On Emory's Presidential Search

Emory University is in the midst of searching for a new president. Before the search was announced, earlier in the spring semester and in my role as chair of the faculty council, I shared my views on the matter with the academic affairs committee of the Board of Trustees. The upshot of my remarks was that for Emory to become a truly world class university it needs to hire a truly world class scholar, someone who deeply understands the academic mission of the university. When I gave these remarks, only one of the top four leaders of the university (the provost but not the interim president or the head of the health care side or the chief enterprise officer) even had a PhD, which to me is utterly shocking for a university that aspires to academic excellence.

For the sake of time, I had to winnow down my remarks to seven minutes. But here, for what it’s worth, is my un-truncated text:

There are many factors that make a university like Emory truly world class. As I read aloud what I see to be the top four, ask yourself if Emory has these:

1. Leadership at all levels (from the president’s office to the deans to the department chairs) of world-class scholars, members of the academies, widely respected public intellectuals, people with the intellectual gravitas and courage to put the academic mission at the center of the university

2. A university-wide lived commitment to the academic mission of research and education, preparing students to be courageous leaders and independent thinkers

3. Strategic and ample investment in creating a faculty of world-class scholars and researchers who are defining new fields

4. A culture that encourages inquiry, independence, and debate, what the ancients called parrhesia

Sadly, here at Emory, the above factors largely do not obtain. Despite its avowed commitment to excellence, of late the goals of eminence seem to be slipping further away.

I think this is not for want of good intentions. Everyone I know in this room wants the best for Emory. But somehow Emory keeps getting in its own way.

We consistently set our sights too low, comparing ourselves to other private R1s in the south rather than the very best in the world. We focus too much on metrics rather than what makes a university great.

I think that perhaps our priorities are not in line: we have lost sight of our core academic mission and the centrality of research, teaching, and faculty engagement in setting the university’s direction.

Let me be more specific. In my time as a leader of the university senate and the faculty council, I have come to see five specific ways Emory gets in its own way:

1. By not recruiting truly stellar candidates for its top leadership, missing opportunities to build, starting at the top, a faculty of world-class scholars. Let’s not bring in leaders who do not fully understand or appreciate Emory’s teaching and research. But let’s do bring in widely renowned scholars and researchers from areas in which we ourselves excel, as schools like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Penn, Yale, MIT, Cornell, and Berkeley have done. And all the while let’s develop our own academic leaders from within our own ranks by investing in shared governance, involving faculty in substantial administrative activity, and entrusting even larger responsibilities on those who thrive in this arena.

2. By failing to prioritize its own faculty, starting with the simple matter of compensation, which consistently lags behind inflation, leading to salary compression, gender inequities, and a largely demoralized faculty. It seems that in its yearly budgeting process, faculty compensation is an afterthought rather than a core concern. More broadly, there is insufficient investment in faculty for the development of truly field-defining work across all the departments in all the schools.

3. By not fully embracing shared governance. Important actions and decisions are regularly made without faculty consultation and hence without fully considering their consequences. The vast majority of our faculty, who are situated in the School of Medicine, lack any effective shared governance structures; in fact these seem to be actively discouraged. Most decisions seem to be made top down, without faculty consultation. The imperatives emanating from the behemoth of Emory Healthcare seem intent on disempowering faculty with little if any regard for the university’s academic mission or the importance of tenure and shared governance.

4. By making decisions consequential for the academic mission of the university without faculty or community consultation, including disbanding DEI and turning away from need-blind admissions. Respondents to a recent survey by the senate’s committee on community life overwhelmingly opposed the DEI discontinuance decision to be deeply unpopular. In a New York Times article last month, Emory topped the universities that “shuttered or rebranded” DEI offices. This is not what we should be known for.

5. And, finally, by allowing punitive actions against faculty members and students who exercise their basic rights—creating a culture of silence, obedience, and obsequiousness—when we ought to be fostering a culture of fearless inquiry. Last year you heard from my predecessor, George Shepherd, about the intensive work the university senate did to clarify our open expression policy in partnership with the president’s office; but then at the beginning of this academic year the university blithely ignored that policy in terminating a faculty member’s employment over a private social media post, causing great anxiety among the growing ranks of Emory’s untenured faculty. How can a university prepare students to be courageous leaders and independent thinkers when its own faculty are afraid to speak up? On this, let’s compare ourselves to the University of Chicago that has long championed robust debate and inquiry.

Turning things around starts with addressing the first impediment, that is, by recruiting a new president who deeply understands the importance of faculty eminence and the academic mission of the university. This of course is up to the BoT, but I do encourage you to do this as soon as possible, even if it means speeding along leadership changes within the Board. Without presidential leadership, addressing all the other matters will face friction at every step.

Still, in the meantime, the faculty council, the university senate, and our committees have been addressing issues of employee compensation, due process, faculty consultation, and open expression. We have expanded our work on shared governance, including:

• Increased transparency, opening up senate meetings to the whole university community and faculty counsel meetings to all faculty

• A new senate budget priorities committee that engages with the administration to set priorities, including a new compensation subcommittee for faculty and staff representatives to help set the merit pool

• A process by which the faculty council and senate can offer input on any new or newly-being-revised policy

• Advocacy for due process policies for faculty members facing conduct investigations

• Gauging and conveying community-wide concern on matters facing the university

On all these, we are finding strong allies in upper administration. But to make real change, we need more than the good will and good faith of the individual executives we are working with. The very top levels of the university, from both the Board of Trustees, starting with this committee, to the President, need to make academic eminence front and center.

What might this look like? Recall last fall’s presentation by the outgoing dean of the SON Linda McCauley. Recall that she became dean just as the university was considering dissolving the SON entirely. She not only saved the school from being dissolved, over the years she turned it into the top-ranked school of nursing in the country. She did that, she told us, by spending her first five years there investing in the faculty. She did not try to find ways to game the rankings in order to get ahead, like focusing on retention rates. She understood that if SON offered a stellar educational experience, retention wouldn’t be an issue; students would stay. She understood that to have a stellar university, you need a stellar faculty. So she saw her foremost role to be to invest in and champion the faculty, helping every one of them hone their scholarly and research portfolios. She nominated faculty for national awards and fellowships. She gave them ample funds and time to conduct their own research. She filled a long vacant Woodruff Chair and increased revenue to bring in other amazing faculty like Deb Bruner. Under her leadership, the number of Emory’s SON faculty in the National Academy of Nursing grew from 4 to 46. That’s how you build a world-class school. Multiply such laser focus and efforts ten-fold and you can build a world class university.

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People ask me how I feel about Emory and I answer unequivocally that I love Emory, especially what I see to be its soul: the relationship between faculty and students. While university presidents may come and go, faculty tend to spend decades or even their entire careers here working with students who come here for one of the transformative experiences of their life. I ask you to help honor that core part of who we are by committing to what could make us the world-class university that we very much can and should be.

I realize that doing this may well involve shifting some major priorities. Perhaps the relationship with Emory Healthcare needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps some capital projects need to be delayed or canceled. Perhaps upper administrative ranks need to be winnowed. Whatever the means, please remember the ends, making Emory truly world class.