ggreat: Here’s why I think the UChicago is so tough for the President (note a lot these apply to other jobs, but UChicago has a broad range of challenges, I would argue moreso than anywhere else.).
Chicago politics.
Chicago politics.
Chicago fiscal situation which will cause the city to consistently look to UChicago for financial support / help for favored projects.
UChicago is relatively poor relative to some of its top competition: Yale, Stanford, even Penn. President must find a way to not fall further behind and maybe catch up a little. Massive fundraising challenge.
Very challenging internal constituencies: top professional schools, top graduate schools, top college with very smart and (properly) demanding students and faculties. All these constituencies must be attended to. New president does not have much upside, probably more downside. This can also be viewed as a plus for the UChicago President but it must be managed constantly and carefully.
UChicago must carefully manage its academic missions and the security needs of the institution given its proximity to high crime areas. There are other top private research universities in urban areas but I think UChicago is seen to be in proximity to a higher crime area than any of the others. Not sure that is true, but I think most people default to that position.
UChicago President is head of two Department of Energy National Labs: Fermi and Argonne. Now this is also an opportunity for UChicago, but it is something which pulls on the President and presents potential downside (lost contracts) as well as upside.
UChicago does not have a full fledged engineering school and its CS school is just starting to emerge. This is a challenge in the new era of "relevant" and "cost effective" college degrees. As a side note, I do believe that UChicago was very smart about the Molecular Engineering Institute. It has put UChicago at the forefront of a few technologies of the future, most notably quantum computing.
In short, the UChicago President must be a very skilled politician while also being a respected academician. It is not a part time job, haha. So far Pres. Zimmer has done a very good job, in my opinion, in navigating all these challenges (nod to HydeSnark and other students who see the administration, I think, as distant and unfeeling). Aside from his extremely great intellect, Dr. Zimmer seems to have highly developed political skills and a high level of self confidence. I think he has something else, a simple, strong, and, I think, appropriate philosophy and vision for the University. This helps when running a large complex organization.
So that’s about it. I probably forgot a couple of things.
I had Diermeier at Kellogg, he is a very well respected. But, I’m not sure they will promote from within. You just don’t often see that anymore. When you have an administration change, you are looking for a “boost” or a “pivot.”
I think the one thing that Zimmer has done well, and it has had the expect windfall, is keeping the UChicago Brand in the Higher Ed conversation. He has innovated and the new President will need to do that too. Will (s)he do it in the same way, I don’t think so, but (s)he will be looked to do that. Zimmer has the big “Mo” going in the right direction, the new Prez should concentrate on keeping that going, albeit in a different way.
Imagine if the school wanted to become The Face of Public Policy? Could you think of anybody who is well known and respected in that space that could come back to the University and from the day of the announcement put that arm or UChicago immediately at the top of the thought leaders in that space, or farther ahead? It would also energize the Law School. I know it will never happen, but just imagine.
BB - the last two brought in from outside didn’t last long. UChicago is certainly a moving target but do you really think it needs to “pivot”? My only thought there would be turning the medical division into a top performer. For that they might look to a leader in the field of medicine. But you still need 1) experience running all the academic divisions (hence a provost or a pres. of a highly respected academic but less prestigious university) and 2) someone who actually “gets” the Chicago brand. Most of the latter tend to have spent time at UChicago. It was on this 2nd point that Sonnenschien and the guy following him fell a bit short. The trustees may feel they learned their lesson. Of course, they’ve also had successful outsiders as well.
A pub pol guy might be good - but presidents need to raise money first and foremost. They need to be visionary and convincing. There are some extremely rich University of Chicago benefactors out there. They aren’t going to fork it over if the vision doesn’t match theirs.
Hearing third-hand rumblings that Diermeier might be problematic due to the Harris lawsuit and how it’s being handled. Might not be a good choice if too many departments are mad at him (wouldn’t know that one way or the other). It’s very hard to predict something like this 4 years in advance because in two years Brown might need another Provost who is up from the ranks of UChicago.
JBSF, the person I was alluding to in my post would have no problem raising money. I’m thinking of a name that if it came to be, nobody would every confuse UIC with UofC again. Again, it will never ever happen, but if it did…
One more thought: what does UChicago need “fixing”? I’d argue that the hard sciences need a bit of bolstering to get them to the level of prestige enjoyed by the social sciences and humanities divisions. Zimmer, of course, is a STEM dude but perhaps putting in someone who can turn around a sciences division or two without damaging the other, more highly successful, divisions is the way to “pivot”.
Dudes - joke, right? Aside from the obvious lack of true academic experience (including tenure, running an academic division, provost, etc), he can’t even manage to get the OPC built on time.
Plus, people might not remember this but the nail in the coffin for Sonnenschein was his attempt to bring in Bill Clinton as a graduation speaker, thus violating decade upon decade of a ceremony that was actually taken SERIOUSLY by the university. A celebrity in the top spot would destroy the university.
Mostly Joking. But, he wouldn’t be the first POTUS to be President of a respected University. Wilson at Princeton, albeit he was at Princeton prior to being POTUS. But, there is a former Governor with no academic experience leading Purdue right now, and I’d say doing a lot to innovate in that space and Purdue is definitely on an upward trajectory in the space of higher education.
