“At best we’ll have a president who openly declared he’ll be out in two and a half years, an interim chancellor or interim provost,” Brown says. “We’re in a situation where the leadership at the top will be thin, and as a faculty member, I’m clearly concerned about that.”
Dr. Ted Widlanski, a chemistry professor who has pushed the faculty resolution on Herbert, says many faculty members already considered Herbert a lame-duck leader who has not moved the university forward during his two and one-half years as president.
“This guy was never going to get renewed anyway,” Widlanski says of Herbert.
Herbert said in his letter that IU’s president needed to be more directly responsible for the Bloomington campus.
“This is a particularly significant priority because, unlike our Big Ten peers, each of the last four IU presidents has encountered a set of leadership challenges and for a variety of reasons, been subjected to faculty criticisms on the Bloomington campus,” his letter said.
Herbert had been chancellor of Florida’s state university system after 10 years as president of the University of North Florida before IU hired him in 2003 following Myles Brand’s resignation to become president of the NCAA.
— Associated Press
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
