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Agree to Disagree

Agree to Disagree

A week after President Skorton’s first State of the University address, it might seem crass and hackneyed for a student journalist to once again raise the issue of Jeffrey Lehman’s sudden resignation last year. But the University’s rushed announcement of the capital campaign, coming right on the heels of Skorton’s inauguration, now suggests that it was differences over fund-raising that drove the final wedge between the Board and its 11th president.

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed magazine, Chairman of the Board Peter Meinig said that it “serves no useful purpose” to dwell on the specifics of Lehman’s departure. But Lehman’s resignation was more than a broken tenure; it also set the agenda for Cornell’s foreseeable future.

From the onset of his presidency, Lehman adopted an ear-to-the-ground approach. “How do I see the State of the University?,” he asked in his first address. “Wonderful … It is a perfect time for us to think carefully and deliberately about how the University should evolve in the years to come.”

Central to his message was listening before taking action:

“During my first year as Cornell’s president, I had many opportunities to listen to what others think about our university,” he wrote in his 81-page “Reflections on the Call to Engagement.” Lehman’s approach to running the University started with every voice in the University: his Call to Engagement surveyed “Cornellians everywhere to engage a set of fundamental questions about our future,” as he wrote.

Thus far, the Skorton’s administration — from divestment in Darfur to the new $4 billion capital campaign — has prized the eye over the ear. Under the new president, Cornell is looking toward a certain future:

“Cornellians are dreamers, yes, but this is no dreamy scenario,” Skorton said in his own first State of the University address last week. “We have concrete and focused plans and strategies.”

Though the University has continued its policy of silence on Lehman’s departure, the weight of the evidence suggests that it was this divergence in policy — Lehman’s dreamy “Call to Engagement” versus Skorton and the Board’s concrete capital campaign — that led to Lehman’s removal from office.

Of course, definitive evidence can only be found in the Non-Disclosure Agreements signed by both Lehman and the Board’s Executive Committee — documents that prohibit either party from speaking out on the situation’s specifics.

But at whose behest were these contracts drawn up?

The majority of the evidence points to a hush-hush operation on the part of the Board. The Sun reported this month that in the year of his departure, Lehman earned upwards of $1 million, the highest presidential salary in the Ivy League. Yet, much of this attractive package was contingent upon Lehman following the “Board’s official policy of not discussing the rift that ended [his] two-year tenure,” according to The Sun.

The financial filings obtained by The Sun showed that in his last year in office, Lehman received a base salary of $855,468, as well as $148,566 in benefits and a $75,000 expense account. Were these high sums “the price of silence,” as the report suggested?

Not according to Vice President for Media and Community Relations Tommy Bruce, who has consistently hinted that Lehman left of his own volition. In an interview with The New York Sun on June 13, 2005, Bruce likened Lehman’s term to a series of speed bumps, and said that he could not waver from the way “the president wants us to characterize this.”

And then, in the July/August 2005 edition of Cornell Alumni Magazine, Bruce alluded to Lehman’s primary role in the policy of silence, saying that he could “only characterize this decision as Jeff wants it to be characterized.” And again on August 28, Bruce told The Sun that “Jeff announced his decision to resign,” once more playing up Lehman’s autonomous decision to step down. “It may be frustrating,” Bruce said, and “we may not like the outcome, but we have got to respect it.”

Despite Bruce’s attempts to cast “Jeff” as the instigator of his departure, the timing of the capital campaign all but confirms what many already suspected: the Board’s senior members pushed Lehman out because his insistence on listening and engagement detracted from the University’s dollar goals.

On paper, Cornell’s financiers should have been happy with Lehman. According to The New York Sun, Cornell’s endowment grew $1 billion during his presidency, and in 2003-2004, alumni set a school record for contributions.

But beneath the surface, major financial disputes were shaking the administration.

In the days after his resignation, Lehman asked the Cornell News Service that he be remembered “as a president who brought the community together for a moment to think about what Cornell means to the world,” but alumni and donors, according to the Alumni Magazine, found Lehman’s transnational vision to be “vague,” and said that it “did not translate well as an incentive for donations.” Though the new capital campaign claims to look global, most of the money is set aside for campus-specific goals.

Frustration with Lehman’s vision extended to the Board and the development office, specifically Inge Reichenbach, the University’s chief fund-raiser. According to The Sun, “Reichenbach and the Board felt that Lehman’s ‘Call to Engagement’ was a distraction from the capital campaign.”

Though Lehman had singled Reichenbach out for a “special mention” during his first trustee address, his relations with her soon soured, culminating in Reichenbach’s resignation in April 2005. Her frustration with Lehman’s Call to Engagement was compounded by the president’s appointment of his wife, Kathy Okun, to a senior advisor position in Day Hall.

Lehman’s presidency may have been characterized by a number of “speed bumps,” as he told the Ithaca Journal, but it now seems reasonable to conclude that the insurmountable obstacle to his presidency was his insistence on per-pupil engagement, rather than per-pupil expenditure.

While the student body will appreciate the $640 million of the capital campaign earmarked for student research, it is important to remember why Lehman was so widely admired by students, faculty and alumni — and why his departure was met with such widespread dismay: Cornell’s eleventh president worked for the $50 donor, the low-income undergrad and the middle-class alum. Sadly, it was the $50 million contributors who were essential to realizing his goals, and it was these deep-pocketed donors whom Lehman neglected.

Lehman’s vision proved untenable for a modern university with ever-growing needs. In Skorton, the Board has found its man.

Rob Fishman is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbf25@cornell.edu Agree to Disagree appears Wednesdays.

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