But at least now it won’t have as much baggage as it did when the firm announced its arrival March 1.
After Diverse inquired as to why the biography for former Chicago State University president Wayne Watson — one of the firm’s more colorful founding principals — was conspicuously absent from the search firm’s website, the firm revealed that Watson — who retired from his post at CSU in 2015 amid a series of whistleblower lawsuits — had “left TM2 for personal reasons.”
Although some may question the decision to involve Watson in the first place, his sudden departure means TM2 won’t have to answer questions about a recent ethics report that found Watson “acted without integrity” when he made false allegations against two board members as they tried to foment his ouster. Nor of a recent court ruling that suggested Watson acted with “malice and deceit” in trying to pressure a university attorney to withhold records about Watson’s employment that a faculty member had sought under Illinois’ open records law.
His departure leaves John Garland, former president of Central State University; Sidney Ribeau, former President of Howard University; and Dorothy Cowser Yancy, president emerita of Johnson C. Smith University and Shaw University, as the firm’s three founding principals.
While Garland and Yancy left their presidential posts amid generally favorable reports, Ribeau cannot lay claim to the same. Ribeau stepped down abruptly from Howard University in 2013 after the institution’s credit rating was downgraded and its enrollment declined.
Critics had been questioning how two former HBCU presidents who recently had rough exits from their posts could legitimately style themselves as experts in talent recruitment. (CSU is not formally recognized as an HBCU but has been regarded as one.)
