ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Why would anyone want to be a college president? That question has new significance after the leader of Columbia resigned yesterday just before the start of the fall semester. During the last school year, leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell all left their jobs. These schools have been dealing with campus protests over the war in Gaza, and some of the leaders have also faced congressional scrutiny. Watching this all play out in public gives Brian Rosenberg a mild case of PTSD. He described that experience in an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education headlined, "The Impossible College Presidency." Rosenberg spent 17 years as president of Macalester College in Minnesota. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
BRIAN ROSENBERG: Thanks for having me.
SHAPIRO: You stepped down from the Macalester presidency a few years ago, before the Hamas attacks of October 7, the war in Gaza that followed or the protests that have taken over many college campuses. So what is it about this moment that feels so familiar to you?
ROSENBERG: It's always been a challenging job, and it's important to remember that the increasing pressures on the presidency didn't begin on October 7. The central problem about most colleges right now is that higher education is an industry under tremendous pressure, particularly financial pressure or demographic pressure. Presidents are brought in to try to solve problems that require transformation, and they're facing an industry that is culturally and structurally not very good at transforming itself. And so they get pressure from boards of trustees, they get pressure from faculty, and when they push for too much change, they tend to get votes of no confidence. And often they leave.
SHAPIRO: So there are economic and financial pressures, but there are also cultural pressures.
ROSENBERG: And that's what's really significantly worsened. And you see that play out, I think, most dramatically at the elite universities. Higher education in general has become another target in the culture wars. We see it when we have a vice presidential candidate talking about the professors being the enemy.
SHAPIRO: JD Vance, yeah.
ROSENBERG: And we see it in the congressional hearings where college presidents were grilled in ways that had very little to do with running a college.
SHAPIRO: The way you describe it, it sounds like the war in Gaza, the protests on campuses have just exacerbated existing trends. You have a great line where you say, "even those who disagree about almost everything else appear to agree that the presidents' judgment is bad, motivations are corrupt and actions are wrong. I wonder sometimes if the trucks declaring the presidents to be pro-Hamas zealots ever drive past the trucks declaring them to be genocidal Zionists. If so, do the drivers wave to each other?"
ROSENBERG: (Laughter) Even in the blackest moments, I try to inject a little humor.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
ROSENBERG: But it is true that presidents are now expected to solve problems that are essentially insoluble. You know, we saw in the congressional hearings that it didn't really matter whether presidents evaded the questions from the congressional panel, whether they agreed with a lot of the things asserted by the congressional panel, or whether they pushed back. In each case when they finished, there were calls for their resignation.
SHAPIRO: You write, "I was treated gently in comparison to presidents who are women or people of color or especially both." Do you think it's coincidence that the presidents who resigned from Columbia, UPenn, Harvard and Cornell were all women?
ROSENBERG: No, I do not. It was not coincidence, and I also think it was not coincidence that the first three presidents who were called in were not only all women, but all very new presidents. It's a job that has a pretty steep learning curve. And when you're brand-new to the job, it's going to be harder to handle a moment like that. But I do think there is unquestionably more pressure being brought to bear on groups that are traditionally underrepresented in these leadership positions and - so women and people of color and especially women of color.
SHAPIRO: So if it is a mistake to believe that switching out the president will solve the problems of these higher education institutions, then what should we expect from a president and what can solve the problems?
ROSENBERG: What we should expect from a president is to try to push the many constituencies on a university or college campus - the students, the faculty, the alumni, the boards of trustees, the politicians - to understand the challenges that the sector faces and the fact that it is no longer, in many cases, fulfilling its social contract. It's not doing what it was designed to do, which is provide education that's accessible and affordable, increases economic mobility. Higher education right now is failing at that.
And so the president can't enact all the changes, but the president can try to inspire and push people to work for those changes. I think constraint drives innovation, and I think the fact that you're going to see more and more institutions in situations of constraint is going to lead to more innovative responses to that. I don't think it's going to come from the Harvards and the Columbias. I think it's more likely to come from the institutions that need - in the words of my old AP biology teacher - to either adapt or to die, and I think we'll hopefully see some of them adapt.
SHAPIRO: Brian Rosenberg is president emeritus of Macalester College and a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He's author of "'Whatever It Is, I'm Against It': Resistance To Change In Higher Education." Thank you so much.
ROSENBERG: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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