OP-ED: The Selection Of The University Of Michigan’s 14th President And 13th White Male
DR. MARK SCHLISSEL, a former Provost from Brown University and a long-time Dean of Biological Sciences from UC-Berkleley, will take over from Dr. Mary Sue Coleman. Whether Dr. Schlissel will prove to be the Board of Regents’ own RichRod remains to be seen. To be sure, Dr. Schlissel is the most predictable, least creative choice the Board of Regents could have made. He’s a 55-year-old white man with a Ph.D. and M.D. in Physiological Chemistry. Dr. Schlissel is the face of tenured academe (white, middle-aged, male) as well as the face of over 180 years of university leadership in Ann Arbor.
As she described her university, its faculty, students, research and medical treatments, one of Dr. Mary Sue Coleman’s favorite descriptors was “cutting edge.” She spent a dozen years positioning the institution as a cutting edge leader in the state, the nation and the world. Her own appointment as president demonstrated a cutting edge decision on the part of the Regents who selected her. At the time Dr. Coleman assumed the presidency of the University of Michigan, women accounted for fewer than 15 percent of the total number of university presidents in the United States.
Following the tenure of Dr. Mary Sue Coleman with the hire of Dr. Schlissel, who has never headed a college or university or held an administrative position at a university with a Division I sports program, is a step in the wrong direction politically and socially. Governor Snyder is pitching a plan under the auspices of which the federal government will set aside 50,000 special visas for Detroit. If successful, this initiative would speed up the projected shift in Michigan’s racial demographics.
Then, we have the fact that fewer black students than ever are enrolled in the University of Michigan. After the U.S. Supreme Court allowed race-based admissions, Michigan voters blocked them at state schools through a ballot initiative. The result is that black enrollment is down almost 30 percent, to 4.2 percent of the student body. Meanwhile, there have been repeated calls by students and faculty for more diversity on campus.
Seven of the 12 Executive Officers who work with the president to oversee the university and its two satellite campuses are women, but only two are non-white.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Michigan’s population which is white is expected to fall over the next two decades. Asian and multi-racial groups in the state are projected to post the largest population gains. Whites in Michigan will continue to be the majority, according to Census Bureau projections, through 2040. However, the number of residents in Michigan who self-identify as Asian or multi-racial is projected to triple.
In the 1993-1994 academic year, 4.3 percent of Michigan’s full-time, tenure-track faculty members were Black, 8.0 percent were Asian, 1.8 percent were Hispanic. By 2012, 5.1 percent of full-time, tenure-track faculty were Black, 14 percent were Asian, 10 percent were Hispanic. While Provost at Brown, Dr. Schlissel oversaw a faculty that lacked the diversity of Michigan’s (11 percent Asian, 4 percent black, and 3 percent Hispanic).
Yet, in his remarks at the news conference at which his hiring was announced Dr. Schlissel said, “excellence and diversity are inextricably linked.” They are indeed, but alas not in the case of his own appointment to lead the University. The Board of Regents, it appears, missed the lesson Dr. Coleman spent a dozen years trying to teach them: cutting edge is as cutting edge does.