If the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is willing to make necessary changes to its relationship with System leaders, the perfect candidate for UW’s next chancellor just became available.
Richard Lariviere’s story is a familiar one. As the president of the University of Oregon, a majority of his term has been swallowed by battles against deep cuts in state funding. Frustrated with the current constraints of working with the Legislature and state university system, he turned to alternate strategies to buoy UO’s chances for success.
As a result, his third year as president will be his last. The Oregon State Board of Education voted Monday to prematurely sever his contract, after what they considered to be the final act of defiance by Lariviere. At a special UO Senate meeting Wednesday, UO System Chancellor George Pernsteiner painted Lariviere as a “passionate and brilliant leader,” but “a leader only for the University of Oregon,” according to Oregon’s Register-Guard. Board of Higher Education member Lynda Ciuffetti labeled him as a subordinate unwilling to cooperate.
It is easy to see why the board is unhappy with Lariviere. Even after he was told to stop, he continued to push a proposal to run UO under a separate governing board and fund operations via an endowment created with state bond money and donations. When the governor and board told him to hold off on pay increases, he found a way to do so without using state money, which they took as an affront to their authority.
The superior-subordinate relationship has a place, but it is not the right dynamic for a state board and university leader. Tension arose in the cases of UO and UW because the state boards refused to give university leaders’ ideas the weight they deserved. Lariviere may have become somewhat of a rogue administrator this past year, but he was forced into this role by a state higher education board unwilling to relinquish its own power to accomplish the greater good. His ideas had serious merit, but the state board was too busy focusing on itself to see that.
UW needs someone like Lariviere as its next chancellor. For this to happen, the Board of Regents must first realign their relationship with System chancellors. Lariviere’s clashes with the state revealed the same problem that cropped up during former Chancellor Biddy Martin’s tenure: State university system governing boards tend to label overall system success as the only goal, instead of recognizing that freedom at the level of an individual school can lead to experimentation that benefits all.
The Board of Regents should jump at the chance to utilize Lariviere’s penchant for strengthening a university budget in a time of austerity. It certainly recognized the merits of Martin’s request for more independence from the state when it proposed, and received, similar autonomies for all System schools.
If relations between Martin and the Board of Regents had progressed in the same way, I have no doubt the regents would have terminated Martin’s chancellorship. But as cuts in funding continue to roll in, I hope they recognize that would have been wrong. Lariviere represents a second chance at bringing innovation to the highest level at UW. Doing so will allow UW to seek its own successes that can then spread to the rest of the System.
The night the board fired Lariviere, they went against a petition with 6,300 signatures supporting the renewal of his contract, according to The New York Times. Students, faculty and the University Senate president spoke highly of him and adamantly opposed the state’s reasons for letting him go. With the right support, Lariviere would be an unstoppable advocate for UW and, potentially, the System. And unlike Martin, he never stopped fighting.
Signe Brewster ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in life science communication.
