On Tuesday afternoon, passersby on the Diag listened to six University of Michigan students, faculty and staff speak to the crowd at a forum titled “What Do I Want in a New U-M President?” The event marked the beginning of this year’s Political Speech and the Public Square series, a program from the University’s Faculty Senate for community members to hear a diverse range of well-informed perspectives on critical issues. Speakers gave brief talks on important values for the Presidential Search Advisory Committee to consider as their search continues for the next University president.
Derek Peterson, Faculty Senate chair and event organizer, spoke at the session. In an interview with The Michigan Daily before the event, Peterson said public discussion is an opportunity for University community members to exercise their right to free speech.
“The idea undergirding all of this is to give us an opportunity as a campus to practice the First Amendment and to remind ourselves that this is a university that values free expression, even while there are forces outside the University and within it that wish to dampen down on controversial speech,” Peterson said. “We in the faculty government and (Central Student Government), which is co-sponsoring this with us, want to keep the door wide open for dissenting views of all kinds.”
Peterson also noted that no members of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee are elected members of faculty governance. Julie Boland, professor of linguistics and psychology, opened the event with a conversation on faculty involvement in decision-making. Boland said it is essential for the next president to include and listen to faculty voices.
“Our new president must understand that administration cannot achieve shared governance by handpicking faculty to serve on important committees, such as the Presidential Search (Advisory) Committee,” Boland said. “Shared governance requires that faculty themselves choose their representatives. Shared governance requires that the recommendations of faculty advisory committees be followed, and in the rare instance when they’re not followed, that strong justification is given to those committees for why their recommendations were ignored.”
Meredith Kahn, Ann Arbor campus chair of the Galleries, Libraries, Archivists and Museums unit of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization, said the next president should value libraries as a protector of academic freedom.
“I want a University president who understands that the galleries, gardens, libraries, archives and museums of this university are essential,” Kahn said. “There is a reason that the library sits at the heart of campus. Our collections form the basis of teaching and research. Our workers protect the freedom to be which is essential to academic freedom itself.”
LSA junior Sydney Olthoff, co-president of the University’s American Civil Liberties Union undergraduate chapter, shifted focus to the importance of valuing civil rights protections for students. She quoted a May 2024 post on X by Regent Sarah Hubbard (R) in which she responded to student protesters’ demands by writing, “I say no, no, no and hell no.” Olthoff called for the institution to uphold students’ rights, citing incidents such as the firing and surveillance of pro-Palestine protestors.
“Students, faculty, staff, civil rights groups, legal organizations, humanitarian organizations, community members have ceded their support for the dire need to protect civil rights on campus, in our community and in our country,” Olthoff said. “To campus bans, to the investigation, intimidation and prosecution of students, to University-sanctioned permits for free speech, to using our tuition money for violence, genocide and surveillance, we say ‘no, no, no and hell no.’”
Rebekah Modrak, Art & Design professor and former chair of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, concluded the discussion by reiterating the need for collaboration and shared vision in leadership.
“Authoritarian leadership lacks accountability and leads to a sense of imbalance and fear, (to) social conformity and to a hostile and ambivalent community,” Modrak said. “We need a president who recognizes that universities are healthiest and most productive when power is shared.”
In an interview with The Daily, Business sophomore Hugh Lee, who attended the event, said public forums can help students better understand leadership values shared at the community level.
“Especially politically, there’s a lot of things happening around campus and the University,” Lee said. “I think it’s important that students and the school body share their opinions so that we have a better understanding of the culture and what we want out of our president, much more than what the University and the higher-ups want.”
Daily Staff Reporter Thomas Gala-Garza can be reached at tmgala@umich.edu.
