Even though there have been longstanding ideological differences across states, higher education leadership was largely insulated against these differences over the last half-century. Yes, they popped up in meaningful ways on topics such as South African divestment, affirmative action, and antiwar protests, but it was possible for university leaders to move from red states to blue states and vice versa. It helped to share the state’s political leanings, but it was generally not a requirement.
The last month has clearly shown that potential presidents now must pass an ideological litmus test in order to gain the favor of governing boards and state policymakers. Here are three examples:
- Santa Ono’s hiring at Florida was rejected by the system board (after being approved by the campus board) due to his previous positions in favor of diversity initiatives and vaccine mandates. He tried to pivot his views, but it was not enough for Republican appointments on the board.
- Six red states, led by Florida and North Carolina, are seeking to launch a new accreditor to break free from their longtime accreditor (which was the only major institutional accreditor to never have a DEI requirement, although their diversity page is now blank). Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used his press conference to go on a tirade against higher education, but the North Carolina system’s statement was more cautious, focused on academic quality.
- The Trump administration’s Justice Department effectively forced out University of Virginia president James Ryan over his alleged noncompliance in removing diversity initiatives from campus. This effort was successful because Virginia’s Republican governor also supported removal and has the ability to push the institution’s governing board to take action.
While there has been a long history of politicians across the ideological spectrum leading universities (such as Mitch Daniels at Purdue, John King at the State University of New York, and Dannel Molloy at Maine), these politicians have generally set aside most of their ideological priors that are not directly related to running an institution of higher education. But now a growing number of states are expecting their campus presidents to be politicians that are perfectly aligned with their values.
There are two clear takeaways from recent events. The first is that college presidents are now political appointments in the same way that a commissioner of education or a state treasurer would be in many states. Many boards will be instructed (or decide by themselves) to only hire people who are ideologically aligned to lead colleges—and to clean house whenever a new governor comes into power. The median tenure of a college president is rapidly declining, and expect that to continue as more leaders get forced out. Notably, by threatening to withhold funding, governors do not even have to wait for the composition of the board to change before forcing a change in leadership. New presidents will respond by requesting higher salaries to account for that risk.
Second, do not expect many prominent college presidents to switch from red states to blue states or vice versa. (It may still happen among community colleges, but even that will be more difficult). The expectations of the positions are rapidly diverging, and potential leaders are going to have to choose where they want to be. Given the politics of higher education employees, blue-state jobs may be seen as more desirable. But these positions often face more financial constraints due to declining enrollments and tight state budgets, in addition to whatever else comes from Washington. Red-state jobs may come with more resources, but they also are likely to come with more strings attached.
It is also worth noting that even vice president and dean positions are likely to face these same two challenges due to presidential transitions and the desire of some states to clean house within higher education. That makes the future of the administrative pipeline even more challenging.
Robert Kelchen 
Thanx for observing this most worrying trend. But I wonder how bipartisan it may be. Are there examples of Democratic governors forcing the expulsion of presidents for ideological reasons?
Would it more accurate to state that a growing number of Republican states are expecting their campus presidents to be politicians that are perfectly aligned with their values, that college presidents in Republican states are now political appointments, and one should not expect many prominent college presidents to switch from blue states to red states, tho some may switch from red states to blue states?
I do expect that Democrats will clean house when they replace Republicans in the future, either to get rid of people who they see as unqualified or to potentially even find a place for some of their appointments.
Important analysis. May I reprint this in the Higher Education Inquirer?
Robert, I write from a red-state U. You’re seeing something that’s been in progress for a long time — ideological control and all. No, leadership has not been resisting the statehouses; over the last decade we’ve seen leadership entirely captured by statehouses, with variously successful bids over the last several years to take over everything down to curricula classroom instruction, shifting faculty out of the way as governors and regents vet department-level leadership. This is also a threat to tenure, since a department gadfly who’s recast as a stick in the spokes can be accused of interfering with the efficient running of departments.
What I will say for blue-state feds and academics is that as this garbage comes for you, you’re catching on relatively fast and dispensing with “but they can’t because [ideal]” and “but don’t they know” fairly quickly (they can and they don’t know, but also don’t care). Your advantage (academics, not feds) is that there’s nowhere else for you to go. Our faculty members who haven’t just fled have been picked over and picked off, but people were going to you: you’re the last resort. Not everyone can go to Canada or France, and you’re largely unemployable outside academia, so it looks like at least some of you will have to stay and fight, at least as long as your state governments want universities around.
Sorry, that’s “curricula and classroom instruction,” of course. And I’ll point out that the fiddling with curricula has nothing to do with whether or not the politicians or their university-based reps (presidents, provosts, deans) have any expertise in the discipline. For that matter, as state support has drained away, we’re also seeing DEOs wearing multiple hats, managing departments they’ve got nothing to do with. When you’ve eroded faculty expectation of a serious voice over a decade or so and rewritten your handbooks and manuals repeatedly, it’s much easier to get away with this sort of thing; after a certain point, what remains of pushback just looks like a collection of old cranks.