{"id":2587,"date":"2025-09-04T10:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/umich-faculty-senate-hosts-town-hall-on-university-president-search\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T10:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T10:49:07","slug":"umich-faculty-senate-hosts-town-hall-on-university-president-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/umich-faculty-senate-hosts-town-hall-on-university-president-search\/","title":{"rendered":"UMich Faculty Senate hosts town hall on University president search"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The University of Michigan\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/facultysenate.umich.edu\/\"> Faculty Senate<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csg.umich.edu\/\"> Central Student Government<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/universitystaffunited.org\/\"> University Staff United<\/a> and the<a href=\"https:\/\/umaaup.org\/\"> Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Association of University Professors<\/a> hosted a<a href=\"https:\/\/facultysenate.umich.edu\/town-hall\/\"> town hall meeting<\/a> at Weiser Hall Wednesday afternoon to allow students share their thoughts in the ongoing<a href=\"https:\/\/regents.umich.edu\/governance\/announcements\/presidential-search-update\/\"> search<\/a> for a University president.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The meeting began with a presentation from Judith Wilde, research professor at<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gmu.edu\/\"> George Mason University<\/a>, on the process of searching for a new University president. Wilde used<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cmc.edu\/\"> Claremont McKenna College<\/a> as an<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cmc.edu\/presidential-search\"> example<\/a> of the secrecy of past presidential searches and how faculty play an important role in the selection process.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA few years ago, (Claremont McKenna) had planned on a secret search,\u201d Wilde said. \u201cThe faculty really didn\u2019t want it \u2014 they agreed that it would be open, and they just plain asked the faculty, \u2018Will you please not talk a lot amongst yourselves and we can then keep this open as possible?\u2019, and let at least some faculty know what\u2019s happening. And it went very well, so a lot of it is to what extent the faculty wants to be involved and is willing to take on specific roles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After Wilde\u2019s presentation, University Regent Paul Brown (D) said he hoped to further understand why secrecy in the presidential search process has become an industry standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI guess I would love to understand, because I\u2019m also critical of search firms, and oftentimes critical of secrecy, especially when we\u2019re dealing with a public institution,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people here presenting about probably some of the negatives around secrecy. Yet the industry almost exclusively, for a couple of decades, and maybe to my criticism, has done secret searches. \u2026 If 99 out of 100 searches are done that way, there must be people here to defend it, which I would love to hear because I think it needs defense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Derek Peterson,<a href=\"https:\/\/facultysenate.umich.edu\/sacua\/\"> Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs<\/a> chair, spoke on behalf of the Faculty Senate. Peterson referenced SACUA\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/facultysenate.umich.edu\/statement-of-principles-concerning-the-upcoming-presidential-search\/\"> Statement of Principles<\/a> for the presidential search and The Michigan Daily\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/opinion\/re-the-search-for-the-next-u-m-president-from-faculty-and-staff\/\">collection of letters<\/a> from faculty and staff<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/opinion\/re-the-search-for-the-next-u-m-president-from-faculty-and-staff\/\"> <\/a>reiterating their hopes for the presidential search process. Peterson also said both the statement and article express wider beliefs among staff that the future president holds a responsibility to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/administration\/call-attention-to-an-injustice-understanding-protests-at-umich\/\"> listen to protesters<\/a> and defend the University\u2019s mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is, to me, a shame against a public institution like this one that we have as yet been on hearing and unresponsive to the claims that student protesters have been consistently making at great cost of their personal liberty and welfare over the past two years,\u201d Peterson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not impossible that under the new U-M presidency, we will see an ethical investment committee formed that takes seriously the suggestion that many of us want. \u2026 We\u2019ve got to have someone who\u2019s in a position to stand up on behalf of this world-leading public university and defend what it is that we do, which is to educate our students in the critical capacity for reasoning as citizens of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nathan Sadowsky, University Staff United treasurer and earth and environmental sciences academic program manager, said he believes the future president should exhibit qualities of leadership and stand proactively against pushback from the federal government. Sadowsky said leadership needs to be clearer in University-wide communications, citing the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/news-briefs\/umich-releases-new-anti-discrimination-policies-makes-all-u-m-employees-mandated-reporters\/\"> recent announcement<\/a> of changes to mandated reporter standards for faculty.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI get students walking in today asking what it means that they now have reporting obligations, an announcement made yesterday that I don\u2019t know what it means for them,\u201d Sadowsky said. \u201cI want to see a president who comes in and has some courage to develop a real culture of leadership that I feel is lacking at this university. To answer those questions proactively, affirmatively, to take those stances and say we are going to lead and not just respond to what is happening in the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>During the panel, CSG President Eric Veal Jr. said he hopes the new president will be supportive of student-administration collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI hope, in this search, we get it right,\u201d Veal Jr. said. \u201cI hope, when we get it right, we have someone who cares and supports all of the communities on our campus, someone who has character, someone who ensures that our university is leading and headed to success for a plethora of years to come. I hope that we have a president who isn\u2019t just able to regurgitate \u2018Leaders and Best,\u2019 but actually embodies those values in their everyday decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Ward, associate professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, drew attention to the difference between the town hall organized by SACUA and the recently announced<a href=\"https:\/\/record.umich.edu\/articles\/r-3\/\"> University listening sessions<\/a>. Ward said the space for conversation the town hall provides is important in fostering genuine dialogue surrounding the presidential search.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis event has been organized autonomously by faculty, members of the staff and students to create a space where we can have some type of broad democratic conversation,\u201d Ward said. \u201cWe all know that there is a particularly strong need to create spaces for democratic engagement here and anywhere throughout society. None of us did this as an obligation to the University. We didn\u2019t check a box as, perhaps, the regents are in terms of what they need to do to carry on their search.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Sarah Palushi can be reached at sarpal@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The University of Michigan\u2019s Faculty Senate, Central Student Government, University Staff United and the Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Association of University Professors hosted a town hall meeting at Weiser Hall Wednesday afternoon to allow students share their thoughts in the ongoing search for a University president.\u00a0 The meeting began with a presentation from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[351,1133,325,1796,1448,656,2784,341,568],"class_list":{"0":"post-2587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-faculty","9":"tag-hall","10":"tag-hosts","11":"tag-president","12":"tag-search","13":"tag-senate","14":"tag-town","15":"tag-umich","16":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2589,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2587\/revisions\/2589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}