Presidents Speak Out on Academic Freedom, Institutional Change, and Shared Governance

Last year at Hamline University, an art history instructor showed a 14th-century image of the Prophet Muhammad and garnered a complaint from an observant Muslim student. That incident ended with Hamline failing to rehire the adjunct, Erika López Prat, and receiving criticism from a full spectrum of politicians and those interested in academic freedom. Regardless, the university held a forum on academic freedom in September at which President Fayneese S. Miller noted that she did not see the event as a defensive move, “but rather an offensive” one and advised faculty to “not treat [students] as cattle to be prodded and moved in the direction we want.” Forbes reported on warnings coming from past presidents of higher education institutions regarding transformational change. Former president of Bucknell University and Washington & Jefferson College, Brian Mitchell, offered this important advice: “Abandon the approach to governance where trustees are updated in their periodic board meetings,” given that “institutional change will happen at a speed to which they are unaccustomed and potentially unwilling to accept.” Macalester Colleges former president Brian Rosenberg just published a book on change: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education. In it he states, “Shared governance is a system designed, in my view, to make sure that any changes are very slow and very incremental...and end up...with an outcome that is...antithetical to anything...transformational.” Yet he concedes that presidents “will go back to their campus and wax poetic about the wonders of shared governance, because that’s what they have to do to survive.” Forbes closed with this Benjamin Franklin quote “When you are finished changing, you are finished.”