The University of Michigan’s Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs met Monday afternoon in the Alexander G. Ruthven Building to discuss the search for a new University president, interference in Senate Assembly elections by Medical School administrators and Faculty Senate resolutions on a Big Ten legal defense compact.
SACUA members discussed the importance of influencing the search for a new University president throughout the meeting. SACUA chair Derek Peterson expressed his disapproval of former University President Santa Ono — who resigned earlier this month to pursue a presidential position at the University of Florida shortly after cutting all diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the University of Michigan — and former University President Mark Schlissel — who was fired for his inappropriate relations with a University employee.
“The last two presidential search processes have given us presidents who — I think the result was not necessarily in the interest of the institution,” Peterson said. “Santa Ono, plainly, is a climber who was auditioning to be president of the University of Florida for some months before he left.”
Peterson said he believed a potential solution to the recent streak of unpopular and unrepresentative University presidents could be to bring the presidential search process into public view rather than keeping it behind closed doors.
“The 2022 SACUA did advocate, as you all saw from my email last week, for an open presidential search process,” Peterson said. “Whether or not we think that the regents will accept it, we will have a decision next week to take about whether we want to follow our predecessors’ line on this.”
Kentaro Toyama, professor of community information, said the idea would likely face opposition from prospective presidential candidates seeking to avoid the risk of being publicly denied the job and the University’s Board of Regents, who would not want to subject their decision-making processes to public scrutiny.
“The people who are interviewing almost certainly don’t want to be public if they’re going to be the one to lose,” Toyama said. “(And) I think the regents also don’t have a strong interest in making it too open, because then they’ll get all kinds of feedback and it will be a public thing.”
SACUA also discussed a notice sent out by the Medical School administration that stated faculty members with “professionalism issues” would be banned from running for Senate Assembly seats. Peterson said he was concerned that professionalism could be used as an excuse to mask corrupt election practices.
“Professionalism, defined adequately or not, does seem to be used by the (Medical School) leadership to take people who they think will be troublesome out of the running for election to faculty government,” Peterson said.
Committee members agreed to draft a resolution on the topic to present at a future SACUA meeting.
SACUA also reviewed a series of resolutions passed by the Faculty Senate in April. These included a proposal for a Big Ten legal defense compact to protect universities from President Donald Trump’s administration, a resolution urging the regents to reinstate DEI programs and a resolution urging the University to protect international students.
SACUA members were divided on how to respond to the resolution urging the reinstatement of DEI programs, which was overwhelmingly approved by the members of the Faculty Senate. Public Health lecturer Kirsten Herold said she doubted SACUA could get the board to reverse cuts to DEI programs.
“It did pass, and so you probably have to do something,” Herold said. “But you know, in terms of putting it into a letter to the regents saying ‘this is what you have to do, have the next president sign on to’ — I really don’t see that. That’s a nonstarter.”
Peterson said he believed SACUA needed to advocate for the restoration of DEI programs, even if it was unlikely to succeed.
“I feel as though we need to advocate around this,” Peterson said. “We have 78% of our faculty telling us to do so. I understand that we’re confronting politics that make it unlikely that resolution three will come to fruition. But surely we do have to make the case, even though it will cost us some political capital.”
Soumya Rangarajan, assistant professor of internal medicine, proposed adapting DEI policies to the current political climate as a potential strategy to gain the board’s support for reinstating DEI programs.
“I feel like there was a big initial push to say ‘Oh my gosh, we better cut all this stuff because there’s this executive order,’ and then there were challenges in the courts,” Rangarajan said. “So I feel like one of the angles is instead of saying, ‘Well, you have to reinstate DEI,’ is to say, ‘What about DEI is still legally available?’ Because there are things that are still compliant.”
SACUA discussed pulling together legal resources to defend international students from visa revocations and other attacks on their status. Toyama suggested reaching out to the Office of the Provost to acquire the financial support necessary to hire dedicated immigration lawyers.
“With the resolution about establishing legal support, that will require funding,” Toyama said. “It might be that the provost is the right person for doing that. There might be ways to do it so that it’s not a per-person thing, but if a whole bunch of people suddenly have their visa revoked, then there’s one lawsuit supporting all of them.”
Summer News Editor Glenn Hedin can be reached at heglenn@umich.edu.
