Short Nerd Chief

It’s now been over a week since President Nichol was shown the door by the W&M Board of Visitors, and as politicians are wont to do, the post-action spin machine is running at full throttle.  Jim Bacon, for example, says that “it looks like Nichol is neither someone who can be trusted with the truth nor someone who holds the interests of the College above his own.”  In a comment to my Boycott W&M page, Amelia Peabody points to two editorials (one, two) in the campus Flat Hat and one from the Daily Press that “best sum up why his contract was not renewed.”  Many from the anti-Nichols camp note that all but one of the current BOV were appointed by Democrats (which is not particularly surprising, given that the last Republican governor left the mansion in 2002).

So which is it, incompetent administrator kicked out because he’s a bad manager, or victim of a political witch hunt?  Let’s start with the editorials from the local media, papers that allegedly turned on a President they once supported.  The second Flat Hat editorial (which is actually from November 2007) goes a long way in explaining the first.  Writing about an email between Nichol and Tim Sullivan, which may or may not have indicated that Nichol was dishonest about a revoked $12 million donation from James McGlothlin, Flat Hat columnist Max Fisher says that

We, who understand the pettiness of Nichol’s detractors and the importance of his contributions to the College, are unsure if we can still defend him. The revelations of this e-mail may be too much to forgive. So, the dream of a better College dies with our faith in Nichol. Nichol’s real betrayal, his real crime, more than anything else, no matter what they say, is allowing that dream to die. It was his dream, too. Now cracks a noble heart.

The issue of the donation clearly became a huge issue for the campus paper.  After Nichol was fired, the paper concluded that “the Board of Visitors was right not to renew College President Gene Nichol’s contract.”  Why?  The fundraising issue was paramount:

But our opinion on Nichol evolved as we studied his presidency, with recent editorials expressing deep skepticism. His relationships with donors soured and serious ethical questions arose concerning whether he knowingly misrepresented fundraising figures. Controversy made Nichol himself the issue, and this has impeded his ability to lead effectively.

As are many campus papers, the Flat Hat has always been well-stocked with children styling themselves the next Woodward or Bernstein.  College administrations are rarely the source of scandals rising to that level, so you take what you can get.  In this case, what you get is a $12 million donation pledged by a seventy-something law school alumnus but then revoked in outrage following the Wren Cross controversy.  Nichols announced the successful conclusion of the Campaign for William and Mary before news of the revoked donation came out, and the junior journalists seized on this “falsehood”, arguing that Nichol knew the donation had been revoked.  The email exchange, however, can easily be read to say that Nichol knew only that McGlothlin would not be giving any more money in the future, which would make his statements about the endowment campaign truthful.

In any event, in November Fisher acknowledged the obvious, that opposition to Nichol came not from concern about his fundraising ability or his management skills, but about his overall vision for the College:

I am saddened that this is how Nichol’s presidency may well end. I am saddened that Nichol’s enemies — who have not been fighting Nichol so much as the loss of the regional, WASPs-only, good-ol’-boy college they remember — may be brought closer to their goal.

In the end, the Flat Hat concluded that firing Nichol was the right thing to do, but their opinion is clearly driven in large part by their months-old effort in investigative journalism to prove that the President lied about when he knew that the troglodyte McGlothlin didn’t want to give $12 million to a school that was so open to non-Christians.

The Daily Press never actually comes out and supports the firing of the President, but they are clearly put off by the email with which Nichol announced the news:

But Nichol also needs to go back and read his own resignation statement one more time, when he writes, “Mine, to be sure, has not been a perfect presidency. I have sometimes moved too swiftly, and perhaps paid insufficient attention to the processes and practices of a strong and complex university. A wiser leader would likely have done otherwise.”

That is, in fact, a fair self-assessment. A wiser leader might not have written this e-mail at all. A wiser leader might still be president of William and Mary.

Even while saying this, the editorialists again note the obvious, that opposition to Nichol has everything to do with the Wren Cross and very little to do with management ability:

But there’s more to running a state-supported college than being a charismatic champion of liberal arts or a bulldog for progressive politics. The position takes executive leadership in planning, administration, fundraising, cultivating influence on behalf of the institution. There are many puzzle pieces — students, faculty, parents, alumni, legislators, governors — and it takes considerable skill to knit them together and keep the peace. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” can be monumentally problematic when steering the course of a complex college community.

Was Nichol unjustly vilified in what he characterizes as a “committed, relentless, frequently untruthful and vicious campaign”? Yes. Did members of the Virginia House of Delegates inappropriately seek to intimidate board appointees during a hearing in Richmond last week? Yes. Will his ideological opponents now dance in the streets and claim victory? Yes.

So we return full-circle to the question. Was it ideology and politics, or was it fund raising, alumni relations and management?  Nothing that’s come out in the last week changes my view that it was the former.  I have no particular affection for Gene Nichol.  When I left Williamsburg, the President was still Tim Sullivan.  I have no idea whether Nichol was a good administrator or a bad one.  Student applications kept rising while he was in office and the overall reputation of the College’s academic programs remained high, but he may well have been an incompetent, bumbling fool.  But allegations about his management ability are latecomers to this party, while offended Christians have been hanging around the open bar for a good while.  The BOV may be made up of Democratic appointees, but they remain political appointees who keep their positions only by the good graces of the General Assembly, and oversee a public university largely dependent on the public trough in Richmond.  That they kicked Gene Nichol out the door a week after Republicans called some of them before an inquizatorial board to grill them on why they hadn’t fired Nichol for messing with the cross doesn’t pass the smell test.  It may not have been all ideology, but ideology clearly played a major role.

It bears repeating — Nichol may have been a bad president.  William & Mary may well be a better place in a couple of years under different leadership.  But he was removed from office because he attempted to make non-Christians feel welcome in a publicly-owned building on a secular campus by reserving a religious icon of no particular historic significance for religious functions. He was removed from office because he refused to squelch student expression with which he disagreed.  He was kicked out because he attempted to make the campus as welcoming to a Muslim from Detroit as a Baptist from Suffolk.  You don’t have to be a liberal or champion of progressive politics to be offended that college personnel decisions were informed more by outside agitators than by concern for the education of students (I’m not the former, but I am the latter).

The BOV has the power now.  Make it clear that they (and Nichols’ successor) are going to stand up to the troglodytes now carrying Nichols’ head on a bloody pike, and this will all fade.  Do anything else, and the New PC will have won.  What’ll it be, Rector Powell?