Integrity of Southern University Presidential Search Challenged

In a previous post I suggested that leadership and leadership ascension were critical problems facing HBCU. I argued that governing authorities (boards of trustees, boards of supervisors, etc.) arbitrarily select presidents and other academic leaders without substantive input from other constituencies and stakeholders and without a thorough vetting of candidates. The recently concluded Southern University presidential search and selection process dramatizes the problem and validates my concerns. On April 30, 2010, following an extended search by the Southern University System Board of Supervisors (SUBUS) selected Dr. Ronald Mason, the sitting president of Jackson State University (JSU), as the new Southern University System president. However, days before the announcement was made, the search process and the already anticipated appointment of Mason were challenged by two prominent members of the University Presidential Search Committee and a SU faculty member.

Before examining the issues raised by the three challengers, a brief history of the search process might be helpful. The SUBUS launched the search in July 2009 when it appointed a 15 member search committee that included representation from each of the systems three campuses, the alumni federation, faculty senate, students and the Baton Rouge business community was formed. The search committee retained a presidential search firm to help it identify and recruit qualified candidates. In February 2010, the search firm presented the search committee with a list of thirteen finalists who were brought to the campus for preliminary interviews. Following the preliminary interview process an additional name, Dr. Ronald Mason, was added to the list. Shortly after the addition was made public, rumors began circulating that a deal had been struck and that Mason would in fact be the next SU president. Leaving nothing to chance, however, a group of Jackson State University alumni reportedly organized a pray-in to implore the supreme deity to make sure that Mason got the SU presidency so that JSU would be free of him. Other Jackson State, stakeholders including the Mississippi Black Legislative Caucus, the student body, and faculty Senate had all excoriated Mason for what they perceived to be his duplicity in first opposing and then supporting the governor’s plan to merge the state’s three black colleges. When the Supervisors announced on April 14th that Mason was one of three finalists, the alumni group celebrated the success of their pray-in.

At any rate, it is the question of the integrity of the search process that demands our attention. Professor Albert Samuels writing to the SUBUS a week before the official announcement was made argued that the “so-called head hunting firm” had presented the search committee with a sorry field of candidates several of whom, he alleged, had been rejected, fired or forced to resign by their previous employer. He argued further that some of the candidates had glaring disqualifying characteristics that could be uncovered by a simple Google search. Samuels cited two in particular; Dr. Carolyn Meyers who was leaving the presidency of Norfolk State amidst a scandal and Dr. Robert Jennings, who was let, go after a short and tumultuous tenure as president of Alabama A & M University. Samuels also strenuously opposed the by then widely anticipated appointment of Mason because of his duplicity in the campaign to merge the three Mississippi HBCU.

Samuel’s reservations were shared by Donald Wade, past president of the SU Alumni Federation and member of the search committee. In an open letter to Friends of Southern University dated April 26, Wade suggested that the search process had been a case of the tail wagging the dog with the search firm exercising too much control over the search process. Search committee members, he reported, had not been allowed to ask their own questions but rather the search firm had provided individual committee members with questions to be asked. Fundamental questions about the role of the president in university affairs or the land grant mission of the university, according to Wade, were never even discussed. He also noted that search committee members as a group were not allowed to participate in the final scoring and ranking of candidates. He asserted that “At no time was there a meeting of the whole and an OPEN tally of the points awarded by committee members to candidates conducted”.

Another member of the University Search Committee, Dr. Sudhir Trivedi, president of the SU Faculty Assembly, sent a letter to the supervisors complaining about undue secrecy of the process and noting that there were several important questions that he would have liked to have asked the candidates but that there was no opportunity to do so. For example he said “I would have liked to ask the question why the faculty senate at JSU expressed a vote of no confidence in Mason or if Haynes could tell us three things he accomplished with respect to academic standards and faculty matters during his tenure as Southern provost.” Trevedi echoed Wade’s complaint about the lack of transparency in the evaluation process. He also lamented the fact that the search firm discouraged committee members from asking the candidates tough questions.

None of the complaints mattered, however. The co-chair of the Search Committee, Murphy Bell, intimated that the complaints were suspect because they were raised at the last minute, apparently forgetting that Mason had been added to the list of candidates at next-to-the last minute.

So what do we make of all of this? It reaffirms our position that the selection and elevation of leadership at our colleges is a critical but critically flawed process. The governing authorities in conjunction with presidential search firms are accountable only to themselves. Those concerned with the future direction of HBCU must organize to, first of all, influence the selection of supervisors and trustees and develop structures and processes to hold them accountable.

Now is a good time to start.