Another political chancellor in trouble

[Hibush]

Georgia and perhaps a couple other states have been in the news for having non-academic heads of the state university appointed by a governor in order to increase the governor's political power.

It turns out something like that was happening in New York as well, this time with Democrats.

With ex-governor Cuomo removed from all the power he spent decades building, his appointees are falling for various reasons. The latest is the SUNY chancellor. Nominally for yelling at a faculty member who belongs to UUP, the SUNY faculty's union. I suspect there is some political payback or house cleaning happening. But I don't know what.

I have not heard of any terrible academic policy Malatras imposed in his year and change in the post.

Does anyone here have insight related to the academic side. Or is he simply a marker of Cuomo's former power to put allies on every board in the state?

[dr_codex]

This one is almost pure politics, from what I know. Much of it is baggage from his time working for Cuomo (nursing home death reporting, the book deal using State resources, & the sexual assault/bullying/doxxing). But some of it is the product of what he did working for SUNY, and he didn't do himself a lot of favors when he said that 2019 was a long time ago and that he'd changed a lot since then.

But there are internal SUNY politics that are at play, too. The hire without a national search really rankled, and it tainted his term from the start. As a political appointee, his value plummeted when the golden goose was gone, and any direct line to Grace Mansion was cut. Neither of the Cuomo Governors were ever a great friend to SUNY, despite packing the Board with his people, and there's residual fallout from that among the union rank-and-file, even if union leadership thought it valuable to back the (ex)-Chancellor.

Lastly, the scuttlebutt is that a number of the campus presidents felt as though they were hung out to dry during COVID; they were given very little SUNY cover for their decisions, and left in the unenviable position of having lots of responsibility for, but limited authority over, their pandemic decisions. Many US States have used the same playbook, insisting that the decisions should be made locally (by County, by school district, etc.). It's a canny political decision, and might even be justifiable on epidemiological grounds, but I cannot be the only one who sat in on some very heated school board meetings as things were hashed out. You can see why the Board were happy with this, but there were always knives being sharpened elsewhere ...

[Hibush]

Thanks for that super inside look!

I imagine there are a lot of sharp knives in Albany these days, and that loyalty to Cuomo was almost entriely transactional. Anyone whose power is based on such a transaction is at risk of being cut loose.

[Langue_doc]

According to the headlines in the NYT and Gothamist

SUNY Leader to Resign After Disparaging Cuomo Victim

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/nyregion/suny-chancellor-malatras-resigns.html

https://gothamist.com/news/suny-chancellor-jim-malatras-resigns-after-disparaging-cuomo-accuser

I haven't had any desire to read past the headlines, so cannot comment on the articles.

[Hibush]

I figure this old thread is a better spot for this item than starting fresh.

The University of Nevada chancellor has been given the boot for clashing with the chair of the regents. In this case, it sounds as if the regent is political and the chancellor was trying to operate a university system.

Chancellor Melody Rose was hired in the summer of 2020. By the following fall, she filed a hostile-workplace complaint against Regents chair Cathy McAdoo.

"On Covid: The chairwoman has been wildly inconsistent, indecisive, and attempting to shift blame for inaction to me and my team, at times calling me obstructionist. She also routinely appears to make her decisions based on direction from God." --Rose

Systemwide faculty Senate chair professor Amy Pason speaks of faculty departures: "There's not stability. It makes faculty members, worried their jobs won't be funded far into the future, less likely to stay in Reno. We are seeing a lot of resignations."

This reinforces the pattern that shaky schools, public or private, do have trouble retaining good faculty. It is possible that this Regent sees that as a feature, not a bug. There are some antieducation people getting into these slots.

[marshwiggle]

This reinforces the pattern that shaky schools, public or private, do have trouble retaining good faculty. It is possible that this Regent sees that as a feature, not a bug.

In Darwinian terms, it is a good thing. The places that are shaky, are probably at least partially that way because of bad management, and so if they lose good faculty to better and better-run places, then it will improve the good places and hasten the demise of the bad ones.

[apl68]

At the University of South Carolina the whole Board of Trustees is apparently now in trouble:


https://www.thestate.com/news/local/education/article259811560.html


Over the past couple of years they've failed to deal with an accused harasser on the faculty to everybody's satisfaction, hired a president who has plagiarized much of a commencement speech and has been privately badmouthing the school, and spent something like $16 million buying out departing coaches during the COVID crisis.  Legislators are talking about replacing the whole Board.