Critics of OSU board dead wrong. It — not entitled students, faculty — runs show

The end of Ted Carter’s term as Ohio State University’s President for an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman seeking business with the school came as a surprise to many. While no excuse, men behaving badly with women other than their spouse has been happening for as long as there have been men and women.  

I’m less surprised by Carter’s marital indiscretions than his poor judgement as it relates to his employment, especially given his distinguished military career and modern sensibilities about such things. At least he took the honorable path to resign rather than be fired. It appears the rest will be between him and his wife.

The drama surrounding the selection process for Carter’s replacement is much more interesting. Complaints from faculty and students about being excluded from the process indicate misplaced entitlement.

University trustees were well within their authority and were right to accept Carter’s resignation. It was also squarely their sole responsibility to select his successor.

I’ve been involved in executive placement roles on both private and publicly elected boards. And I’d never cede authority for the selection of a chief executive to either employees or customers. 

Keep that framing in mind because it’s likely different than how university faculty or students view themselves.

Historically, universities were cloistered environments established by scholars, religious institutions, and governments to curate, research, and disseminate knowledge and clearly defined civic and cultural values to a relatively small and select student population. They were governed by faculty because the institution’s role was narrowly defined by its educational purpose and professors were best suited to facilitate it. The limited scope and size didn’t require much in the way of administrative or support staff.

While professors had wide latitude in developing curricula, they were still expected to hew to their institution’s foundational texts and instill those clearly defined civic and cultural values. Scholars and researchers expanded human knowledge that sometimes upended previously sacrosanct views but rarely, if ever, did they reject the fundamental basis of the culture that supported them. 

There’s virtually no similarity between that past and today’s massive public universities like Ohio State where administrators and staff outnumber faculty by four to one. It’s stunning to consider that the more than 50,000 OSU employees rival in size the student population of about 60,000. The role and skills required of a university president in that case is more similar to a chief executive officer of a multinational corporation than an academic. 

More importantly, as a public institution funded by more than half a billion Ohio taxpayer dollars, the democratic process of selecting that chief executive is accomplished with the appointment of trustees chosen and confirmed by elected officials. Those appointments thereby represent the will of the people for determining the priorities and values of the institution they fund. The president’s role is to carry out those priorities.

Good leaders solicit input from stakeholders like faculty, students, and staff, and newly appointed president Ravi Bellamkonda has a head start on that process after his short tenure as provost before being tapped to replace Carter. That input will shape how Bellamkonda executes his objectives, but he reports to the trustees, and everyone else in the university ultimately reports to him.

Whether students and faculty agree with the trustees’ priorities is another matter entirely. They retain their First Amendment and academic freedom rights to express their views on the topic. They don’t get to choose their boss or set overall policy. Nor should they. 

Employees have the freedom to change jobs and customers have the freedom to take their business elsewhere. Instead, as the comments by unhappy faculty and students demonstrate, they disagree with the trustees’ priorities on politically hot topics like DEI and disruptive protests and want a president who’ll support them.

There’s simply no upside in capitulating to such demands. As I’ve written before, our public universities have allowed themselves to become politically one-sided and failed to self-police weak scholarship and political activism masquerading as academic freedom. The public demanded change, and the trustees have a fiduciary obligation to achieve it. 

If they allowed recalcitrant faculty and student groups to participate in the selection process for the new president and those groups disagreed with the trustees’ choice before it was made, they’d weaken the new executive’s hand in carrying out his charge. If they agreed with it given their biases, they’d weaken the drive for change.

I work with several Ohio State faculty members as part of my family’s civil discourse initiatives and have great respect for their academic accomplishments and commitment to teaching and learning. As an alumnus and a voter, I want my alma mater to fulfill its land grant charter of conveying practical knowledge while inculcating our shared civic values.

Ted Carter’s term may have ended because of his indiscretion, but the trustees’ exercise of their statutory discretion in selecting his replacement signals the best way to achieve those results.