↓ Download PDF ← Back to Library
The Association’s Committee on College and University
Governance has discussed the investigating committee’s
comprehensive report on the action by Antioch
University’s administration and board to suspend opera –
tions at Antioch College and believes that an introduc –
tion emphasizing the wider implications of Antioch’s
closing for American higher education would enhance
an appreciation of the complexity and multiplicity of
the developments treated in the report.
Antioch College was founded in 1852 in Yellow
Springs, Ohio, with an inaugural faculty of six, one of
whom was the first female college professor in the
United States to share equal status and salary with her
male colleagues. With the internationally acclaimed
education reformer Horace Mann serving as the col –
lege’s first president, Antioch quickly established its rep –
utation for educational innovation. Novel educational
practices, subsequently adopted by many other institu –
tions, included the blending of practical work experi –
ence with classroom learning, community governance,
active recruitment of African American students begin –
ning as early as the 1940s, and the first study-abroad
program. The college continuously ranked highly
among colleges whose graduates complete the doctoral
degree and maintained its reputation for combining
academic rigor and collaborative learning to provide an
enriching educational experience. The decision to close
Antioch College in 2008, if allowed to stand, would
mean a loss to liberal arts education, and would thus be
of concern to all in the academic community who share
the values it embodied throughout much of its storied
history.
The investigating committee’s report points particu –
larly to the kinds of problems that arise when the facul –
ty is overlooked while key managerial decisions are
made, and it analyzes each phase of the dissolution of
Antioch College in relation to the Association’s recom –
mended standards for faculty governance. It details the
gradual deterioration of faculty governance at the col –
lege through a series of administrative actions that cul –
minated in the suspension of its operations.
1. There was an expansion of the college’s outreach to
various communities beyond its core campus, lead –
ing to the establishment of some forty autonomous
satellite campuses located far afield from any cen –
tral administration and common mission that
required resources beyond what the college could
provide. Once adult education and vocational cam –
puses were established without any organic relation
to the founding Yellow Springs campus, in places
like Seattle, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Keene (New
Hampshire), and even Yellow Springs itself, institu –
tional governance became scattered, unwieldy, and,
eventually, dysfunctional.
2. The cooperative faculty structure on the home cam –
pus fell into disuse, while the college’s status
declined within the emerging system now renamed
Antioch University.
3. In the absence of effective structures for faculty par –
ticipation in the affairs of the college, Antioch
University’s administration and board of trustees
turned to nonparticipatory management practices,
addressing the institution’s problems by making
decisions without consultation; faculty participation
in devising solutions came to be perceived by the
administration as a waste of time and inevitably
subversive.
4. The dispersed organization of units within Antioch
University fractured the administration itself—
creating competition among the different campus
leaders, a dispersal of scarce resources, and resent –
ment of Antioch College by the other campuses,
now independent and removed from the college’s
commitment to liberal education.
5. With the establishment of Antioch’s satellite campuses
without systems of faculty tenure, only on the core
campus did the university board and administration
face active and engaged tenured faculty members
who could be expected to speak their minds and to
insist upon a role in institutional decision making.
6. Proceeding to intervene in curricular matters, a fun –
damental area for faculty participation in academic
Prefatory Comments from the
Committee on College and University
Governance to the Report on
Antioch University and the
Closing of Antioch College
41
(November –December 2009)
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
decisions, the board in 2004 imposed a new curricu –
lum on the college over faculty objections, precipi –
tating a crisis that accelerated the enrollment
declines.
7. The board, unable to match its stated commitment
to the new curriculum, and notwithstanding a
promised five-year trial period for success, voted in
June 2007 to declare the college in financial exi –
gency and to suspend its operations.
The university board and administration, in suspend –
ing the operations of Antioch College with its reopening
highly uncertain, appeared not only unconcerned with
the college’s rich history of progressive education but
also determined to eliminate the financial obligations
attendant upon maintaining a residential liberal arts
program. During its 156-year history, the college had
struggled through many hard times but had been sus –
tained by the strong tradition of its faculty’s engage –
ment with enlightened boards, distinguished adminis –
trators, eminent alumni, and talented students working
together to serve the common good. To the great for –
tune of those committed to progressive education, those
devoted to the Antioch tradition have once again taken
critical steps toward reopening Antioch College. As
announced on June 30, 2009, the governing boards of
Antioch University and an organization known as the
Antioch Continuation Corporation have reached agree –
ment on opening a new Antioch college, independent of
the university. Reopening is anticipated for fall 2011. I
42
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
I. Introduction
Antioch College, an independent liberal arts institution
located in Yellow Springs, Ohio, was founded in 1852
with a resolution passed by the general convention of
the Christian Church. In 1853, the college admitted its
first class of six students, four men and two women,
with an inaugural faculty of six, one of whom was the
first female college professor in the United States to
have status and salary equal to that of her male col –
leagues. With the internationally acclaimed educator
Horace Mann serving as the college’s first president
until his death in 1859, Antioch began from the outset
to establish its reputation for educational innovation
and progressive politics. Financial difficulties, which
beset the college throughout its history, forced its clo –
sure in 1862. The college remained closed through the
end of the Civil War and reopened in 1865 under the
auspices of the Unitarian Church. Another brief closure
for financial difficulties occurred in 1881–82. From
1919 to 1921, the college closed for a third time dur-
ing the reorganization of its curriculum by incoming
president Arthur Morgan. The new curriculum, requir –
ing students to combine practical industrial experience
with classroom learning, together with its focus on
student participation in the governance of the college
community, became the educational model many
institutions would emulate in the coming years. The
1960s and 1970s witnessed a large expansion in stu –
dent enrollment, along with the opening of numerous
branch campuses, as detailed below, which were sub-
sequently greatly reduced in number. In 1978, before
the end of the consolidation, the Antioch College cor –
poration formally changed its name to Antioch
University. By the late 1980s, Antioch included five
additional units (Antioch University McGregor in
Yellow Springs; Antioch University New England in
Keene, New Hampshire; Antioch University Los Angeles;
Antioch University Santa Barbara; and Antioch
University Seattle).
On June 7, 2007, the Antioch University board of
trustees declared Antioch College to be in a state of
financial exigency and authorized college president
Steven Lawry “to suspend campus governance rules,
regulations, policies, and practices to the extent neces –
sary or desirable to take the actions he deems necessary
to appropriately abate the current financial crisis at the
college.” Two days later the board voted to suspend
Antioch College’s operations after one more year. The
college at that time had an enrollment of approximate –
ly 260 full-time students with a full-time faculty of
thirty-five. The suspension became effective July 1,
2008, with the board having stated its intention of
reopening the college no later than 2012. The members
of the college’s faculty, including twenty-eight with
tenure, continued to receive compensation from
Antioch University through August 2008.
With the sole exception of Antioch College, the
Antioch University system has not had a system of
academic tenure, and all full- and part-time faculty
members at the other campuses serve on indefinitely
renewable term appointments. The five nonresidential
units offer a variety of programs to adult learners lead –
ing to bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. In 43
College and University Government: Antioch University and the Closing of Antioch College 1
1. The text of this report was written in the first instance
by the members of the investigating committee. In accor –
dance with Association practice, the text was then edited by
the Association’s staff, and, as revised, with the concur –
rence of the investigating committee, was submitted to the
Committee on College and University Governance. With
that committee’s approval, the report was subsequently
sent to the administration of Antioch University, to former
administrative and faculty officers at Antioch College, and
to other persons concerned in the report. In light of the
responses received and with the editorial assistance of the
Association’s staff, this final report has been prepared for
publication.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
2007, they enrolled approximately 3,600 full- and part-
time students who were taught by approximately 140
full-time and 290 part-time faculty members.
