’s endowment has grown by approximately 25 percent during her tenure.

Many faculty members were surprised and upset to learn of Ms. Hoffman’s resignation. But Joanne Belknap, a professor of sociology at Boulder, said she will be glad to see Ms. Hoffman leave her post.

“I think she lost complete credibility around the rape charges,” Ms. Belknap said. “She has handled crises horribly.”

http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 51, Issue 28, Page A1