Dear Editor,
The Oct. 12 Cavalier Daily guest opinion piece from The Jefferson Council, "The hypocritical politicization of U.Va.'s presidential search," claims, among other things, that faculty did not protest when former University President Jim Ryan appointed Ian Baucom Provost without a search.
That is factually inaccurate. In fact, faculty did protest. In a Jan. 28, 2022 Faculty Senate meeting — covered in a Jan. 31, 2022 Cavalier Daily article aptly entitled “Faculty Senate members oppose decision to not conduct national search for new provost” — Faculty Senators sharply criticized Ryan for this action.
Additionally, Economics Prof. Amalia MIller, and Sarah Turner, University professor of economics and education, wrote a Jan. 26, 2022 Cavalier Daily opinion piece entitled “What does shared governance mean at U.Va.?” They plainly state: “What transpired [with Provost Baucom’s appointment] appears inconsistent with both precedent and accepted practice.” The editorial identifies “the steps of broad outreach, consultation and consensus building” as important procedural search norms that I find to also be especially relevant to the searches currently underway.
Following the appointment of Provost Baucom, Faculty Senators also called for policy change to limit the ability of the administration to forgo a search in the future. Then-Provost Baucom agreed to undertake a revision of PROV-024, Academic Faculty Members Appointed to Administrative Positions, to include:
Administrative academic leadership positions at the level of dean, vice provost, or vice president (under the purview of the provost) must be filled via a competitive search involving faculty input, even if the position is limited to internal candidates.
PROV-024 is a provost-level policy which applies to searches done by the provost or someone who reports to the provost and not to searches for the provost or president. However, it was put in place in service of the larger principle of external searches with faculty input, following protest by faculty after the appointment of Provost Baucom without a search. Faculty would be happy to see similar edits to the relevant Board- or presidential-level policies, but have less influence on these policies than on provost-level policies.
Jeri Seidman is the Chair of the University Faculty Senate and a professor at the McIntire School of Commerce. She can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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