Members of the Antioch College faculty first sought
the Association’s assistance shortly following the June
2007 resolutions of the university board declaring
financial exigency and suspending college operations.
As the date for suspension approached, the college’s
faculty voted to request that the Association proceed
with an investigation, emphasizing in a letter of May
14, 2008, the administration’s failure to consult sig-
nificantly with the faculty both before and after the
June 2007 declaration of financial exigency and
asserting that the university system had a “well-
established pattern” of “neglecting consultation with
the faculty or with the Administrative Council (AdCil)
about the financial well-being of the college.” The
Association’s staff had written previously to the uni-
versity administration setting forth concerns about
apparent departures from AAUP-supported principles
and procedural standards relating to sound academic
government, and in October 2008 the staff informed
the university’s chief administrative officer, Chancellor
Tullisse (Toni) A. Murdock, that the Association’s
general secretary had authorized an investigation of
university governance.
In addition to meeting with current and former
Antioch College and Antioch University faculty mem –
bers and former administrators in December 2008 and
January 2009, members of the undersigned ad hoc
investigating committee conducted telephone inter –
views, read through extensive documentation
gathered by the Association’s staff, collected additional
documentation, met with the university vice chan-
cellor for finance, and corresponded with Chancellor
Murdock.
A draft report based on the information acquired
from the above sources was prepared by the investi-
gating committee, approved by the Association’s
Committee on College and University Governance for
release to the concerned parties, and sent to those
parties on May 13, 2009, with an invitation for correc –
tions and comments. In a detailed late June response,
Chancellor Murdock referred to discussions between
the Antioch University board of trustees and the
Antioch College Continuation Corporation, begun
when college operations were suspended the previous
June, that would provide for the reopening of Antioch
College as an independent institution under its own
governing board, separate from the remaining units of
Antioch University. An agreement to create the new
Antioch College was announced on June 30, 2009, with
the reopening anticipated in fall 2011.
II. The Institution’s G overnance
Until February 2009, Antioch University was governed
by a single twenty-member board of trustees. That
board has since been replaced by a university gover –
nance structure that includes previous trustees as a
university-wide board of governors and new boards of
trustees for each individual campus to oversee local
campus operations. The board of governors is currently
chaired by Mr. Arthur J. Zucker. Dr. Murdock was
appointed chancellor in November 2005, while she was
serving as president of Antioch Seattle, where her
Antioch service as an administrator had begun in 1997.
Before moving to Antioch University, Dr. Murdock had
served for eight years as associate provost at Seattle
University. She received her BA and MA degrees from
New Mexico State University and her PhD in education
from the University of Arizona. Antioch University, like
Antioch College, is accredited by the Higher Learning
Commission of the North Central Association of
Colleges and Schools; in addition, Antioch Los Angeles
and Antioch Santa Barbara are separately accredited
by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
Each Antioch campus has its own president, who is
responsible for day-to-day operations and who partici –
pates with the chancellor and the university’s chief
financial officer in the University Leadership Council
(ULC), which is charged with formulating university-
wide operational policies and procedures. No similar
university-wide body exists to which faculty representa –
tives may belong.
At Antioch College, the faculty had been represented
in institutional governance through a variety of mech –
anisms, including the Administrative Council, which
first appeared in 1926. From its inception, AdCil mem –
bers, who were representatives from the faculty, admin –
istration, student body, and staff appointed originally
by the president and later elected, were advisory to the
president and “the focal point for the formation of cur –
rent policy in the college.” After 1930, AdCil was provid –
ed for in the charter of the college. The Administrative
Council’s purview was broad: “All major matters of
college policy . . . come to it for review and decision, or
originate there. It passes on all questions of personnel.
It counsels with the president concerning college
finances and passes on the budget. It appoints faculty
policy-making and administrative committees to han –
dle admissions, student counseling, curriculum, and
examinations, as well as to establish the policies of the 44
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
cooperative plan.” 2 In 1978, when the college became
part of a university system, a university-wide AdCil was
attempted. It proved too large and unwieldy, however,
and was abandoned, with AdCil again becoming the
advisory body to the Antioch College president, while
university governance shifted in composition to consist
only of administrators. In 2005, the college’s faculty
approved a proposal to establish a faculty senate in ad-
dition to AdCil, which, at the time of the college’s clos –
ing, had not yet been approved by the university board.
III. Faculty Participation in A ntioch College
G overnance: Background
Determining the extent of faculty participation in the
governance of Antioch College is fundamental to an
assessment of key issues in this case. Questions arose
as to the precise nature and extent of the faculty’s
knowledge of both the financial situation of the col –
lege and the board’s intention to declare financial exi –
gency and to suspend college operations. As noted
above, Antioch College did have a system of shared
governance that, according to college faculty members
with whom the investigating committee spoke, had
functioned well historically, but a sequence of struc –
tural changes in the relationship between the college
and what had become the wider university allowed for
a series of administrative actions that had the cumula –
tive effect of ending the centrality of Antioch College in
the university system and reducing the ability of the
Antioch College faculty to participate meaningfully in
the governance of their own college. By the beginning
of this decade, the university administration and board
were including the faculty in governance decisions less
frequently, and the faculty was hardly included at all
when the board in 2004 adopted a renewal plan that
called for a dramatically changed curriculum or when
it declared financial exigency and voted to suspend
college operations three years later. The history of the
relationship between the college and the university is
central to an understanding of the participation of the
faculty in governance decisions.
From the early 1960s through the mid-1970s, as en-
rollment at Antioch College expanded from 1,700 to
nearly 2,500 students and the Ford Foundation advanced
its interest in funding partnerships that would bring the
liberal arts to diverse communities, no fewer than forty
“learning communities” with an Antioch affiliation were
initiated in the United States and abroad by Antioch
College faculty members, by various community groups
and nonprofit organizations, and by entrepreneurs out –
side the college. Those programs initiated by members
of the college faculty—for example, Antioch Graduate
School of Education in Putney, Vermont, and Antioch
Education Abroad—went through the regular process of
faculty curricular planning and approval. Since 1926,
the Administrative Council of the college had dealt with
academic, curricular, and faculty affairs, and the new
programs created by the faculty in the 1960s and 1970s
were monitored by the faculty through AdCil. Most of
the programs, however, were not created by the faculty;
the administration created and oversaw these other pro –
grams without faculty or AdCil involvement. Indeed,
many of the enterprises evolved at more than one remove
from Antioch and its oversight and control. For exam –
ple, a Baltimore Center of Antioch University created a
Huntington, West Virginia, Center for Miners, and the
Huntington Center for Miners, in turn, created a
Mercedes, Texas, Center for Migrant Workers. Most of the
new centers had no connection to Antioch College pro –
grams or to the college faculty. While there was a con –
cern with outgoing cash flow for those enterprises that
received college funding, one of the main criticisms of
the burgeoning satellite system was that its oversight
and monitoring drew administrative energy away from
the college, a criticism that would be repeated until the
suspension of the college’s operations.
