Sanctioning body may consider University of Iowa request to allow Board of Regents reprimand

IOWA CITY - Following an American Association of University Professors decision over the weekend to sanction the University of Iowa for its recent presidential search, UI faculty leaders are calling on the national association to change its rules to allow reprimands of governing boards.

And an AAUP official on Monday told The Gazette he'll recommend the association's Committee on College and University Governance consider that request.

'I do think the committee … will likely review the request and give it consideration,” said Hans-Joerg Tiede, senior program officer in the AAUP's Department of Academic Freedom, Tenure, and Governance. 'What they will decide, I don't know.”

Current AAUP rules don't permit governing boards - like Iowa's Board of Regents, which oversees the state's three public universities - to be sanctioned for violating AAUP-supported standards of academic government. That's why delegates at the 102nd annual AAUP meeting on Saturday voted to sanction only the University of Iowa for a presidential search that resulted in the Board of Regents' hiring of businessman Bruce Harreld over widespread objection from faculty, staff, and students.

'The sanction is primarily directed against the Iowa Board of Regents,” according to the AAUP committee that investigated the case.

During Saturday's annual AAUP meeting in Washington, D.C., members of the AAUP's UI chapter asked the association to change its rules to allow reprimand of governing boards. And the university's Faculty Senate President Thomas Vaughn followed that appeal on Sunday with a message to UI faculty senators disavowing the sanction and seconding the call for change.

'We believe that the AAUP's sanction against the University of Iowa is misdirected,” according to Vaughn's email. 'The national AAUP organization should change its rules to permit sanctions to run against governing boards rather than against the universities that they govern.”

The soonest AAUP members could consider a rule change would be in September during the association's shared governance conference, according to Tiede. If the Committee on College and University Governance supports amending the rules, a recommendation would have to go before delegates at next summer's annual association meeting.

'So it would be at least a year for that change to take place,” he said.

And, Tiede said, in creating the sanction list in the 1990s, the AAUP intentionally recognized 'that governance involves all of the participants,” not just a governing board or a university.

'There seems to be an undercurrent that somehow there is this institution, the University of Iowa, and the Board of Regents is somehow entirely separate,” Tiede said. 'That has not historically been the view of the association and our view of governance. The governing board is part of the institution.”

Still, he said, the association could benefit from reviewing that rationale.

'There might be a better way of doing it,” Tiede said. 'And the committee is surely willing to consider that question.”

Before the AAUP sanction, UI faculty senators in April sent a letter to the association arguing against such action by making a distinction between regent and university behavior.

'The University of Iowa presidential search process was clearly flawed,” according to the letter. 'As Faculty Senate officers, it was never our wish to preside over a meeting in which the senate voted no-confidence against the Board of Regents. This was a serious step, and we did not take it lightly.”

But, the senators said, typical AAUP sanctions follow 'pervasive patterns in which faculty were denied any meaningful role in academic governance, even as to fundamental faculty functions.”

'In three out of the six cases currently listed on the AAUP website, the college or university was sanctioned for having abolished the faculty governance structure altogether,” according to the letter. 'In sharp contrast, the University of Iowa had an exemplary tradition of shared governance.”

Senators said that tradition is continuing, despite Harreld's controversial hire. Harreld, who had no academic administrative experience before starting the UI job Nov. 2, has met regularly with faculty senators and at least twice with the UI AAUP chapter.

Harreld has familiarized himself with AAUP values and policies, according to the letter, and has promoted those ideals in faculty discussions. He's holding public town hall meetings, has launched a largely faculty-led strategic planning process, and also has developed a new budgeting process 'that seems much for democratic than our previous one.”

'Of course, none of these subsequent events excuses the presidential search process that got us to this point,” the faculty senators write. 'Nevertheless, we believe it would be both unfair and unwise for the AAUP to sanction a university whose shared governance is, on the whole, praiseworthy.”

Tiede said although the AAUP's sanction was 'primarily” directed at the Board of Regents, it wasn't exclusive to the board. Members of the UI faculty and administration were involved in the search process and even in private meetings held with Harreld that weren't afforded other candidates.

'I don't think the report warrants the conclusion that the board is the only one responsible for this,” he said.

To get off the sanction list, the university and Board of Regents would have to adopt changes to improve governance practices, and Tiede said AAUP delegates would have to vote for removal at its annual meeting.

In the meantime, Iowa's Board of Regents has been thrust into another presidential search - this time at the University of Northern Iowa. With UNI President Bill Ruud leaving for the presidency at Marietta College in Ohio next month, regent leadership is developing a process for a new search.

Tiede said reports that the board is considering a closed search - meaning, potentially, names of finalists would not be made public - runs counter to progress the AAUP is promoting.

'That would be an unwelcome development,” he said. 'The language that we have in our policies on shared governance is that the search for a president should be a cooperative process between the university and the board.”

Open searches in the past - involving faculty, staff, student and community participation in the recruiting and selection - has produced 'outstanding” presidents, according to Tiede.

'This (UI) search process was a very very clear departure from the way they have been conducted in the past, and that is worrisome,” Tiede said. 'With the forthcoming search at UNI, it is disconcerting.”

Regents Executive Director Bob Donley and board President Pro Tem Katie Mulholland are establishing a timeline and process for the UNI search that will involve meetings with key constituents groups, including faculty. But, Mulholland told The Gazette on Monday, they've made no decisions on how to move forward. She and Donley have considered 'the whole range” of search styles and options.

'But the way we're setting this up, (a closed search) is not likely,” she said.

Iowa law does not require the board hold an open search. State code allows the board to 'enter into closed session to evaluate the professional competency of individuals whose appointment or hiring is being considered,” according to board spokesman Josh Lehman.

And the law generally protects application materials as confidential.

'There is no provision in state law requiring that finalist names be made public,” Lehman said.