Boyd backs off fundraiser for conservative
UT president insists his support was personal
“We do not agree on numerous issues. For instance, I strongly support diversity and inclusion, including honoring and upholding LBGTQ rights and all university policies in that regard, and I think my record at UT these last three years speaks for itself.”
University of Tennessee System President Randy Boyd has pulled his contribution to a fundraiser for one of the most conservative members of the General Assembly after a Knox News report about his involvement.
In an email sent to a handful of university faculty on Sunday, Boyd said Sen. Mark Pody, R-lebanon, mistakenly interpreted his offer to pay for a political breakfast in Knoxville as agreeing to host the event.
Boyd insisted that his contribution to Monday’s event was in his personal capacity, not as the president of the largest university system in the state.
“I have not solicited nor did I intend to solicit any contributions for him,” he wrote to faculty.
“I have not made a contribution to him either personally or through a PAC. I am also not attending the event and have decided not to pay for the breakfast.”
Boyd responded to four UT Knoxville faculty members, including Monica Black, professor of history; Patrick Grzanka, associate professor of psychology and chair of the Interdisciplinary Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality; Tina Shepardson, Lindsay Young Professor and head of religious studies; and Anne Langendorfer, president of United Campus Workers of Tennessee.
They said Boyd’s involvement with Pody would harm the university and would send a message that administrators don’t support LGBTQ+ rights.
“We respect your right to a private life, just like we expect all faculty and staff to express their freedom of speech and expression as private citizens,” they wrote.
“But you have an ethical responsibility in your job to stand for all of us, even if it means harming your existing friendships and relationships with politicians in Nashville.”
After Boyd’s reply, Grzanka wrote he was “grateful and relieved” that Boyd had pulled funding for the event.
UT Faculty Senate President Louis Gross said that he and senate members met with Boyd on Monday morning.
“It lead to an educational experience,” Gross said.
“I fully believe that (Boyd’s) expression of willingness to learn from this experience and continuing efforts to enhance diversity and inclusion across the UT System is a real one that he is dedicated to.”
Pody has been a lightning rod for years in the state legislature.
Earlier this year he agreed to pay for people to travel to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 protest of the presidential election.
The rally turned into a violent insurrection at the Capitol that injured more than 140 police officers. At a rally in Nashville that same day, Pody told a crowd, “We need to be praying for the truth to be revealed.”
In a statement to Knox News last week from a spokesperson unaffiliated with the university, Boyd said he doesn’t think there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
In 2019, Pody co-sponsored a billed named the Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act, which said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage is void in Tennessee because the state has already passed its own law and constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman. The bill went nowhere.
More recently Pody has sponsored legislation that sought to give a man who gets a woman pregnant veto power over an abortion by petitioning a court for an injunction against the procedure. The bill ultimately failed.
“We do not agree on numerous issues,” Boyd said. “For instance, I strongly support diversity and inclusion, including honoring and upholding LBGTQ rights and all university policies in that regard, and I think my record at UT these last three years speaks for itself.”
Boyd, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, was approved as the interim president for the state’s largest university system in 2018 shortly after he unsuccessfully ran for governor. The interim title was removed in 2020 when the university system’s board agreed to keep him on through 2025.
He also is the owner of the Tennessee Smokies minor league baseball team, which is asking Knoxville and Knox County taxpayers to fund a new stadium near downtown Knoxville as part of a deal in which he and his partners will invest $140 million in retail, restaurants and residences in the Old City neighborhood around the stadium.
Knox News reporter Becca Wright contributed to this story.
Randy Boyd,
University of Tennessee System president