Beginning in 1975 and continuing through the late
1980s, most of the new programs were gradually shut
down. While Antioch College faculty members were not
involved in the decisions to close these various campus –
es and centers, they had been vocal in expressing their
concerns about many of the sites. Academic standards
were inconsistent, cash flow was a problem at many sites,
and several of them utterly failed financially. During the
1960s and 1970s there had been little fundraising for
Antioch College, and its endowment remained around
$5 million. Enrollment at the college had fallen from a
maximum of nearly 2,500 to 1,600 students by 1975
and much further to 500 by 1981. 3 AdCil remained an
45
2. Algo Henderson and Dorothy Hall, Antioch College:
Its D esign for Liberal Education (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1946), 206–7. Henderson was Antioch College’s
executive vice president and acting president from 1934 to
1936, president from 1936 to 1947, and the leader to
whom shared governance is most often attributed.
3. Chancellor Murdock, who provided extensive com –
ment on a prepublication draft, stated, “The early 1970s
was a difficult time for all private higher education
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
active participant in setting budgetary priorities and
making budget decisions. After initial faculty layoffs in
the late 1970s, AdCil and the faculty voted twice to
reduce faculty salaries by 5 percent to avoid additional
layoffs. That the college was subsidizing off-campus
centers, absent a significant endowment of its own and
with a greatly reduced student body, complicated the
situation even further. Some faculty members became
increasingly frustrated with the poorly planned expan –
sion, which, they maintained, was damaging the col –
lege’s strong academic reputation and draining finan –
cial resources better used to maintain the Yellow
Springs campus and its academic programs. After the
closings, five units in addition to Antioch College
remained. Two of these were housed on the campus of
the college: the School for Adult and Experiential
Learning, which later became Antioch McGregor, and
Antioch Education Abroad, later renamed Antioch
International. The School for Adult and Experiential
Learning was operated primarily by members of the
college faculty and provided supplemental revenue
streams for the college’s undergraduate programs. Its
director reported to the president of the college. Antioch
Education Abroad, created in 1957, had been a crea –
ture of the college faculty until the college suspended
operations. It included faculty members from else –
where who were appointed through formal channels
to the college faculty, regular Antioch College faculty
members serving in program and leadership roles, and
program faculty members housed on the college’s cam –
pus and included in the college’s budget, with regular
faculty and AdCil oversight of the program. Programs,
courses, and initiatives were approved through regular
faculty processes.
While there is some controversy over the criteria used
in determining which programs and units survived to
become part of the Antioch system, there is agreement
that the surviving units were seen as economically
viable. They were nonresidential, did not have large
infrastructures, and engaged only part- and full-time
non-tenure-track faculty members. Only at Antioch
College was there tenure. More than one past Antioch
College president stated to this investigating committee
that most top administrators at the other campuses did
not appreciate tenure, viewed it as problematic for
them, and did not want the issue of tenure raised on
their campuses. In 2007, Laurien Alexandre, Antioch
University’s vice chancellor for academic affairs, was
asked about tenure at these other units and was quoted
as saying, “Tenure has never been available and it had
never been thought of when those campuses were cre –
ated. The early vision of the campuses was that they
were satellites of the college and need not be fully vest –
ed in tenure and academic culture.” Several faculty
members pointed out to the investigating committee
that in university-wide meetings of the faculty, which
began in the mid-1990s and continued until the early
2000s, there was tension over the college’s being the
only Antioch unit with tenured and tenure-track faculty
members.
In 1978, when the Antioch College corporation for –
mally changed the institution’s name to Antioch
University, then-Antioch president William Birenbaum
explained in the Yellow Springs N ew s that the change
was in response both to an external study of the institu –
tion and to the Ohio State Board of Regents’ recently
redefined distinctions between colleges and universi –
ties. The president added, “The change . . . will have
no direct effect on the institution’s program or admin –
istrative and financial structure. Instead, . . . it should
clarify what Antioch is to the public.” The change was
discussed with AdCil, and the dean of the college
reported, “I think there was general approval of the
change.” In fact, both the administrative and financial
structures did change. The president of the college,
who also served as the chancellor of the university,
retained college leadership, chaired AdCil, and partici –
pated with the faculty in some decision making at the
college level. Most often, however, he delegated these
responsibilities to a provost, vice president, or dean.
The college lost to the university its president’s undi –
vided attention as well as its development office, public
relations staff, and chief financial officer. The college’s 46
institutions throughout the nation. The private sector
institutions had the lowest proportion of the traditional,
four-year residential student market in its history, less
than twenty percent. Many institutions faced budget reduc –
tions, cuts, layoffs, and closure. Some institutions survived
and some did not. College alumni folklore attributes
Antioch College’s decline in the enrollments in the
1970s/1980s to (1) the student strikes in 1973 and 1978,
which resulted in the closing of the campus for several
months and from which the college never recovered, (2)
expansion of the non-residential campuses and the drain
on the college revenue, (3) lack of oversight from the col –
lege president, (4) dominance of the campus by the left-
wing radical sector of the faculty and staff causing an
environment of oppression that dissuaded new students
from attending, or (5) a combination of two or more of
these elements.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
administration became the university’s administration.
With the shift to Antioch University, essential matters
of governance, especially those related to resources,
moved entirely from the college to the university. 4
While Antioch College faculty members retained pri –
mary responsibility for the curriculum and general
academic policies at the college, they were excluded
from academic decisions affecting other university
units. AdCil continued to work on the college’s budget,
but the university, not the college, was in control of
resources. A number of efforts were made to gain col –
lege representation in university decision making,
including the formation of a systemwide AdCil with
faculty and student representatives from each unit, but
the systemwide AdCil was disbanded. AdCil continued
to deal with the budget, all matters of major policy,
and faculty hiring and evaluation, but only for the col –
lege. No shared governance structure included the col –
lege faculty in university-level decision making. This
fundamental flaw in the governance structure would
persist and become of central importance in under –
standing why Antioch faculty members state that they
were largely taken by surprise when financial exigency
was announced.
Dr. Alan Guskin, president of both the college and
the university from 1985 to 1994, made substantial
changes in the structure of the relationship between
Antioch College and the university, changes that some
have seen as repositioning Antioch College as “a first
among equals” in the Antioch University system. Others
hold this reorganization responsible for reducing the
position of the college from “the apex of the Antioch
University pyramid” to “one among equals.” President
Guskin separated his roles, creating a university chan –
cellor’s position (a position that he himself filled) and
a college president’s position. What had been a dual
administration moved to university quarters, while the
college searched for and engaged a new administration
that included its own president, a vice president for
development, and a chief financial officer. The presi –
dent of Antioch College did retain direct access to the
board of trustees and was not required to report
through the chancellor, whereas the same was not true
for the provosts at the other sites. The college president
was given autonomy within a framework of policy
negotiated with other university leaders, the initiation
of a federal model of governance for the university. In
addition, Dr. Guskin created the University Leadership
Council (ULC), consisting of the heads of the five cam –
puses, including the vice chancellors for finance and
development, and chaired by the chancellor. Finally,
Dr. Guskin consolidated the graduate and adult exten –
sion programs originally at the college into Antioch
McGregor and appointed a provost for McGregor, which
was effectively separated from college control at the end
of the 1980s. Because the graduate and adult extension
programs did bring revenue to the college, Dr. Guskin
ensured that the college would share in McGregor’s
success by contributing 7 percent of its student-derived
revenue to the college. He solidified additional revenue
for the college, drawn from the overhead that the other
campuses paid to the university, to replace the admin –
istrative leadership that had been removed from the
campus (for example, the president, the development
officer, public relations). In return for what some
describe as using the Antioch name, each unit paid a
sum into a college fund. Later these would be called
“subsidies” to the college rather than revenue that was
due to the college for what had been lost or shared.
