When a Board Fires a President Who Fired a Provost

AP Photo/Matt Rourke

When Temple University’s Board of Trustees named Neil D. Theobald as its 10th president, in 2012, the announcement rang with hopes that he would usher the institution into a new, more prosperous era.

Mr. Theobald’s résumé boasted a successful run at Indiana University as senior vice president and chief financial officer. He arrived on the Philadelphia campus, in 2013, with ready plans to keep costs down by helping students graduate in four years and reshaping the university’s budget.

Three years later, the leader who was once acclaimed for his business acumen is on the chopping block.

On Tuesday, Temple’s board voted no confidence in Mr. Theobald, with the intention of dismissing him at its July 21 meeting, Kevin Feeley, the board’s spokesman, said on Wednesday.

The controversy centers on Mr. Theobald’s relationship with his provost, Hai-Lung Dai. Two weeks ago, Mr. Theobald fired Mr. Dai, blaming him for allowing the funds spent on merit scholarships at Temple to exceed the budgeted amount by $22 million.

[[relatedcontent align="left” size="half-width”]] Stunned faculty members — the notice of Mr. Dai’s dismissal did not offer much in the way of elaboration — started an online petition asking the board to review Mr. Theobald’s actions and saying the dismissal demanded further explanation. By Wednesday, the petition had drawn more than 4,000 signatures.

The petition’s creator, Eric Borguet, a chemistry professor, said Mr. Dai’s removal had triggered outrage from some faculty members.

“When you say somebody’s relieved of their responsibilities, effective immediately, there is a suggestion that there is a clear and present danger,” Mr. Borguet said.

Michael Sachs, president of Temple’s Faculty Senate and a kinesiology professor, said that when the president fired Mr. Dai, the petition was the faculty’s only vehicle to express disapproval.

Mr. Theobald did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.

Reflecting Badly

Faculty members were protective of Mr. Dai because he had largely led the university’s effort to attain its top-tier ranking as an R1 institution in the Carnegie Classification, with $242 million in annual research expenditures, Mr. Sachs said.

“There was concern” that the abrupt dismissal of the provost “was going to reflect badly on Temple in general, but also on Hai-Lung Dai specifically,” Mr. Sachs said. “The core thing here is that the provost serves at the pleasure of the president.”

The faculty wasn’t the only constituency that felt kept in the dark. The board knew Mr. Theobald and Mr. Dai were in talks, and believed the provost would be offered a settlement when he left his post, Mr. Feeley said.

It was only when Mr. Theobald announced that Mr. Dai had been fired, on June 28, that the trustees learned that the dismissal had stemmed from the deficit’s steep increase, he said.

In June 2015 there was a $9-million deficit in merit aid, Mr. Feeley said. Though the number seemed manageable at the time, Mr. Theobald didn’t loop in the trustees about the shortfall or how administrators planned to close it, he said.

By March, when the board first heard of it, the deficit had grown to $22 million, a more concerning figure, Mr. Feeley said.

Hillel J. Hoffmann, Temple’s director of national communications, said in an email that the merit-scholarship program had seen an unexpected increase in students who met the academic requirements, based on grade-point averages and SAT scores, to receive merit aid.

For the coming semester, the number of students with eligible grades rose by 17 percent and with qualifying scores by 29 percent, Mr. Hoffmann said. And because the academic requirements are fixed, the university was on the hook to pay out more aid than it had budgeted. (The students will still get the aid.)

False and Slanderous

Mr. Dai’s lawyer on Wednesday released a statement from the former provost saying he was not aware of the deficit until this past March.

“As the Board of Trustees said yesterday, the responsibility for managing budgetary matters rests with the president,” Mr. Dai said in the statement. “I was never, at any time prior to March 2016, asked by President Theobald to manage this issue.”

As Mr. Theobald continued to blame Mr. Dai for the financial problem, the board grew more concerned, Mr. Feeley said. “Ultimately the deficit is the president’s responsibility,” he said.

The board asked Mr. Theobald to resign on July 7, and negotiations for a settlement package ensued, Mr. Feeley said. When he refused to step down, the board took a vote of no confidence.

Unanswered questions about the administrative shake-up remain. Among them is an email from Mr. Theobald to the board chair and other administrators saying he was concerned about sexual-harassment allegations against Mr. Dai, Mr. Feeley said. The board, while saying there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations, has formed a committee to review them.

Mr. Dai told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the allegations are false and slanderous.

Amid the many questions about Mr. Theobald’s management, particularly of the university’s finances, one thing is clear among faculty members and the board: They were kept in the dark.

“That’s what the ironic thing is here,” Mr. Borguet said. “The ostensible motive for this was the financial issue, yet it was an education-finance expert who was at the helm when all this happened.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.

Correction (7/14/2016, 4:55 p.m.): This article originally misstated when the board first learned about the merit-aid deficit. It was in the spring of 2016, when it was $22 million, not June 2015, when it was $9 million. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.