Claudine Gay was just the start: US college presidents feel a chilling effect

It is not an auspicious time to be leading an elite college.

Last summer, then-Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned after the discovery of problems with published research he had helped oversee. Last month, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill announced she was stepping down shortly after botching testimony about antisemitism before Congress.

Then came the news Tuesday that Harvard’s Claudine Gay has also resigned, similarly following her testimony on that topic. The political scientist, who had become the college’s first Black president, quickly became the president with the shortest tenure; she’d only been on the job for six months.

Observers predict the scrutiny – and resignation pressure – is coming for others too. The result could be a chilling effect on how and when college leaders engage in public discourse, if at all.

“The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader,” Gay warned in a New York Times op-ed published late Tuesday. “For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.”

Gay and Magill both resigned after a much-discussed congressional hearing last month where they were grilled about their handling of student activism on campus related to the Israel-Hamas war. Republicans asked whether they condoned some activists’ calls for the genocide of Jews. The then-presidents’ responses, often circumventing the questions, were leveraged by critics to challenge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and what they framed as selective enforcement of free speech. Gay then moved further into the spotlight over plagiarism accusations.

Now, those same critics are turning their attention to Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, who also testified at that December hearing but remains in her post.

“I wouldn’t exactly envy university presidents in the current environment,” said Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The nonpartisan organization, whose advocacy focuses on college campuses, has challenged the suppression of free speech by people of varying political beliefs. But with 2024 being an election year, Lukianoff anticipates a particularly tumultuous time for leaders who have espoused progressive ideals. “We are likely going to see an uptick in cancel culture coming from the right," he said.

Claudine Gay: How plagiarism claims at Harvard add fuel to GOP feeding frenzy on higher education

College presidents don’t last long

The college presidency is an all but impossible job. That reality is largely reflected in how little time the average college president in the U.S. remains in that role.

Every few years, the American Council on Education conducts a survey of college presidents about their jobs. The most recent survey, published last year, shows that presidents stay in their jobs for an average of 5.9 years, and most say they don’t anticipate remaining for another five. In 2016, it was 6.5 years, and a decade before that the average stood at 8.5 years.

What’s more, the presidents aren’t leaving their posts for similar leadership roles at other institutions; they’re heading into nonprofits or back into faculty positions. At the same time, fewer and fewer provosts express an interest in being promoted to president. Stanford's Tessier-Lavigne, who served as president for roughly seven years and was eventually cleared of committing any wrongdoing personally, remains a tenured biology faculty member at the elite college.

The difficulties that came with the COVID-19 pandemic are one major factor behind the declining appeal of running a university. But there are other ingredients at play as well.

Is the government interfering too much in higher ed?

It’s a time marked by growing government interference in higher education, leaders said, including new laws restricting campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs, professors’ tenure protections and instruction about LGBTQ+ issues or race.

“The strength of American higher education is derived, in part, from the fact that what's taught inside and outside of the classroom is protected from direct to government control and undue political influence,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. “And yet, the hearings on the Hill showed that we are not adhering to those principles.”

“There are multiple constituencies calling upon presidents to act in particular ways, and they’re often at odds,” she said. “Students, faculty, staff, alumni, community members, donors, politicians might have different perspectives on the correct course of action. … No matter what one does in the presidency today, it will be criticized.”

Irene Mulvey, a mathematician and president of the American Association of University Professors, agreed. College presidents, she said, have traditionally served as a firewall between the campus community and the public, including board members and lawmakers; they've been tasked with protecting the academic freedom and free speech interests of their community while appealing to, negotiating with and justifying decisions to funders and governing bodies.

But that’s been changing: With evolving politics and funding circumstances, that firewall has begun to dissipate, Mulvey said. That phenomenon includes private universities, once thought to be mostly immune from outside forces.

“I would imagine college presidents are shaken up by what's happened and feel threatened – and not just personally threatened or professionally threatened,” Mulvey said. “The threat is also against the autonomy that higher education needs to be a public good in a democracy.

“If the government is dictating what protests can happen on campus, what words can be said on campus, what student groups are allowed on campus – if the government's dictating what we what we can research, where we can study where our work can go – then I think that higher education is dead.”

Americans question worth, direction of higher education

The public’s confidence in higher education, meanwhile, has dropped to historic lows, and growing numbers of today’s young people are deciding not to pursue further schooling. Students who will be graduating high school this spring were in middle school when the pandemic hit in March 2020. The disruptions to schooling and learning, for many kids, fueled a detachment from education.

Beyond that, though, are the partisan divides. A minority of Republicans – who often frame colleges as bastions of liberal politics – say in surveys that college is worth the investment. Lukianoff's research, he said, has revealed that many elite colleges have a poor track record when it comes to protecting the freedom of speech across the political spectrum; Harvard for its part has come in last in his group's rankings of which campuses adequately promote that right.

The sector has also been dealt several political blows in recent years that have further undermined that confidence. The U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected not only the use of race-based affirmative action by colleges but also President Joe Biden’s plan to provide broad student loan forgiveness.

The decisions bolstered the perception that access to and the value of higher education are in decline. More recently, the launch of an updated Free Application for Federal Student Aid has been beset by technological difficulties, leaving many prospective college-goers in the lurch.

“I worry … there will be an exacerbation of the racial and economic segregation in higher education that's already taking place in America,” Pasquerella said. “Those who are most marginalized – those who are most disenfranchised – will be dissuaded from attending college at a time when a college education is more important than ever for socio-economic mobility.”

“Somebody who can get a job immediately out of high school might say, ‘Well, you know, it's not worth the money that you spend to go to college and they're all corrupt anyway or they don't teach real-world skills or they're liberals,” Pasquerella said.

Data continues to show that a college degree can significantly improve a person’s earning potential from what it would be had education stopped at high school.

Value of college: Student loan debt is hard to avoid in pursuit of a career. Here's what 5 people tried

Amid creation of ‘plagiarism hunting fund,’ leaders feel chilling effect

Higher education leaders told USA TODAY these realities, more than ever, call for a greater commitment by colleges to principles such as DEI. They feel compelled to double down on their advocacy for greater access, to promote a deeper sense of belonging among students both current and prospective.

Yet the same leaders said the chilling effect of recent developments is very real. Contributing to the chill is the announcement Tuesday of a “plagiarism hunting fund” by Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who has spearheaded efforts to eliminate critical race theory and DEI from institutions including schools.

Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, said this is an especially critical time for leaders such as himself to encourage open inquiry and civic engagement. But "I do worry that many of my colleagues will retreat further from the public sphere. ... I'm afraid this kind of thing will make people gun-shy."

Pasquerella, who before her current post served as president of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, said she herself has been chilled by the vitriol, especially upon receiving emailed death threats on Wednesday following some commentary she shared with reporters the day prior. She pointed to Rufo’s usage, in separate tweets, of the word “scalped” to describe the takedown of Gay, promising not to stop his efforts until diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education are deemed obsolete.

“These same people who criticized higher education for chilling speech and for cancel culture are now engaging in those very tactics to chill speech to cancel people like Claudine Gay,” the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Pasquerella said. “That weaponization of speech and the using of accusations of plagiarism are just one component of the culture wars that fueled the attacks on higher education. And the fact that these attacks often include misinformation and disinformation campaigns has made campus leadership much more difficult.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Claudine Gay resigned, who's next? College presidents in crosshairs