There is an article in the Ann Arbor News confirming the rumors that Judge Shelton is a candidate for EMU presidency, one of the dozen candidates now remaining in the pool: “Judge considered for EMU presidency.” The fact that the Judge’s name was released earlier than those of the other candidates and alone of all of the candidates suggests that his application is getting special treatment of some sort, if not in the search committee or with the Board of Regents, at least in some parts of the community at large.
Whether that seeming favoritism be true or not, it is important that the applications of all of the candidates receive equal and fair treatment; otherwise, this search and the resulting presidency will have no degree of credibility. I hope that these signs of special treatment for the Judge are just worrisome appearances rather than problems in actual fact . The last thing that EMU needs is the reputation of the Regents conducting a “fixed” search for president. That insinuation will hamper the presidency from the get go and jeopardize the continuing success of this quite successful university, a university already unduly hampered despite its proven success with profound and damaging failings in its uppermost administration.
I agree with Prof. Higbee in the earlier post that process is of the utmost importance for this presidential search to have (and to retain) the appearance of legitimacy. As he asks, “isn’t the real issue regarding the EMU presidential search process, at least as it pertains to the Judge, whether the search is an open search, or is it a search with a predetermined conclusion?” Faith in the process is essential to restore trust throughout the university community and to get us back on track in communal good faith and feeling.
For example, we need to know ASAP exactly how and to what degree the candidates will be introduced to the campus community. These interactions must be extensive and substantial, with the input of students, staff, and students actively solicited and taken seriously in an open and transparent fashion. For example, this president needs to be a president for students in general, not just for the students in the student government, so making a forum available for all students, not just for well-connected students, to ask questions of the candidates is crucial. We also need to be informed of the criteria being used to narrow the field from 100 to 12 candidates and thereafter from 12 to the unknown number of candidates who remain in the final pool. Anyone who wants the Judge to be the next president should ensure that the search will be as competitive as possible so that this candidate gets the mandate of the entire community, not just of a few well-placed lackeys and officials.
The more of the process that is left for university community to guess, the more speculations there will be that the search is illegitimate. In contrast, the more information the university community has about the candidates (and the more the community gets to interact with those candidates), the more we will focus on real information rather than on rumors or innuendo.
Without a participatory and open process in which the judgement of all of the constituents in the campus community is considered fully and fairly (and not just the necessarily provisional and limited perspectives of those who happen to be on the search committee), the successful candidate will not be successful in any respect at all: he or she will be near doomed to failure in seeming to “succeed” but only in an apparently illegitimate search that determined the outcome in advance.
This does look kind of bad….
I know there are people reading this who have commented before on the “totally above board” nature of the search to date; do any of those folks want to comment on this development?
For those who don’t read the newspaper in hard copy, I want to note that the article about the Judge is the top story on page one.
Is it too conspiracy-freakish to wonder if this released info is a trial balloon to see if there are any howls of outrage?
No howling here. But with all due respect, I think there is no major university in America that would seriously consider a local circuit judge (with that being his chief recommendation) a viable candidate as its president.
I am surprised by the search committee. Now is not the time to be playing games with Mr Shelton’s sincerely meant application — it’s not right to be jerking him around like this.
Get serious, search committee! EMU needs a president with demonstrated executive chops to change the culture of barely competent and “it’s good enough for EMU”. Either that, or someone of *nationally* respected stature who can unite us in quality and optimism.
Well, it’s a little conspiracy-freakish, but probably not too much. I’m not sure they are that smart, but I’m also pretty sure they aren’t that stupid.
And I also agree with you about Shelton’s qualifications, at least what we know so far. I was thinking this morning that I just have a really hard time imagining him being able to answer a whole host of questions from faculty about the way the institution runs. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
This all assumes that someone with “nationally” respected stature has applied for the position. Given the last two presidents, who applied and were hired at a time when EMU was not known for significantly negative events in the national arena, I would suspect it would be even more remote to expect nationally renowned candidates to give EMU a second (or first) look today. The deans from the Ivy League schools probably haven’t shown up in droves applying for EMU’s presidency.
“Nationally respected” is not synonymous with “Ivy League,” and doing a national search for a university president (which, btw, is what we’re doing, in theory) is the norm.
There aren’t a lot of university president jobs out there, and EMU has a lot of stuff going for it that makes the job potentially attractive. It’s a good size, it’s in a good location, there’s an interesting mix of programs, there’s some long-term growth potentials, good faculty and students, etc., etc. Oh sure, we all know about the problems, but a lot of those problems (for example, a lack of money) are present at every second-tier public university in the country. But that doesn’t mean a well-done and legitimate search couldn’t attract quality candidates.
Of course, we have no idea at this stage how many people applied or who they were, now do we?