Nearly two weeks after Teresa A. Sullivan was forced to resign as president of the University of Virginia, a push to reinstate her appears to have traction. The Board of Visitors announced Thursday that it would meet on Tuesday to “discuss possible changes in the terms of employment of the president.” The announcement follows a statement Thursday from the college’s deans, who voiced support for Ms. Sullivan’s reappointment. The Faculty Senate has also endorsed her reinstatement.
The reappointment of a college president after such a public rift with the board’s leadership might have seemed a remote possibility just days ago, but this story has been anything but predictable. To the surprise of some of her colleagues, Ms. Sullivan would consider coming back to her old job on the condition that Helen E. Dragas, the rector and a central player in the president’s ouster, resign, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Ms. Dragas, for her part, shows no signs of backing down. In a statement released Thursday evening, she pointedly dismisses the preference for incremental change that Ms. Sullivan expressed in a 14-page defense of her presidency, released this week. “The days of incremental decision-making in higher education are over, or should be,” Ms. Dragas’s statement says.
So if the board does decide to reinstate Ms. Sullivan, what message would such a change of course send, and what are the potential consequences for the institution and the players involved? The Chronicle posed those questions to several higher-education experts. Following are some of the possibilities they imagined.
A Value System Is Publicly Restored
The board’s deliberations about ousting the president occurred in secret, and the explanations for her dismissal were roundly criticized as vague and insufficient. If the manner in which Ms. Sullivan was removed ran against Virginia’s principles of openness and fairness, bringing her back might restore the balance, said Jason E. Lane, an associate professor of educational administration and policy at the State University of New York at Albany.
“In this case you see an institution saying, ‘We value something deeper here than new revenues. There is something about UVa that we value, and you violated that. You violated our trust,’” he said. “It’s a bit idealistic, but I do think there’s a bit of a deeper meaning there” to reinstating her, said Mr. Lane, who also serves as director of educational studies at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.
Ms. Dragas, in her statement on Thursday, attempted to further explain the board’s decision, but that came only after an announcement had been issued stating that the board would consider reinstating Ms. Sullivan, and 11 days after Ms. Sullivan’s forced resignation.
A Terrible Sequel
It is not pleasant to think about, but a second Sullivan presidency could invite a second disaster. While some turnover on the board is inevitable, the fact remains that a good number of members wanted Ms. Sullivan gone just days ago. What if they again reached an impasse?
“If nothing has been resolved in terms of the underlying relationship, they could end up having to march her off the plank again, or she may reach a level of frustration” where she quits, said John K. Thornburgh, a senior vice president at Witt/Kieffer, an executive-search firm. “This is presidential hiring and firing with a butterfly net, and that’s not the way you should approach the most important decision a board makes.”
The President Gains Upper Hand
It would be difficult to imagine a president with more political capital than one who was reappointed with a groundswell of faculty, student, and alumni support, said Stephen J. Trachtenberg, president emeritus of George Washington University.
“If the chairman steps down, and Teresa Sullivan is reinstated, she becomes the most bulletproof president in America,” Mr. Trachtenberg said. “She’s good for a number of years until she has a chance to either demonstrate her talent or fail, but she will not be subject to whimsical, arbitrary, capricious behavior by the board. Presumably she would not take advantage of the situation.”
Conversely, the board would be in a weakened position, said David W. Breneman, a professor in economics of education and public policy at Virginia.
“It would be a major repudiation of the board,” said Mr. Breneman, who previously served as director of the public-policy program at Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, as well as dean of the Curry School of Education. “That’s pretty unusual. Boards are usually pretty cautious about getting themselves into a position where that happens. It would mean this was a horrible mistake with longstanding and perhaps unexpected consequences, which these people on the board should have understood.”
Virginia Becomes Stagnant
Much of the conflict between Ms. Sullivan and the board appears to have boiled down to a debate about the appropriate pace of change at the university, which some board members viewed as insufficiently prepared for a revolution in online learning. Reinstating the president could be interpreted as a signal that Virginia should slam on the brakes, said Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the National Association of System Heads. Ms. Sullivan was making substantive changes in difficult areas, such as university financing, and reversing that momentum would be a big mistake, Ms. Wellman said.
“It would be a triumph for organizational conservatism, and that would be too bad, because this is a place that needs to change and was changing,” she said.
Faculty Power Recognized
In the defense of her leadership that Ms. Sullivan released this week, she cast herself as a defender of broad-based liberal-arts education facing off against “corporate” forces on the board. This was red meat for professors, who would see her reinstatement as a victory for traditional academic principles and an affirmation that faculty should be central to discussions about the direction of the university.
“If she were to return, the faculty would feel very empowered,” said Michael N. Bastedo, an associate professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan, where Ms. Sullivan was previously provost. “In general, faculty feel they have lost power in the university. Things that used to be part of the faculty’s purview are now part of the board and the administration, and that’s part of a continuing privatization of the university.”
Sullivan’s Legend Grows
There is no doubt Ms. Sullivan had a tough act to follow at Virginia. Her predecessor, John T. Casteen III, held the post for 20 transformational years. Up until a few days ago, it was fair to question what kind of mark Ms. Sullivan, 62, might really leave on the university. Now, however, “there will be a folklore about her that will immediately arise,” said Mr. Lane, of Albany.
“The extent to which that folklore becomes her legacy will depend on what she does in the future,” Mr. Lane said. “This no doubt transforms her relationship with UVa regardless of whether she returns or not. This is her defining moment at the institution. This propels her into a level that she probably was not in, and I don’t know if she would have reached that level or not.”
