CU Regents should disclose their finalists for president
As someone who benefited from the resources provided by the University of Colorado, including while I was at Fairview High School, and who is a parent of a CU student and a CU fundraiser, I have great affection for the university.
And, as a former member of the Princeton University governing Board of Trustees and as a current member of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, I know the single most important responsibility of CU’S governing Board of Regents is the selection of a president to lead an institution with a $ 5 billion budget covering 70,000 students and 37,000 employees at the CU Boulder, UC Denver, UC Colorado Springs, and Anschutz campuses.
The regents had promised the community a transparent process but appear to be laying the groundwork to name a single “finalist” to avoid disclosing the names of other applicants.
Until a year ago, the literal reading of the Colorado Open Meetings Law and the Colorado Open Records Act required public institutions to disclose who the finalists were. However, last year a law was passed which allows the naming of only a single “finalist.”
In the previous presidential search, the Board’s Democratic and Republican members had unanimously advanced only one candidate — Mark Kennedy — and described him as a “finalist,” despite others who clearly were finalists.
Kennedy ultimately was hired on a partisan 5 ( Republican) to 4 ( Democratic) vote. Today Democrats have a 5 to 4 majority.
By denying CU community members and all other Coloradans ( including the voters who elected the Regents) the list of applicants for the position — or at least the list of finalists — the 2019 Regents made it impossible for anyone outside their circle to assess the quality of their decision- making.
The key point is that disclosure of those who applied for the job gives the public the ability to evaluate the quality of the Regents’ most important decisions. Without the ability to assess the list of candidates, the public has no way of knowing how well the Regents performed.
When one of the 2019 Regents or a related party leaked the list of 30 candidates, the public had the opportunity to evaluate the job the Board did and most then graded the Regents with an “F.”
This didn’t mean Kennedy could not be a good president. It simply meant the Regents made a poor, clearly politicallymotivated decision. Coloradans hope
this egregious approach is not repeated in the current search process.
The Regents and their peers at other public institutions and agencies validly argue that disclosing the names of applicants or even just the finalists is likely to discourage some of the most attractive, highestquality candidates from applying.
They posit that many potentially exceptional candidates would be loath to have it known publicly they were interested in leaving their positions. This is a strong argument in favor of not disclosing the names of many, if any, candidates, especially if an institution wants to maximize the number of exceptional applicants.
However, there is an equally strong argument that, even with the possibility of applicants’ names being made public, the applicant pool still would include exceptional candidates.
This was proven when the previous list of 30 candidates was disclosed publicly because many of the candidates were unconcerned about that revelation.
The list proved that, even if half the candidates had not applied, the Regents still could have made a better choice.
It also is fallacious to assume disclosure of an applicant’s name automatically is deleterious to every candidate.
In some cases, having one’s name announced as someone who is being considered for such a prestigious position is an asset and actually increases that person’s chance of eventually securing such a position.
The presumption that disclosure of someone’s interest in a superior position always is seen in a negative light is false, especially in higher education.
The best leaders of institutions surround themselves with the highest quality people they can find. They assume these people eventually will seek other positions and actually support those efforts.
The ultimate question is, “Does the public’s interest in being able to evaluate the performance of their elected representatives supersede the desire to maximize the number of applicants?”
The Regents have the legal right to name only a single finalist. Hopefully, for the benefit of Colorado’s citizenry, the Regents will decide to disclose multiple names so everyone can more accurately determine how good a job they did performing their most important duty.