NY Times, December 11, 2008
Kerrey Gets Vote of No-Confidence at New School
By MARC SANTORA and LISA W. FODERARO
Bob Kerrey, the Vietnam veteran and former Nebraska governor and
senator known for his acerbic tongue and iconoclastic tendencies,
earned an overwhelming vote of no-confidence on Wednesday afternoon
from the senior faculty at the New School, the Greenwich Village
university he has run since 2001.
Mr. Kerrey has clashed with some professors since the day of his
appointment as the New School's president, with complaints that he
lacks a Ph.D. and that his politics particularly his early support
for the Iraq war were too moderate for the unabashedly liberal
campus. But the underlying controversies became an open uprising this
week after Mr. Kerrey announced that he would serve temporarily as
provost as well as president after cycling through four provosts in
seven years.
The no-confidence resolution, which has no direct impact but is
intended to pressure the board of trustees to dismiss Mr. Kerry, was
backed by 74 senior, tenured professors and opposed by 2, with one abstaining.
Afterward, many of the professors marched over to a scheduled meeting
of the board of trustees to deliver a document denouncing Mr. Kerrey
for making it "virtually impossible for the faculty to be properly
involved in thoughtful and effective academic planning," and
declaring that the turnover in the provost's office was "part of a
larger pattern characterized by unilateral, impulsive and sometimes
secret decision-making."
The trustees, according to a university spokeswoman, offered their
unanimous support for Mr. Kerrey at the meeting.
Interviews with former provosts and senior professors indicated that
conflicts over governance have ranged from the profound to the
mundane: A few years ago, Mr. Kerrey dismissed an outside
consultant's report recommending a separate budget for academic
affairs, as many universities have; more recently, Parsons the New
School for Design was blocked from printing hats and other items with
a new logo because it was not the university's symbol.
Some said the disagreements were as much about Mr. Kerrey's style as substance.
"I came to the New School largely because I sensed that he was a
charismatic, affable, charming person," said Arjun Appadurai, an
anthropologist who was provost from late 2004 to July 2006 and is
helping to lead the revolt. "I found that was one part of the style.
But I also found there was another part that was impulsive,
autocratic and produced an increasing sense of fear among those who
worked for him."
The situation in some ways echoes the difficulties Lawrence H.
Summers had as president of Harvard before he was forced out in 2006.
Like Mr. Summers, who is now President-elect Barack Obama's choice to
be chief White House economic adviser, Mr. Kerrey was recruited in
part for his star power and management acumen. And like Mr. Summers,
he has often found university politics more difficult to navigate
than electoral politics.
Mr. Kerrey, in an interview, acknowledged that the high turnover
among provosts the university's chief academic officer was
unusual and unfortunate, but he defended his decisions to replace
those he deemed ineffective.
He said that much of the anger directed his way is rooted in more
complex issues about the nature of the New School, which was once
known as a haven for intellectuals fleeing Hitler's Europe and has
long functioned more like a confederation than a university.
"I don't fear any vote that the faculty could take," Mr. Kerrey said,
noting that the group meeting on Wednesday involved a fraction of the
New School's 333 full-time and 1,733 part-time faculty. He said he
has ruffled feathers because he is trying to "move from one kind of
university to another kind of university," adding, "The problem at
the New School is not necessarily me."
Mr. Kerrey, who is 65 and has a contract through 2011, said on
Wednesday that he would consider appointing an interim provost if it
seemed that the search would be prolonged, contrary to his e-mail
message to the faculty on Monday that he would serve as acting
provost after the abrupt departure of Joseph W. Westphal, a former
congressman, assistant secretary of the Army and chancellor of the
University of Maine.
Mr. Westphal left, after only three months on the job, to work on
defense issues for Mr. Obama's transition team a short-term job,
raising questions about why he would not return.
Mr. Westphal, whom Mr. Kerrey recruited and who had won many friends
on the faculty, did not respond to a message left on his cellphone.
Mr. Kerrey, for his part, said: "I don't think it is legitimate to
say to me that I do not have the authority to hire and fire my provost."
The faculty also voted no confidence in James Murtha, who since 2005
has been the university's executive vice president, essentially the
provost's counterpart on the business side. Because of the turnover
among provosts, professors complain, power has been consolidated in
Mr. Murtha's hands, limiting their role on curriculum issues like
creating new courses, hiring, and tenure decisions.
"I think everyone has just had it," said Duncan K. Foley, an
economics professor. "This administration's paralysis and dysfunction
has reach a tipping point."
In some ways, Mr. Kerrey's tenure has been tumultuous from the start,
with some professors suspicious of his lack of academic credentials,
others critical of his penchant for catchy quotations, and still
others offended by his calls in 2002 for regime change in Iraq, which
he defended in a debate with undergraduates before a packed auditorium.
Mr. Kerrey said the most contentious issue has been his attempts to
transform the way professors are appointed and tenure is granted.
Dissenters, many of them refusing to be identified for fear of
retaliation, complain about Mr. Kerrey's temperament and say he has
placed the school's budgetary concerns over academic excellence.
Elizabeth Dickey, who served as Mr. Kerry's first provost and has
since left the New School, said: "Bob Kerrey is smart and works hard,
but he really didn't know academic life when he came to the New
School and he had to learn. At most other universities, the academic
life is seen as the mission and the academic life gets a big seat at
the table."
The New School's instructors once included luminaries like Hannah
Arendt, Leo Strauss and Aaron Copland, but in the 1980s and '90s the
school was known more for its adult-education offerings than for more
prestigious university work. Mr. Kerrey was recruited to build on
work done by his predecessor, Jonathan F. Fanton, to turn disparate
programs on fine arts and social sciences into a unified academic institution.
He has succeeded at raising the school's profile, stabilizing its
finances, and increasing enrollment in degree programs to about
10,000 from 7,000. But critics say he has emphasized enrollment and
splashy initiatives like a proposed new building on 14th Street and
Fifth Avenue over academics and shut them out from important decisions.
Mr. Kerrey lost part of his right leg in the Vietnam War and was
awarded the Medal of Honor. He made a fortune with a chain of
restaurants and health clubs in Nebraska. He served as the state's
governor from 1983 to 1987 and as a senator from 1989 through 2000.
He sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1992, flirted
with another run for president in 2000, and briefly considered a run
for mayor of New York in 2005.
Mr. Kerrey made no apologies for making hard business decisions that
have most likely angered some faculty members. In the current
economic climate, he said, he has instituted a hiring freeze and will
probably eliminate pay raises this year.
But he views himself as battling an entrenched culture, where the
various schools protect their turf even as he tries to create a more
central authority. He said he expects a two-year effort to produce a
faculty handbook with clear universitywide guidelines on key issues
to be finished in the coming months.
He was unfazed by Wednesday's vote.
"If the board loses confidence in me, then I would move on with no
hard feelings," he said. "If I went out and got hit by a bus, I would
know it had been a great eight years."
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