What’s New
A spate of no-confidence votes has hit higher education in recent months, including high-profile cases in which faculty members at West Virginia University, Rutgers University, and the University of Arizona have expressed dissatisfaction with their leaders. At least 23 faculty governance boards and unions have approved no-confidence resolutions in 2023, a Chronicle analysis found.
The Details
Here’s the context behind several of this year’s votes of no confidence:
- A rough few months for the Rutgers University system’s president, Jonathan Holloway, culminated in a no-confidence vote last week. At issue for the Rutgers University Senate, which passed the resolution, were Holloway’s threat to force striking instructors back to the classroom, increases in tuition, room and board, and meal fees, and his decision not to renew the contract of Nancy E. Cantor, the popular chancellor of Rutgers’s Newark campus.
- Faculty members at West Virginia University protesting sweeping program cuts turned to a no-confidence vote in President E. Gordon Gee. In a resolution that passed this month, 797 to 100, full-time faculty members alleged that Gee had refused to “accept responsibility” for the institution’s current fiscal state, which was caused, in part, by “poor planning” and “faulty decision making.”
- Jason Wingard resigned in March as Temple University’s president after a two-year tenure plagued by labor disputes and concerns about public safety. But Wingard’s exit wasn’t enough to placate the Temple Association of University Professionals, which said that “none of the core issues” had been resolved with his departure and which approved a no-confidence resolution in the provost and board chair a month later.
- The University of Arizona’s Faculty Senate in March voted no confidence in the institution’s president, Robert C. Robbins, and other senior leaders after a professor was killed on campus last fall. Robbins, the senators alleged, had failed to protect the professor’s safety despite knowing that his accused assailant, a former graduate student, had threatened him for more than a year.
- Walter Wendler, president of West Texas A&M University, was hit with a no-confidence vote by the Faculty Senate in April, weeks after canceling a drag show planned by a student group. The president’s stand against the performance, faculty leaders said, exemplified Wendler’s “divisive, misogynistic, homophobic, and noninclusive rhetoric.”
- A trio of faculty and staff unions at the newly incorporated Vermont State University in February passed no-confidence measures in President Parwinder Grewal and other administrators, criticizing plans to transition to an “all-digital” library and downgrade some athletic programs.
- Hamline University faculty members called in January for the immediate resignation of Fayneese S. Miller, the president, for her handling of a situation in which an adjunct professor showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in class last fall. (Miller later announced she’d retire in 2024.)
What’s notable about those cases? Two things, said Sean McKinniss, a consultant who maintains a public database of no-confidence votes. Thanks to the prominence of the institutions and their leaders, each vote has made national headlines. (Traditionally, he said, no-confidence votes are more likely to be employed at smaller institutions that aren’t as well known.) And the concerns raised by the voting bodies are much more varied than the typical reasons faculties vote no confidence.
Ordinarily, McKinniss said, no-confidence votes center on one of three factors: financial mismanagement, a president’s failure to participate in shared governance, and interpersonal friction. While some of this year’s votes — West Virginia’s, for example — hewed closely to those norms, others, like the votes at West Texas A&M, Vermont State, and Hamline, show that faculty members are widening the scope of what they consider grounds for a no-confidence vote.
The Backdrop
No-confidence votes hold no inherent power — faculty governing bodies and advocacy groups don’t have the authority to oust presidents — but they’ve proved to be potent tools for drawing public attention to perceived wrongdoing in the ivory tower. And they often get results: Faced with a vote of no confidence, leaders often apologize, backtrack on their actions, or even resign. A 2022 Chronicle analysis found that, about 51 percent of the time, a president on the receiving end of one winds up leaving office within a year. Another Chronicle project found that 13 percent of presidential resignations in the past five years were linked to a no-confidence vote.
When they don’t force a president out, the votes often create a public-relations headache and drive leaders into a defensive posture. Even if presidents weather no-confidence votes, it’s likely to follow them on their search for their next gig, with hiring committees asking questions about what had prompted the vote.
There’s been an increase in no-confidence votes in the last decade, with 2021’s 24 votes setting a high-water mark. (While the 23 votes so far in 2023 include those by unions, the 2021 number counts only votes by faculty governance bodies. The Chronicle logged 15 no-confidence votes in 2022.)
What to Watch For
Given that the pressures facing academe — pandemic-induced budget cuts, political pressures, public disillusionment with the value of a diploma, and the impending enrollment cliff — are only ratcheting up, McKinniss thinks it’s reasonable to expect another spike in no-confidence votes in the next two years, perhaps citing an even broader range of faculty complaints. “The no-confidence vote really is a symptom of a greater disease. You can see the warning signs at these smaller institutions, many of which have closed in the last two to five years,” he said. “This might be getting near a tipping point.”