Eventually, the university administration would view
these subsidies as unacceptable burdens on the units. 5
While these changes were initiated by Dr. Guskin,
they were based on full discussions with Antioch
College faculty members who wanted to regain auto-
nomy for the college and to protect its role in institu –
tional governance. Some of these faculty members, who
met with the investigating committee, state that they
negotiated these arrangements with Dr. Guskin, with
great trepidation, over several years; they were con –
cerned about losing governance of the college to the
university. The faculty and AdCil continued to manage
47
4. Chancellor Murdock states that the new arrangement
“allowed the college to continue to be the center of the
university in the system as the chancellor continued to use
the other campuses’ resources in order to bolster the college.”
5. The board and the other campus presidents, accord –
ing to Chancellor Murdock, were not concerned about the
annual subsidies, which varied from $600,000 to $740,000,
but rather about the fact that repeatedly “the college pro –
posed budgets that were not balanced and far beyond its
means to achieve.” With respect to the annual subsidies, a
former Antioch College professor, Thomas Haugsby, stated
in a letter to the Association that the annual payment to
the college was “intended to provide a ‘living endowment’
for the college by providing resources back to the college.
This was partly in recognition of the investment made
through the college’s endowment, faculty, administrative
services, reputation, and accreditation.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
the governance of the college, participating in decisions
on policy, personnel, and budget, but they had no role
in university governance. While AdCil had always been
“legally” advisory to the college president, its decisions
had almost always been implemented without adminis –
trative intervention or constraint, according to both for –
mer college faculty members and former college
administrators. During the Guskin presidency, this
continued to be the case.
The provosts of the nonresidential units petitioned
the board of trustees, through the ULC, to become
presidents. 6 They argued that presidential status was
needed for them to be credible in their regions, to raise
funds, and to negotiate contracts. The decision to
accede to their wishes was made by the board, on the
recommendation of the chancellor, in February 1998.
The college faculty had no knowledge of this change
until after the fact, and they expressed their concern
about the reduced centrality of the college in the uni –
versity structure.
From the late 1990s into 2001, the faculty continued
to share actively in the governance of the college.
Student enrollment had by then dropped to below five
hundred, and the endowment stood at only $11 mil –
lion. In late 1996 and early 1997, the faculty, AdCil,
and the general college community developed and
voted on a strategic plan. In 1997, the board adopted
the plan, and it congratulated the college on taking
matters into its own hands. Included in the plan were
overarching mandates for the board to raise funds for
improvements in the physical plant and to initiate
fundraising to build the college’s endowment. The col –
lege implemented 85 percent of the strategic plan’s
more than one hundred action items, and it balanced
the budget for the second and third years of the
plan. The board, however, failed to implement its part
of the plan. Not only did it not raise funds for physical
facilities, board members’ giving to the college
declined after the approval of the plan, according to a
past president. A comprehensive campaign for the col –
lege was not launched until 2001–02. Several former
presidents pointed to the board’s many years of failed
stewardship and lack of understanding of the need
for both development resources and a separate college
board of trustees as a fundamental problem for the
college.
During a mid-year budget shortfall in 2000, the fac –
ulty, working through department chairs and AdCil,
participated in deciding which staff positions to cut
and where to reduce the budget in order to balance it.
Ultimately, with the voluntary support of faculty and
staff members who took reductions in salary and bene –
fits, and with contributions of townspeople from Yellow
Springs, the faculty, working with the college’s chief
financial officer, managed to avoid permanent cuts.
According to faculty members involved, and as evi –
denced in AdCil minutes, the college faculty on that
occasion, working with AdCil, closely tracked the
finances and the goals of the strategic plan.
IV. Excluding the College Faculty from
Budgetary D ecisions
According to Robert Devine, Antioch College’s interim
president from 1996 to 1998 and president from 1998
to 2001, the vice chancellor for finance and the ULC
became more vocal during his time in office in their
criticism of the college’s budget, specifically the rev –
enue obtained from the other units and the college’s
autonomy in developing its own budget priorities. The
college’s budgetary process normally would involve
full discussions with AdCil and representatives of the
faculty, after which the president would carry the
budget through the ULC and then to the board. The
ULC gradually began to exercise greater control over
the budget, according to President Devine. In 2001, the
vice chancellor for finance completely changed the
budget that the college president had brought from
AdCil to the ULC and presented it to the board’s
finance committee as an example of why it was neces –
sary for the board to delegate to the vice chancellor the
authority to intervene in the finances of the
college. Shortly after President Devine stepped down,
with the university administration having concluded
that the college’s leadership was unable to exercise
financial accountability, the vice chancellor for
finance eliminated the position of chief financial offi –
cer at the college and assumed those duties himself.
After the Devine presidency, Antioch College presi –
dents ceased reporting directly to the board and instead
began reporting only to the chancellor. Faculty mem –
bers were not involved in the decision to change the
reporting relationship. The status of the college’s presi –
dent within the ULC came to depend both upon the
facilitation and mediation skills of the chancellor and
upon the willingness of that person to defend the cen –
trality and importance of the college to the university
as a whole. Faculty members and former presi dents of 48
6. According to Chancellor Murdock, “Records show
that no petition was made to the Board, that this was a
Board action independent of the provosts.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
the college who spoke with the investigating committee
said they believe that then-chancellor James Hall, who
served in that capacity from 1998 to 2002, was not
willing to assume this role. With respect to the presi –
dent’s relationship with the board itself, one former
president of the college explained that, while the presi –
dent of the college could attend board meetings, that
officer had no direct access to the board. The presenta –
tions that the president made to the board were only on
matters prescribed to the president by the chancellor.
The investigating committee was told that the entire
structure was dysfunctional and “set the [campus]
presidents up as rivals.” For example, as part of the
financial reorganization, revenues from the other
campuses to the college, intended to continue until
such time as the college’s endowment grew sufficiently
to replace them, were reframed as “allowable deficits”
to be negotiated annually at the level of the ULC. The
cumulative result of these changes was to diminish the
centrality of the college. While the president’s ability to
advocate for the college was weakened, AdCil members
also complained about their own reduced role in policy
development and decision making at the college.
Following the 2001–02 financial reorganization, the
college was not to regain control of its budget, which
was thereafter formulated by the university’s chief
financial officer. Although the college still had a con –
troller and AdCil approval of the budget continued to be
required, budget preparation, budget oversight, and de-
cision making at the college level gradually disappeared .
A former president writing in 2003 to Chancellor Hall
protested that the board and the chancellor had “dele –
gated far too much responsibility, authority, and trust”
to the position of the university’s chief financial officer.