Presidents set vision and raise money. They lead staffs to do the rest. I’m pretty sure he COULD do a good job at the the main purpose of the President. Look, I’m a conservative who never voted for the man, ideallogically I oppose much that he brought forward as POTUS, but still would think he could be a great leader of a school like Chicago.
I wonder if they’d be able to convince him to do it, but if they are, I think it’s a brilliant idea. It would bring international attention to the university and the kind of instant universal recognition among the public that the university craves but so far has struggled with. There’ll be a huge uptick in popularity – the university can get rid of the ED system and still expect a close to 80% yield. And I’d imagine there’ll be tons of money earned through fundraising, only helped by the university’s new-found fame.
There seem to be lots of positives with very few downsides (his lack of academic experience can easily be compensated through aides and an involved provost). The only challenge seems to be to somehow convince him to take the job
BB - Mitch Daniels is doing a superlative job with Purdue, I understand. Guessing that many a university can come calling on Obama if he’s really the guy for the job. How about we wait and see how many attempt it?
Political affiliation has little to do with the issue. Plenty of faculty at UChicago who voted for Obama would be looking elsewhere if he headed up the university, simply because they’d view it as a celebrity, rather than a substantive, move.
@greeat - Obama was never tenure track, but I’m pretty sure he understands the inner workings of a major research university a LOT better than you just revealed in post #30. This is a university, not a foundation.
By the way, there have been a few more notable examples of “non-academics” running universities, including Terry Sanford (Duke) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (Columbia).
The challenge seems to be how do you go about convincing him to take up a university presidency job. He presumably has other concerns, like launching the OPC and the Obama Foundation. BUT, the argument that UChicago can make to him is that his becoming president of UChicago would be really good for UChicago (a university to which he’s affiliated), and as a result of this new-found popularity of UChicago there’ll also be a general improvement and interest in the overall Chicago neighborhoods where the university and the presidential center are located. Therefore even if he takes the job for a couple of short years, it’s a win-win situation for both the university and his presidential center.
OPC is currently mired in controversy. His becoming president of the university will likely only worsen that. It’s unpopular enough with certain factions of the university community as it is.
If OPC gets worked out and everyone is (or enough are) happy, THEN the discussion of president would have more merit. Not much more, but certainly more than now.
As stated prior, let’s see who else is calling. A “good fit” should be in demand elsewhere as well. Provost anywhere, perhaps, or president of a highly respected but smaller university? Let him earn his wings on this.
But we’re talking about 2022 or 2023 here – the OPC will presumably be long open by then, and the controversy all settled.
There might be accusations of a conflict of interest: his presidency of UChicago is good for his center. But he can be open about that The university benefits from his presidency, and his center benefits from the university. They are affiliated, after all.
Obama would be a great choice. He’s one of the few legitimate candidates who has actual administrative experience running something more complicated than a world-class research university, and for a non-academic he is one of the most academic people ever. He was never a tenure-track professor at the law school because he didn’t want to be; the position was offered to him repeatedly. But . . . it’s not going to happen.
While Zimmer was an Ivy League provost, like Gray, Sonnenschein, and Randal before him, he was also a long-time Chicago faculty member. He was really a perfect inside-outside hire. I don’t know that his equivalent exists now, but I would look hard at people with historical ties to the university but significant achievement elsewhere. (Just like You-Know-Who.)
I’m sure Diermeier will be a candidate. How could he not be?
Some other possibilities:
Austan Goolsby.
Mario Small. Afro-Hispanic sociologist who had a rocket-like ride to Dean of the Social Science Division after being recruited away from Princeton. Charismatic, first-rate scholar. He was certainly being groomed for something significant, but he suddenly left for Harvard, where he is back to being a pure academic. Maybe he doesn’t want to be an administrator, but if he did I’m sure he would get a lot of attention.
David Levy. Edward Levy’s son, successful law school dean at Duke, former federal judge, current president of the American Law Institute (a prestigious gig), Harvard PhD. Personally close to Jim Crown. Too old, unfortunately (mid-60s).
I believe it was Geoffrey Stone when he was Dean of the Law School who recruited Obama as a lecturer. Put Stone on the case a second time!
It’s an intriguing idea. Would Obama or any other ex-President be sufficiently engaged by a task as unglamorous as this one? He has talked about wanting to somehow find another way to do politics during the balance of his life. That would be a large distraction in the running of a complicated university like Chicago.
As for fund-raising, one of his weaknesses as POTUS was said to be that he didn’t like to spend time cultivating or arm-twisting legislators. Would he want to do that now with big potential donors? Wouldn’t he prefer to shut his door and write the latest instalment of his memoirs? I believe he wrote the first instalment as a law school lecturer.
I can’t imagine that he would view the job, if he was even interested in it, as anything more than a ceremonial post. Probably Eisenhower was no more than that at Columbia. Would that be such a bad thing if it only lasted for a couple of years? How badly could he screw things up?
The real question is whether hiring celebrity Presidents fits the culture of the University of Chicago. Is it so fundamentally alien, off-putting, discouraging and in every way deleterious of the mission of the place as to counter any advantages derived from the prestige that it would undoubtedly bring?
Nothing is preventing Obama from currently fundraising for the university. Why do you suppose he hasn’t done that yet?
Zimmer himself only spent a couple of years as a provost at Brown. Provosts and presidents are fast tracked all the time. And Obama is used to the fast track.
Edit to add: totally agree he might take the job if only to realize a concrete benefit to his foundation.
