Civil War in Jefferson Country: Lessons from the University of Virginia
Brinda Bose A rain-drizzled, splendidly-verdant, sleepily-calm campus it was, just about a month ago, at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA – so much so that many of its residents would often laugh and exclaim at its placidity, the almost paradisiacal quality of an island-in-the-mild-northern-spring-sun quite untouched by the rowdinesses that we of the alarming tropics both fear and desire in our daily lives. So much so, in fact, that at a conference on Global Humanities at the UVa’s newly-minted Institute for the Humanities and Global Cultures at the end of April, where I was part of a presentation on new administrative policies in Indian higher education (which some of us on our campus here in Delhi perceive as nothing less than an orchestrated, concentrated attack on academia as we value it), it was received by many of the local audience – made up of faculty members across the humanities and social science disciplines, deans and other administrative stalwarts of the UVa – with sympathy and surprise. A few expressed outrage about what was happening at a faraway campus (perhaps quietly thanking their stars for being at the University of Virginia rather than of Delhi). A couple of others (presumably of UVa Rector Helen Dragas’s ilk, as it appears with hindsight) implied in their comments and questions that we in Delhi were perhaps rather naïve to even expect that an university would be run in any way differently from a corporate – what kind of an arcane idealism was that? It aroused curiosity, the Delhi University story of midnight show-cause notices that stank of fake legalese, accompanied by photographic evidence of sniffer dogs, police men and women and rope cordons around a regular Committee of Courses meeting at which its members were to be coerced, initially with veiled threats and ultimately with open punitive action, to sign in favour of what the Vice Chancellor and his team had decreed for the institution: wild and wicked systemic changes whose fallouts, in just over a year or so, Delhi University is already beginning to crumble under. Those there who were far more sharply attuned to grave and fatal rumblings in academia all across the globe (and there were, of course, many of them) knew, of course, that horrific and melodramatic as the unfolding, ongoing DU story was, it was symptomatic of the times we were all thrashing about in. But even they, I can wager, did not in their most vile nightmares imagine that a so-very-similar horror would slam upon their summer-somnolent Charlottesville ‘Grounds’ like a frenzied tornado within the month, just as the last batches of students had slunk away for a glorious summer break after ‘end-sem’ examinations and the beautifully leafy campus was drawing a quiet fragrant breath or two to build up spirit and stamina again for the new academic year to come. I can bet that, even as some of them spoke with pride of the University’s high-ranked Darden School of Business, they did not in their most bizarre dreams imagine it would bring them so much shame and sorrow just as the sun grew stronger on the tall trees and rolling greens and their lovely stately buildings. Brandishing “strategic dynamism” as a weapon in the face of a slow-and-steady academic vision, and ravaging the edifices of loyalty and love among alumni, donors, students and staff overnight that take years of care and understanding to build, a fresh new management-oriented policy of governance has, as suddenly as the proverbial storm on a blithe summer’s day, brought mayhem and melancholy to the University of Virginia this historic June of 2012. And as is already evident from the outpouring of articles, open letters, Facebook posts and tweets, and the massive – now nationwide in America and fast turning global – outburst of reportage, interviews and analyses in the media, the charming, bucolic University of Virginia at Charlottesville will certainly never be the same again – even if, as latest news filtering in gives hope, the tide is stemmed and turned. Just a week ago, two years into her five-year-term, Teresa Sullivan was summarily dismissed from her post as President of the University of Virginia, to the complete shock and disbelief of the majority of the staff and students on campus. Helen Dragas, Rector of UVa’s Board of Visitors (what we in India know usually as a Governing Board/Body), explained this decision cryptically, thus: “The Board believes that in the rapidly changing and highly pressurized external environment in both health care and in academia, the University needs to remain at the forefront of change.” The sticking point, however, was that Sullivan was largely seen as a successful leader in what are extremely difficult times for public universities all over the world, and the one who was attempting to bring change to the institution with vision and grace. This was a very rotten bolt from a pretty serene blue. Bewildered, and convinced that there must be a good explanation for this unexpected move from the Board, the faculty began to ask questions – fast, furious, and increasingly embarrassing. What was revealed subsequently was a tale of Machiavellian wringing and stringing, in the true style of corporate boardroom politicking: hardly astonishing, however, given that the chief protagonists who engineered this coup d’etat under cover of darkness were Rector Dragas and a bunch of wealthy donors to the university, in cahoots with a group of university insiders, some members of the Darden business school of the UVa – fie on them, most of all. (And could Dragas have been better named? Dickensian, according to an astute Facebook comment; one’s literary soul is sated at once.) Farcically enough, an email sent out by hedge-fund billionaire, former Goldman Sachs partner and member of the foundation board of UVa’s business school Peter Kienan by a mistaken ‘reply all’ hit to more people on a university list than was intended, revealed that Sullivan’s removal was shamelessly ‘managed’ by some who are most possessed of those skills