The president continued that “my campus is unable to
get detailed, accurate, timely, and transparent reporting
of critical issues of finance, revenue, and expenditures.
. . . It is a recipe for disaster.” At the time of the suspen –
sion of the college’s operations, the college’s controller
had resigned and a university-wide official had taken
over some of his responsibilities.
The faculty’s loss of participation in the budgetary
process was addressed in a letter from the Antioch
College chapter of the AAUP to the greater Antioch
community in February 2004, written in response to
budget decisions made by “administrative fiat” rather
than through discussions with the College Budget
Committee of AdCil:
From the point of view of the AAUP, perhaps most
troubling is the way Antioch’s traditions of demo –
cratic self-governance have been thoroughly
undermined and disregarded. Long-established
college procedures by which budget information
was provided to AdCil on a regular basis, and
which, if in place, would have led to an earlier
awareness of this year’s deficit, have been
replaced by a top-down, non-participatory gover –
nance structure. The College Budget Committee,
a subcommittee of AdCil, received its charge this
past fall, but was not convened because those
administrators to whom the university had grant –
ed budget control apparently refused to meet with
them. Thus both AdCil and the College Budget
Committee were denied access to vital financial
information. We find it particularly disturbing
that the college is being forced to absorb all of the
negative impacts of budget shortfalls when much
of the current budget deficit happened outside of
college control.
The [Antioch chapter of the] AAUP continues
to be concerned by the unimaginative “solutions”
which are being advanced by administrators
charged with budget decision making. We expect
future consultation with the faculty about the
effects of this proposed budget and our ability to
work within its constraints. We remain committed
to public discussion of these issues, and to a
thoughtful process by which Antioch’s time-
honored traditions of self-governance continue
to guide the college budget, staffing, and
curriculum. 7
By the beginning of this decade, Antioch College’s
system of shared governance had become limited to
reacting to decisions made at the university level by the
board and the chancellor.
V. Issues of Concern
Summarized here are what appear to the investigating
committee to be the central issues raised by the actions
taken concerning Antioch College and its faculty by the
administration and the board of Antioch University.
A . F U N D A M EN TA L RESPO N SIBILITY FO R TH E CU RRICU LU M
According to the Statem ent on Governm ent of
Colleges and U niversities , the Association’s founda –
tional document on academic governance, “the faculty
has primary responsibility for such fundamental areas
49
7. Chancellor Murdock writes that “the college president
was always responsible, and AdCil always knew when they
were ‘off the mark’ concerning the budget.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
as curriculum [and] subject matter and methods of
instruction.” In October 2003, a board-appointed
Sesquicentennial Commission for the Renewal of
Antioch College was charged with outlining a “sustain –
able vision” for that renewal. The renewal commis –
sion’s report, presented to the board at its June 2004
meeting, called for a radical transformation of the col –
lege’s curriculum to commence in fall 2006. Central to
the new curriculum was the creation of “experiential
learning communities” organized around a single
theme and taught collaboratively by two or three fac –
ulty members from relevant disciplines. In January
2005, the college’s faculty was informed that the new
curriculum would begin in fall 2005, a year earlier
than originally scheduled. Faculty members inter –
viewed by this investigating committee stated that the
curriculum was imposed on them without adequate
consultation, that they never voted to approve it, and
that they had no role in determining its commence –
ment date.
The thirteen-member renewal commission, co-
chaired by the chancellor and the chair of the board,
included only two faculty members, neither of whom,
according to faculty members with whom the investi –
gating committee spoke, represented the faculty on the
commission in any formal or substantive manner.
According to a professor who had requested more fac –
ulty representation on the renewal commission, a uni –
versity administrator told him that “more faculty
would have too conservative an impact on the think –
ing of the group.” Until midway through the process,
members of the commission, including the dean and
the president of the college, were not permitted to dis –
cuss the commission’s work with the Antioch faculty
members who would be responsible for implementing
the curricular changes. The university administration
promised the college community that it would be
brought into the shaping of the renewal plan when the
commission was closer to completing its work. Until
February 2004, communication with the college’s fac –
ulty, for the most part, had to do with additional
appointments to the commission and the commis –
sion’s projected timetable for presenting its recommen –
dations. Most members of the faculty were unaware
that a curricular overhaul was part of the commis –
sion’s work, and the investigating committee was told
that many faculty members were shocked when that
overhaul was announced at a meeting in February
2004. Before that meeting, the board had already
endorsed the initial work and the stated vision of the
commission, including a curriculum based on experi -50
ential learning communities. 8 The commission had
not been mandated to focus on the college’s curricu –
lum, and, according to a member of the commission,
the curriculum “turned out to be the path of least
resistance, given the chairs’ prohibition on addressing
governance and finances.” 9 Faculty members inter –
viewed by the investigating committee were perplexed
by the focus on the curriculum, because in a recent
review for reaccreditation the visiting team had found
fault with governance but not with the curriculum.
During March and April 2004, a series of sessions, to
which particular faculty members and students were
invited, focused on formulating a workable design for
the curriculum in order to make the commission’s
prescriptions viable. 10 Each time faculty members
raised concerns about the financial viability of the
renewal plan, they were assured of the board’s long-
term commitment to a new plan. At these meetings
concerned faculty members asked fundamental ques –
tions, such as “Who ‘owns’ the curriculum?” and “By
what processes will curricular, staffing, and hiring
decisions be made?” They questioned the potential
impact of the renewal plan on continuing employment
of the current faculty and asked whether the board
would guarantee the provision of adequate long-term
financial support for the plan’s implementation. The
faculty received assurances that they would have five
years to make the transition fully to the new plan, dur –
ing which time the plan would have the board’s
unqualified support, including financial support.
According to a former president, this promise was
“rhetorical,” because the money was not there to sup –
port a major college project such as the new curricu –
lum. The commission’s report, approved by the board
at its June 2004 meeting, included a new curriculum
8. “The Renewal Commission,” Chancellor Murdock
writes, “gave a broad outline of the vision and then asked
the faculty to design an academic program and curricu –
lum that would fit the vision. Most everyone would agree
that curriculum is the purview of the faculty. And, as rec –
ognized by the Association of Governing Boards, any pri –
vate institution’s board has the responsibility and obliga –
tion to set the mission and direction of an institution.”
9. According to Chancellor Murdock, “the commission
explored many options, looking at governance, finances,
community, and curriculum, among other things.”
10 . Chancellor Murdock reports that the roster of the
implementation teams, which were led by dean of faculty
Ann Filemyr, included forty members of the faculty.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
51
and the benchmarks for implementation on which
some members of the college community had worked.
The sentiments of faculty members with whom the
investigating committee spoke can be summed up in
the words of one professor who said, “I was appalled at
the process by which [the new curriculum] had been
drafted and by which it was being presented. I was also
deeply frustrated by being subjected to this process.”
