Dear Commons Community,
Thousands protested on Wednesday against the decision on the part of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees not to renew the contract of the Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, Daniel Jones. As reported in the New York Times:
“In what officials here described as one of the largest protests in the university’s history, students, employees and other supporters of Dr. Jones criticized the plan to change leaders as wrapped in secrecy and threatening to the future of a place that has often been central to the image of this state.
Dr. Jones, who became the school’s chief executive in 2009, had won acclaim for his work to move the university away from the shadow of the racial unrest that tarnished the campus in 1962. The university, on a campus studded with magnolia trees and Georgian buildings known as Ole Miss, posted a record enrollment of nearly 23,100 students last fall, and Dr. Jones has been praised for helping to upgrade its academic and cultural credentials.
But Mississippi’s higher education commissioner, Jim Borsig, announced Friday that the university’s governing board had decided not to renew Dr. Jones’s contract before its September expiration. The panel later said that Dr. Jones, 66, who returned to work at the university’s main campus on March 16 after months of treatment for cancer, had failed to eliminate violations of contracting policies.
Dr. Jones’s removal has since swelled into a storm that has seen students become protest organizers and incited legislative efforts to remake the state’s approach to overseeing its public universities.
“There’s been some basic disagreement for some time between the chancellor and some members of the board, but I’m still just bewildered that the board would take such drastic, radical action without more justification,” said William Winter, a former governor who this week tried unsuccessfully to broker a compromise. “It seemed to be a matter that could have been worked out, that could have been avoided, and the result, I think, is detrimental, not just to the University of Mississippi but to all of higher education in Mississippi.”
The resistance has been wide ranging. The alumni association’s leadership said Dr. Jones’s ouster was “unexpected and distressing,” and the Faculty Senate unanimously declared that it was “shocked and extremely disappointed.” On Monday, the student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, published a front-page editorial supporting Dr. Jones. The Gertrude C. Ford Foundation, which had agreed to spend $20 million for a new science building, said it would withdraw its contribution unless Dr. Jones remained chancellor, the foundation’s president, Anthony T. Papa, said Wednesday.”
As published in the student newspaper: “The actions of the IHL Board of Trustees attempt, unforgivably, to waylay the trajectory of progress and burgeoning improvement our university has seen under a talented chancellor, mentor and friend. Jones is a gift to the university. We stand with our chancellor.”
Tony
