There was a time, not that long ago, when the position of major university president was typically filled, after a national search, by a fast-tracking provost, hot-shot vice president or a smaller school’s president. Sure, there was always the aberration, such as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower accepting the presidency of Columbia University before that of the United States. But the exception was just that.
Then we started to see more presidential vacancies filled by those who had been working outside higher education. According to the American Council on Education, about one in five presidential openings is now filled by someone outside academia.
And some, not surprisingly, are nationally prominent public officials, such as former Oklahoma Governor and Senator David Boren at the University of Oklahoma, former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano at the (10-campus) University of California system, former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels at Purdue and Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, at the University of Miami. Actually, Shalala had been president of Hunter (NY) College back in the 1980s.
Obviously a high profile and familiarity with serving diverse constituencies can pragmatically trump sheer academic credentials in certain scenarios. No one, for example, would second guess the decision of USF to bring in former state Commissioner of Education Betty Castor as president in the 1990s. For USF, it was a Tallahassee upgrade in clout. The university would no longer be a higher ed, hat-in-hand supplicant with a capital insider and political icon at the helm.
Having said all that, there is still the ominous sense that at Florida State University, insider power politics could be the catalyst that determines the successor to Eric Barron. Yes, there’s a head hunter on the case as well as a search committee. But increasingly it’s looking like the committee’s interview with FSU alum and current state senator, John Thrasher, will be determinative. That’s a nice way of saying it looks like the fix is in for the 70-year-old former lobbyist.
Everything and everybody else is on hold until early June when the committee votes up or down on the candidacy of Thrasher, the man chairing Rick Scott’s re-election campaign. The candidate, who as Speaker of the House, dismantled the Florida Board of Regents as a gambit to get FSU its medical school. The candidate who really, really wants this. The candidate who is no T.K. Wetherell (FSU), Frank Brogan (FAU) or Betty Castor.
What were telling–if not foretelling–were the comments of former House Speaker Allan Bense, who now runs the FSU Board of Trustees. He underscored how critical the Legislature’s support will be for FSU’s budget priorities.
“Whether we like it or not, politics is very important,” said Bense, presumably with a straight face.
FSU deserves better.