The faculty responded to the renewal commission’s
plan and to the absence of faculty involvement in its
formulation in three ways. Some faculty members left
the college. Some who remained worked energetically
to create, design, and implement the “learning com –
munities,” which were to be the core of the new cur –
riculum. (A former president described the effort of the
faculty in this regard as “noble.”) A third faculty reac –
tion during the 2004–05 academic year was the devel –
opment of a new college governance body—a faculty
senate—in the hope of strengthening faculty partici-
pation. The proposal calling for its creation stated that
“Antioch College is currently undergoing fundamental
change that dramatically impacts faculty: the curricu –
lum is being transformed, classroom and co-op deliv –
ery systems are being altered, and our departmental
structure is being closely examined. These changes
require updated and transformed faculty structures.”
The proposed establishment of a faculty senate was
intended “to restore faculty oversight to those matters
that either most draw upon [faculty] expertise (the
curriculum) or those that most directly affect their lives
(faculty personnel issues). There is a collective sense of
progressive disempowerment among the faculty with
regard to these two issues. . . . The proposed changes in
faculty governance seek merely to reassert the faculty’s
right to oversee those matters that have historically
been under faculty purview.” The faculty approved the
proposal in April 2005. Thus, in addition to AdCil, the
college now had a faculty senate through which insti –
tutional governance could potentially be shared.
In September 2005, implementation of the first ele –
ment of the renewal plan’s curriculum began.
Enrollments for the entering class under the plan
steadily declined over the course of the 2005–06 aca –
demic year, however, falling from a high of sixty-three
students in the fall to thirty students by the end of the
spring term. An October 2005 university announcement
inviting applications for the chancellor’s position con –
firmed that enrollments had declined because the cur –
riculum was instituted before it was complete: “since
only the first year of the [Renewal] Plan had been pre –
pared and many materials were not available for the
full cycle of 2004–05 admissions recruiting, the enter –
ing class in the fall 2005 is very small.” 11
The Association’s Statem ent on Governm ent and its
derivative The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and
Salary M atters emphasize the need for accessibility of
important financial information to those groups with a
legitimate interest in it and the participation by each
group appropriate to the particular expertise of each.
Such a radical change in the curriculum as had been
undertaken at Antioch College was risky, to put it mild –
ly. The rationale for making a dramatic change in the
curriculum was subsequently characterized in terms of
its purported value to the implementation of a capital
campaign, to the reduction in the high faculty-to-stu –
dent ratio, and to the salvation of the college.
Fundamentally, it appears to the investigating commit –
tee, the impetus for the new curriculum was financial.
One member of the commission recalled that midway
through that body’s work the university administration
decided that incremental change would not be suffi –
cient to address the financial problems of the college.
Rather, dramatic change was needed. The investigating
committee finds that the Antioch College faculty, far
from having a primary role in the development of the
new curriculum as called for under the Statem ent on
Governm ent , was charged primarily with implement –
ing a new focus for undergraduate education being
imposed on the college by the board. The committee
finds further that the board acted to have the faculty
implement a new curriculum without having consulted
with the faculty regarding the reasons why it thought a
new focus was needed and without including the facul –
ty in considering possible alternative approaches to the
college’s financial problems. It is just at these
11 . Chancellor Murdock reports, “With the fundamental
changes in the delivery of the academic program and the
emphasis on a successful capital campaign to fund cam –
pus improvements, it was the hope of the Renewal
Commission and the Board that the College could be
turned around and enrollments would gradually increase.
While the Renewal Plan may have been successful in the
long run in attracting and retaining students, it was not
successful in the short term. Time was of the essence. The
transition from the College’s traditional academic pro-
gram to the bold ELC [Experiential Learning Communities]
concept was difficult to market and may have contributed
to an acceleration of student attrition. Likewise, neither the
annual development campaign nor the capital campaign
was as successful as hoped.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
moments, when dramatic steps that could change the
character of the institution are seen as necessary, that
full and open discussion is essential. The faculty would
have to see the risky decision through, and its close
involvement should have been considered crucial, not
only in understanding the financial situation but also
in planning for possible solutions. 12
B. F A CU LTY IN VO LVEM EN T IN TH E D ECISIO N S TO D ECLA RE
FIN A N CIA L EXIG EN CY A N D SU SPEN D CO LLEG E O PERA TIO N S
The widely accepted standards of academic governance
articulated in the Statem ent on Governm ent of
Colleges and U niversities , which rest on the premise
of an “inescapable interdependence among governing
board, administration, faculty,” and others, call for
“adequate communication among these components,
and full opportunity for appropriate joint planning
and effort.” With regard to the internal operations of
the institution, the document further provides that
“[e]ffective planning demands that the broadest possi –
ble exchange of information and opinion should be
the rule for communication among the components
of a college” and that the faculty should be fully
informed on all budgetary matters. The Association’s
derivative The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and
Salary M atters states,
At institutions experiencing major threats to
their continued financial support, the faculty
should be informed as early and as specifically
as possible of significant impending financial
difficulties. The faculty . . . should participate at
the department, college or professional school,
and institution-wide levels in key decisions as to
the future of the institution and of specific aca –
demic programs within the institution. . . . The
faculty should play a fundamental role in any
52
decision that would change the basic character
and purpose of the institution, including trans –
formation of the institution, affiliation of part of
the existing operation with another institution,
or merger, with the resulting abandonment or
curtailment of duplicate programs.
When the Antioch University trustees resolved on
June 7, 2007, to declare financial exigency and then
on June 9 to suspend Antioch College operations, they
took actions of far-reaching consequences, not only for
the whole Antioch community, and particularly for its
faculty members, staff, and students, but also for the
national academic community, many of whose mem –
bers saw in the college’s historic commitment to pro –
gressive education and social justice an example of
liberal education at its best. Representatives of the fac –
ulty at the college immediately charged that the board
had taken these critical actions without advance
notice or consultation with them and in contradiction
of previous board assurances that the college would
remain open for five years following the implementa –
tion of a new board-mandated curriculum initiated in
fall 2005. 13 Subsequently, former administrators and
prominent alumni, including potential significant
donors among the latter, also alleged a lack of con-
sultation, regarding both the college’s precarious
financial condition prior to the June 7 declaration of
financial exigency and the process by which university
administrators and board members had reached the
decision. Thus the key issue of whether the college
faculty was afforded an opportunity to take part in the
decision-making process was raised from the very
beginning and became the basis around which vocal
opposition to the planned suspension coalesced among
members of the college faculty and staff, students,
and alumni in the days immediately after the
announcements.
12 . According to Chancellor Murdock, “Looking at the
actions taken by the board of trustees over the last two
decades in dealing with the declining financial health of
the College, it is unfathomable that anyone associated
with the College would not be aware that there was a
financial emergency.” She further states, “AdCil and the
faculty were vividly aware throughout the entire decade of
the college’s financial woes; however, they never came up
with any alternative approaches.”
According to the AdCil minutes of November 7, 2005,
however, “[Dean of faculty] Andrzej [Bloch] stated that
this year no adjustment of the current budget was needed
because there was not a budget crisis.”
13 . According to Chancellor Murdock, at the November
2006 board meeting, the board was “very concerned about
the short-term continuation of the College and appointed
a task force of trustees to work with the Chancellor and
CFO to examine alternatives, options, and proposed solu –
tions to the College deficits.” The findings of the task force
were discussed at the February 2007 board meeting. In
March, the board hired a legal firm with expertise in bank –
ruptcy and turn-around efforts. In May 2007, Gateway
Consultants Group was hired “to review the financial
analyses and the sustainability models developed by the
University CFO.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
53
Following the institution of the new curriculum,
university officials turned their attention in 2007 to the
state of the university’s governance structure. In
January 2007, the ULC met with consultant Richard T.
