The revolving door to the president’s office at the University of Oregon is spinning again. Just two years after taking the position, President Michael R. Gottfredson announced on Wednesday that he was resigning immediately to spend more time on academic research and with his family.
While the suddenness of Mr. Gottfredson’s resignation may have caught casual observers off guard, his tenure was marked by near-constant activity and, often, strife. In just 24 months, the president had to handle an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations by the football team (resulting in three years’ probation and other penalties), negotiate a contract with a new faculty union, lobby (successfully) for the formation of a new governing board, and begin a major fund-raising campaign.
Most recently, Mr. Gottfredson had been heavily criticized for the institution’s handling of accusations of sexual assault against three members of the men’s basketball team.
Individually, those issues are mostly garden-variety challenges for the leader of any flagship university. But Mr. Gottfredson was Oregon’s fourth president—including an interim leader—in six years, and his troubles bear some striking similarities to those of his predecessors. Over that time frame, Oregon’s presidents have been especially beset by three challenges that have become part of the university’s culture. Here’s a look at how those factors have played out.
Athletics Amok?
There has long been a sense among faculty members that athletics has overshadowed the academic mission of the University of Oregon—an idea fueled by the millions of dollars spent on sports facilities by Philip H. Knight, an alumnus who is a founder of Nike. The money has helped make the athletics department financially independent of the university, according to athletics officials. But that independence has also raised questions about whether there is any accountability for how the department is run.
That has played out in recent years as the success of the university’s athletics teams, financially and in competition, has been frequently marred by scandals involving players, coaches, and administrators, producing plenty of presidential agita.
Richard W. Lariviere, who served as president at Oregon from 2009 to 2012 (see a timeline, below), began his tenure by forcing out the athletics director, R. Michael Bellotti, a popular former football coach. On top of that, Mr. Lariviere had to negotiate a $2.3-million payout to Mr. Bellotti after it was revealed that he had been working without a contract.
As expensive as that blunder may have been, Mr. Gottfredson has dealt with a much more serious issue: Three players on the men’s basketball team were accused in March of sexually assaulting a female student. The allegations put the university in the national spotlight as the White House and the U.S. Education Department were putting more pressure on colleges to crack down on sexual violence.
The players have denied the allegations, and no criminal charges have been filed against them. But the university’s own investigation found them “responsible” for sexual misconduct, and all three were suspended from the team in May and, later, from the university too. Still, Mr. Gottfredson and athletics officials have come under criticism for having allowed the players to compete during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after learning of the allegations.
The University Senate passed a resolution calling for greater transparency in how the institution handles cases of sexual violence and how it is spending money to prevent such incidents.
But at the root of much of this is still the fear, expressed in a 2007 newspaper opinion article signed by 92 faculty members, that the university was gambling with its academic future to become “a minor-league training ground for elite athletes.”
Fickle Faculty
That article dates to the tenure of David B. Frohnmayer, who led the university from 1994 to 2009. Mr. Frohnmayer was a popular former state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate. But his leadership spurred harsh criticism from some faculty members who blamed him for what they saw as a decline in the university’s academic quality.
Mr. Lariviere, on the other hand, was largely praised by professors and seen as someone who was looking out for the interests of the instructional staff. He even doled out raises to faculty members against the wishes of the governor and the state Board of Higher Education (more on that below). Those actions cost him his job but also made him a tough act to follow, in the eyes of many faculty members.
Mr. Gottfredson was credited with negotiating a contract with the new faculty union, but he has not been nearly as popular as his predecessor with much of the faculty. One of his most outspoken critics, William Harbaugh, a professor of economics who runs an influential blog about university matters, has maintained a steady drumbeat of criticism against Mr. Gottfredson.
“There were the botched administrative hires, the pointlessly contentious relations with the faculty over academic freedom, and the union contract and the secrecy about the basketball rape allegations,” Mr. Harbaugh said in an email on Thursday.
Robert Kyr, the president of the University Senate and a professor of music, said Mr. Gottfredson had “served during one of the most difficult times in the history of our university.”
Mr. Kyr also praised Mr. Gottfredson for working with the legislature and the university system to create an independent Board of Trustees—"the most significant part of the vision that was articulated by his predecessor, Richard Lariviere.”
Governance Gotchas
Despite being popular with faculty members, Mr. Lariviere was ousted by the state Board of Higher Education, which was unhappy not only that he had awarded raises to faculty members but also that he had lobbied state lawmakers on several issues that members of the board had opposed. Two major flash points: a plan to make the university independent of the state system of higher education and a plan to create a $1.6-billion endowment paid for, in part, by state bonds.
The governance debate that had dogged Mr. Lariviere seemed to have been resolved in the Gottfredson era. This year the university did gain the independence Mr. Lariviere had pushed for when a state law, supported by Mr. Gottfredson, created a new Board of Trustees to govern the institution.
But it was, apparently, that same body that has now pushed Mr. Gottfredson to resign, said Mr. Harbaugh. “Our new board is doing the right thing,” he said, “by getting rid of a failed president as quickly as possible.”
Mr. Kyr, for his part, is focusing on the future, with the board’s announcement that Scott Coltrane, the university’s provost, will take over as interim president. “His appointment is a sign of the stability and strength of the institution, and a vote of confidence from the board in our longstanding tradition of shared governance,” Mr. Kyr wrote in an email.
Mr. Harbaugh warned that the new Board of Trustees needed to be fully transparent about choosing a successor—or else Oregon’s strong faculty would again make its presence felt. “The faculty will give the new board a huge amount of credit for executing Gottfredson’s speedy departure,” he said, “but we’ll expect to be thoroughly in the loop in finding his replacement.”
Oregon’s Eventful Half-Decade
Scroll along the timeline below to explore the University of Oregon’s recent history of administrative tumult:
Timeline compiled by Dan Bauman
