Universities have a leadership problem, and it is not for lack of talented administrators and accomplished fundraisers who can navigate the donor circles and university boardrooms.
At a time when higher education faces a crisis of confidence, most presidents and governing boards are choosing management over vision and political calculation over moral leadership.
No place better exemplifies the crisis than at the state’s two major public universities.
Who becomes the next president of Michigan State University in East Lansing after short-lived President Kevin Guskiewicz departs to serve as president of Clemson University is anyone’s guess. There is no indication the University of Michigan has settled on a candidate to lead the institution after President-elect Ken Syverud was recently diagnosed with brain cancer.
But already some politicians, including former Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and former Detroit mayor Mike Duggan, have been mentioned or rumored as potential candidates for the top jobs at MSU and UM.
Stabenow has indicated she has no interest in serving at the helm at MSU. For UM, Duggan hasn’t indicated whether he is interested in becoming the next leader of the university.
What both schools need are transformational leaders who know how to inspire the next generation and speak courageously to the worries and anxieties of students burdened by debt.
The university presidents who will matter most in this era will not be those who mastered institutional politics. They will be those who can demonstrate that higher education at its best sits at the intersection of democracy, economic mobility. Some years ago, I invited former UM President Mary Sue Coleman to join me for a town hall-style conversation at the Charles Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit to discuss what should happen next following the fall of affirmative action on campus.
Some of the questions Coleman faced included whether the institution she led at the time was capable of bringing people together from different backgrounds, beliefs and experiences in the pursuit of a common future.
That’s a mission that requires more than being a degree-granting institution. It is more than annual rankings and branding campaigns. It calls for moral courage to expand opportunity when others seek exclusion and insists that excellence and equity are not opposing values.
Transformational presidents see their roles beyond the boundaries of the campus. They see themselves and their institutions as part of a civic enterprise capable of defending democracy, pushing for economic justice and creating ladders of opportunity for everyone.
Imagine if my late friend Eleanor Josaitis, co-founder of Focus: HOPE, were president of UM or MSU? She was the quintessential example of bold transformational leadership that very few university presidents can match.
She spent more than four decades proving that hope is not a slogan. She built one of the nation’s most influential models for fighting racism, poverty and economic exclusion through education, workforce development, food security and community empowerment.
Josaitis spent her life measuring success by how many lives were lifted? How many doors were opened?
She possessed something rare in academic institutions ― transformational leadership rooted in hope, economic justice and human dignity.
That’s what MSU and UM should look for in their next president.
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Bankole Thompson’s columns appear on Mondays and Thursdays in The Detroit News.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: MSU and UM need transformational leaders as presidents | Thompson
Reporting by Bankole Thompson / The Detroit News
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By Bankole Thompson | USA TODAY Network