Ingram, president emeritus of the Association of
Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, to dis –
cuss the university’s governance structure. 14 According
to his revised May 2007 report, A Proposed Governing
Structure for Antioch U niversity , a draft of which he
had first submitted to the board in February of that
year, the goal of the meeting was “to facilitate a wide-
ranging discussion of Antioch University’s governance
(and related financial, academic, and management)
challenges and to recommend a structure befitting a
multi-campus, private university.” Two of the report’s
most salient recommendations were that “[t]here
should be an ‘Antioch University Yellow Springs,’ with
an undergraduate school (named Antioch College) and
a graduate school (named The McGregor School of
Graduate Studies). It [Antioch College] should have its
own Board of Trustees.” There is no record of the
Ingram report having been made available to the col –
lege faculty. The creation of a separate board, dedicated
only to the college, that would focus on the issues the
college faced (including improved facilities, raising
funds, and building back the trust and financial sup –
port of the alumni), had been raised repeatedly by the
college’s faculty and presidents and rejected by the
existing board. Not sharing the May 2007 report with
the faculty was a significant omission, according to
former president Devine, because the report’s recom –
mendations would have provided considerable support
to those faculty members already convinced that a sep –
arate board for the college would be a solution to the
college’s governance and financial problems. Shortly
after President Steven Lawry assumed office in January
2006, he was asked, but declined, to sign a legal docu –
ment prepared by the university counsel and approved
by the board’s executive committee stating that his
suggesting to anyone the idea of a separate board for
the college would be grounds for his dismissal.
In March 2007, another board-commissioned report
on the financial condition and continuing viability of
Antioch College, prepared by Gateway Group consult –
ants Thomas Chema and Lisa Thibodeau, former presi –
dent and chief financial officer, respectively, of Hiram
College, was presented to the trustees. The report sug –
gested three choices with regard to the college’s future.
The first option was “to attempt to turn-around”
Antioch College by instituting significant expense
reductions, among them “combining units of the uni –
versity, [which] could achieve significant savings,” and
reducing or eliminating the college’s contribution to
the faculty and staff retirement plan. The second choice
was to fold the college into Antioch McGregor, “which
appeared to be operating successfully, and has an exist –
ing administrative structure.” The third possibility was
“suspending the college’s operation at the conclusion
of academic year 2007–08.” The seven-page report fol –
lowed from the authors’ review of “several years’”
worth of university financial records and a discussion
with the university’s chief financial officer of “the ram –
ifications of the university’s financial situation.” It con –
cluded that the college was in a state of financial exi –
gency, that the “university system’s current cash-flow
forecast shows the system running negative by May
2009,” and that “management’s proposed suspension
of operations plan is more likely to be successful in
preserving the viability of the university as a whole and
providing an opportunity to reinvent the college than
other alternatives.” The report was not shared with the
faculty.
While discussions regarding the college’s financial
situation were being conducted at the university level
during early 2007 with little, if any, consultation with
the faculty, the college’s AdCil continued to meet regu –
larly during fall 2006 and winter 2007. Discussions of
budget data at these meetings, according to faculty
members who served on AdCil at the time, were unusu –
ally brief, with college administrators distributing
copies of the budget at the meetings for council mem –
bers’ immediate review and collecting those copies at
the end of the meeting. Detailed financial information
was no longer reaching the Antioch College faculty,
and financial reports (if they occurred at all) were lim –
ited to short presentations of numbers not subject to
alteration. Sometime beginning in March 2007, more –
over, most AdCil meetings were canceled, even as uni –
versity administrators and consultants were actively
considering the future of the college and of the univer –
sity as a whole. AdCil meeting minutes from fall and
winter 2006–07 were quite brief compared with those
from the previous academic year. One faculty leader,
who served on the senate steering committee and as the
senate’s first chair, reported to AAUP staff regarding
senate participation in the decision to suspend college
14 . The Association of Governing Boards had joined with
the American Association of University Professors and the
American Council on Education in formulating the 1966
Statem ent on Governm ent of Colleges and U niversities.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
operations that, “[w]hile I served on the Steering
Committee of the Faculty Senate, there was no consul –
tation of any kind regarding suspension of college
operations. In fact, there was no mention that the pos –
sibility was on the table.” Both AdCil and President
Lawry were focused on the latter’s plan to improve the
college’s financial situation: merging the college and
Antioch McGregor and advocating for a separate gov –
erning board for the college.
Prior to the board’s regularly scheduled June 2007
meeting, the trustees received a May 31 internally pre –
pared ULC plan setting forth the university administra –
tion’s position with regard to the financial sustainabil –
ity of Antioch College and proposing two “scenarios”
for its future status. “It is now apparent,” the report
began,
that the enrollment and finances of the College
are not sufficient for the College to sustain cur –
rent operations. The University management
team has reviewed the finances of the College
and has determined that the survival of the
College and perhaps even the University is
increasingly at risk due to the depletion of funds,
if the College remains open and operating at a
deficit. Cash-flow predictions indicate that
Antioch University will not be able to meet
monthly payroll obligations to faculty, staff, and
creditors sometime in late 2008 with a margin of
error of thirty days without suspending opera –
tions at Antioch College. . . . Therefore, it is the
recommendation of Antioch University manage –
ment that the College declare financial exigency
in June 2007 and operations be suspended on or
around June 30, 2008.
With regard to the two scenarios, the first detailed
plans for “permanent closure” of the college, and the
second proposed “to suspend operations of Antioch
College for a fixed period (three years) with a design
process in place to reopen it as a state-of-the-art, twen –
ty-first-century residential undergraduate program
within a comprehensive Antioch University Yellow
Springs campus and a dynamic multi-campus nation –
al university.” The board resolution to suspend the
college’s operation, which ultimately followed from its
June 7 meeting, called for the suspension of college
operations for no longer than four years, one year
longer than what was recommended in the May ULC
plan. The decision to close the college came less than
halfway into the five-year period the university admin –
istration and board had promised the Antioch College
faculty to realize the results of the administration- and 54
board-mandated new curriculum. The investigating
committee finds that the determination about the col –
lege’s state of financial exigency and the decision on
suspending operations were unquestionably reached
without faculty participation.
President Lawry acknowledged, in a letter to the fac –
ulty dated June 18, 2007, that the Faculty Personnel
Policies and Procedures of Antioch College mandated
consultation with AdCil to prepare a plan and
timetable for abating the financial exigency, and he
indicated his intent to meet that mandate. Neverthe-
less, consultation with the faculty once again did not
occur. By July 26, 2007, Chancellor Murdock had
received a letter of resignation from President Lawry
and named an interim replacement, Andrzej Bloch,
with, according to the AdCil minutes, “full executive
power as COO [chief operating officer] & CAO [chief
academic officer].” The minutes also indicate that the
chancellor had recognized that this change in college
leadership was made without consultation with AdCil
or any other governing body of the college, and she
cited “the Board’s announcement of suspension of
operations” as justification for circumventing the fac –
ulty’s role. The minutes further indicate that AdCil
members discussed the implications of circumventing
shared governance and questioned the chancellor
about the issue. The replies recorded lack any commit –
ment to reestablishing shared governance. Instead, the
chancellor stated to AdCil members, “I don’t know
how we will gain trust,” and “I wonder whether we can
ever work together again.” The minutes of this AdCil
meeting also have Chancellor Murdock reporting that,
at the time of the decision to suspend operations, “we
are looking at a March 2008 bankruptcy of the entire
university.” The declaration of financial exigency,
however, was limited to the college.
