So, everybody is talking about the kerfuffle at Brock: yet another presidential hire gone wrong, though this time the slamming-on-the-brakes happened before the hire actually started working, which I suppose is progress.
What actually happened? At the moment, here’s what we know for sure: Wendy Cukier, a former VP at Ryerson was offered the President’s job at Brock in December 2015 with a start date of September 1. She was undergoing what seemed to be a normal transition, starting to meet with faculty, up until a few weeks ago when meetings suddenly ceased. On Monday August 29th, news emerged that Cukier and the Board had mutually agreed to suspend the appointment, and to look for a new President. Cukier returned to her professorial position at the Ted Rogers business school at Ryerson.
Now, no one has yet actually asserted in print that the reason for the “mutual” change of heart is a report about Cukier’s alleged bullying of staff while at Ryerson, but many news outlets have reported that an inquiry into such allegations took place and by putting two facts side by side the journalists clearly expect the reading public to make that leap. The inquiry into those allegations is said to have occurred in late 2015 (i.e. around the time Cukier’s appointment at Brock occurred), an investigative report into the allegations is reported to have been received by Ryerson in January 2016 (i.e. after the appointment). We don’t know what the inquiry’s report said, and news outlets have been careful to avoid directly stating that there was any connection between the two.
Brock, obviously, is a bit screwed now. Their interim President is the VP Finance & Administration (not an academic and a former CFL player to boot, which has made the faculty union extremely sniffy in an oh-my-God-what-will-other-universities-think-of-us kind of way, which is frankly juvenile). The some-say acting, some-say interim Provost is an outsider: Martin Singer, the Arts Dean from York who is best remembered for deciding to allow Saudi males to not study with girls in the name of religious accommodation. The VP Research is also interim. It’s going to be a tough two years working to sort this out.
To the extent anyone is talking about the general implications, there same to be three. First, some people have posited that gender is an issue in the affair. On the facts of this particular case that seems a stretch. It is however undeniable that recent university President “departures” (let’s call them that) have been disproportionately female (Leavitt at King’s, Ghazzali at UQTR, Lovett-Doust at Nipissing, Scherf at Thompson Rivers, Woodsworth at Concordia, Busch-Vishniac at Saskatchewan, Hitchcock at Queen’s and now Cukier), at least compared to the mostly male population of university presidents. I’d argue that – contra Jennifer Berdahl and the view that only alpha male behaviour is rewarded in universities – there’s a disproportionate number of individuals in that group who were let go precisely because they were too alpha. If there’s a gender case to be made here, it might be about what kinds of leadership styles get women promoted to decanal and vice-Presidential positions in the first place.
Second is the role of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which again are getting in the way of Everyone’s Right to Know Every Last Detail (though to be honest, Brock’s Board of Governors has 27 members and I’m willing to bet that that’s too many to keep a secret for long). NDAs don’t get a lot of favourable press and some say they should be done away with, but it’s hard to see how that’s possible. If someone is being let go for some reason that reflects badly on them but which is short of being “with cause”, you can either pay them a small amount of money now and have them leave quietly (I’m actually a bit surprised no one has yet commented publicly on whether there was a payout and if so how big it was), or you can trash them publicly and pay a lot of money after the inevitable lawsuit. As public institutions, I don’t think universities and colleges have a lot of flexibility on that point.
The third implication people are drawing form this is that here again we have Another Failed Board Search, Why Can’t Boards Get Things Right, Need for Immediate Governance Overhaul, etc. But I think this is overdone. The Brock University Board Chair has gone on record saying his university “did not know” about the Ryerson report (there is no word about when Brock became aware of it). But unlike one or two Presidential searches I’ve heard of, Brock actually *did* its homework and interviewed quite a few people about Cukier. It’s just that, as far as we know, no one at Ryerson told them about the results of the inquiry, presumably because it was a “personnel matter” and hence confidential. If staff at Ryerson knew about the issue and withheld information from the Brock search committee, that’s hardly something the Brock board can be blamed for. Sometimes bad things happen even if you do everything by the book.
Finally, let me stress that we don’t yet know the full story. Maybe we never will. The staff allegations at Ryerson might only be a small part of the issues involved. Keep an open mind. There’s probably more to come.
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Yet again we see another case where it seems that the full story of the background of an appointed president does not appear to have been known to the appointing institution.These days, virtually no university will make a senior appointment without commissioning the exceedingly well paid services of an external consultant. Virtually all consultants will tell you that confidentiality is of the utmost importance and that no member of the search committee can communicate informally or formally with any member of the academic community of the potential candidate. All reference checking must be the sole responsibility of the consultant. Herein lies the problem. I know of numerous cases where this reference checking has proved to be flawed and downright misleading because, like it or not, the consultant,while diligent,does not have the same ability as plugged- in faculty members of the search committee to ascertain what “the scoop is “on proposed candidates. Admittedly this is a very delicate area. But the adamant refusal of search consultants to allow anybody but themselves to do the checking has led to several notorious cases where ignorance of past attitudes and activities of appointed presidents has led to untold reputational damage and severe financial consequences to the institution when the president finally departs. It is about time that boards be made aware of the incredible damage, both financial and reputational, that can be caused as a direct result of this single minded practice of consultants.
I agree with your general point about past experience; however, FWIW, my understanding (though I could be wrong) in this case is that it was the cttee and not the consultant who did the reference checks.