Roundup: The University of Virginia Board vs. . . . Everyone

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Sara Hebel, "A UVa Board Member Resigns and a Prominent Faculty Member Leaves in Protest of 'Fiasco,'" Chronicle, June 19, 2012

Ousted UVA president Teresa Sullivan

The vice rector of the University of Virginia board resigned on Tuesday, saying that he hopes his decision will help begin a "needed healing process" at the university, which has been reeling during the past week-and-a-half over the board's decision to force Teresa A. Sullivan, a president popular with faculty and students, from office.>>>

Siva Vaidhyanathan, "Strategic Mumblespeak: Er, UVA’s Teresa Sullivan was fired for what?" Slate, June 15, 2012

. . . . We were all baffled. So Sullivan did nothing wrong? The board would not even hint at the reason she was fired. Conspiracy theories quickly circulated to fill the vacuum. And they got worse after Kiernan’s letter unleashed an unfounded fear that an MBA “cabal” was in cahoots with Goldman Sachs to loot the university.>>>

Zinie Chen Sampson, "UVa vice rector resigns after president's ouster," Guardian, June 19, 2012

The vice rector of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors resigned Tuesday, saying he wanted to help quell the turmoil surrounding the abrupt ouster of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Kevin Kiley, "Going Another Round?" Inside Higher Ed, June 22, 2012

After a highly unusual -- arguably unprecedented -- series of events over the past two weeks, the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors will meet on the campus Tuesday to reconsider the controversial forced resignation of President Teresa Sullivan.>>>

Marie Griffith, "What Can We Learn from UVA?" Religion & Politics, June 21, 2012

The forced resignation of University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, announced June 10, did not go as planned. Pushed out by a faction of the university’s governing body, the Board of Visitors, Sullivan was said to lack vision and “strategic dynamism,” a term appearing in a widely distributed email from Peter Kiernan, the then-chair of UVA’s Darden Business School Foundation Board. (He resigned shortly after the email went public.) Reporting on the forces behind the orchestrated firing, The Washington Post revealed that Sullivan’s Board critics felt she “lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.” Classics and German, “obscure departments”? raged university stakeholders. What else is on the chopping block? Any subject that doesn’t easily lend itself to direct monetary gain?>>>