As events unfolded, Interim President Bloch did not
carry out the commitment expressed by his predeces –
sor. Instead of consulting with the faculty as mandated
to prepare a plan and timetable for abating the finan –
cial exigency, he issued letters to the faculty on
November 9, 2007, reiterating that the declaration of
financial exigency stood and that notices of termina –
tion remained in force and effect. Regulation 4c of the
Association’s Recom m ended Institutional
Regulations on Academ ic Freedom and Tenure
states that,
[i]f the administration issues notice to a partic –
ular faculty member of an intention to termi –
nate the appointment because of financial exi –
gency, the faculty member will have the right to
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
55
a full hearing before a faculty committee. The
hearing need not conform in all respects with a
proceeding conducted pursuant to Regulation 5
[dismissal for cause], but the essentials of an on-
the-record adjudicative hearing will be observed.
The issues in this hearing may include: (i) The
existence and extent of the condition of financial
exigency. The burden will rest on the adminis-
tration to prove the existence and extent of the
condition.
Since no hearings were held, Antioch College faculty
members were denied the opportunity to examine or
challenge the decisions to declare financial exigency
and to invoke the most drastic abatement approach by
ceasing operations of the college.
The issue of adequate consultation with the faculty
regarding the closing or sale of a major component of
a university or college should include consideration of
the precedents examined in a previous investigation,
addressed in a 1970 Association report, “College and
University Government: Long Island University,” which
is relevant to the present matter. 15 In that case, the
investigating committee questioned the intent of the
trustees to exercise unilaterally their legal right to dis –
pose of a university campus, the Brooklyn Center, the
institution’s original core, notwithstanding its
inevitably profound effect on the entire academic com –
munity. “It should be asked,” the report queried,
whether a majority of the Board of Trustees can
effectuate plans for educational buildings, and
the teaching and learning therein, without con –
sultation with the faculty: the body which pos –
sesses primary responsibility for the academic
program. Can these controlling Trustees, in fact,
sell one part of a university and use the resulting
dollars for the development of those parts which
remain, without hearing from the members of
the faculty? Can they rest on the position that the
Trustees are charged by law with these responsi –
bilities and rights and that they have within
themselves the competence to take such action?
This investigating committee concurs in the finding
of the Long Island University investigating committee
that “[t]hese questions must under accepted academic
standards be answered strongly in the negative.” The
spirit of the finding seems directly applicable to the
current investigation, perhaps even more so in the
Antioch case, where the entire college faculty has suf –
fered termination of appointment, than in the Long
Island University case where, had the trustees been
allowed to go through with the closing, the tenured
members of the faculty would have had the opportunity
to transfer to another LIU campus. 16 The committee
observes that in the case of a reopened Antioch College,
its administration should observe the spirit of the
AAUP’s Regulation 4c(6) on the reinstatement of facul –
ty members terminated for reasons of financial exi –
gency, lest the closure and reopening have the appear –
ance of simply seeking to eliminate tenure.
The closure of Antioch College raises broader issues
involving the responsibilities of trustees. The basic fidu –
ciary responsibility of trustees is commonly recognized,
but in the case of an organization created to oversee
the operation of an educational establishment, is it not
reasonable to expect the trustees to have responsibilities
beyond avoiding financial bankruptcy? It seems to the
investigating committee not at all unreasonable to
have expected the trustees to pursue the goal (the oper –
ation of Antioch College) for which the enterprise had
been established. The 1980 Antioch University Articles
of Incorporation state this purpose explicitly:
Article II: Purpose
The objects of the said corporation are to possess
and carry on at Yellow Springs, Greene County,
Ohio, and at such other places as the Board of
Trustees may determine, a College or educational
establishment where instruction in every branch
of useful learning may be given.
Because this statement of purpose predates the estab –
lishment of Antioch McGregor, it refers to possessing and
carrying on Antioch College as the primary purpose that
could be augmented, but not replaced, by carrying on
with other establishments. Unfortunately, the trustees
and the administration of Antioch University seem to
have lost sight of this purpose.
C. T H E D ECLA RA TIO N O F FIN A N CIA L EXIG EN CY A T A N TIO CH CO LLEG E
The 1940 Statem ent of Principles on Academ ic
Freedom and Tenure provides for the termination of
continuous faculty appointments under extraordinary
15 . Unlike the Long Island University case, Chancellor
Murdock points out, the sale of Antioch College was never
considered.
16 . The closing required approval by the council of the
city of New York. Confronted by strenuous protests from a
united Brooklyn Center academic community once the
community learned of the plan, the city council declined
to approve it.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
circumstances because of a demonstrably bona fide
condition of financial exigency. Regulation 4c(1) of
the Association’s derivative Recom m ended
Institutional Regulations defines financial exigency
as an “imminent financial crisis that threatens the
survival of the institution as a whole and that cannot
be alleviated by less drastic means” than the termina –
tion of continuing faculty appointments. The regula –
tion calls upon an institution to pursue “all feasible
alternatives” to terminating faculty appointments.
This provision raises two questions: (1) was there an
imminent financial crisis that affected the survival of
the institution as a whole? and (2) were there feasible
alternatives to terminating all faculty appointments
and closing the college, and if so did the university
administration consider them?
There can be little doubt that Antioch College’s
financial problems were in no small measure a prod –
uct of managerial decisions made without faculty con –
sultation, including a curricular experiment that was
connected to a decline in enrollment and a decision to
reduce financial support to the college from the uni –
versity. As explained earlier in this report, after the new
curriculum was implemented, enrollment at the col –
lege fell dramatically. The university administration
and the board of trustees asserted that the college had
survived in recent years only by receiving subsidies
from the five nonresidential campuses of Antioch
University. They claimed that the university could no
longer both “subsidize” the college and “remain com –
petitive in . . . local markets.” The support the college
received from the other units had been negotiated and
set, was relied upon by the college, and could not be
easily replaced.
In declaring financial exigency for the college, the
board of trustees asserted that the college’s crisis was
causing a crisis at the university, necessitating the sus –
pension of college operations. A member of the board
of trustees stated in an e-mail message to an AAUP
staff member that, although the issue of saving the
college versus saving the university was raised at the
executive committee meeting as a potential subject of
board discussion, Chancellor Murdock would not allow
the discussion to occur. In fact, the wording of the
Gateway report indicates that the administration had
expressed its desire at the outset to declare financial
exigency and close the college.
The investigating committee examined three meas –
ures of the university’s financial health, using data
from the university’s IRS 990 forms and the audited
financial statements from 2003 to 2008: the budget 56
surplus or deficit, the cash-flow position, and a com –
posite index developed by the Ohio State Board of
Regents based on ratios used to assess the creditworthi –
ness of an institution. Although none of these meas –
ures is indicative of a financially strong Antioch
University, the investigating committee finds that the
data examined do not support a conclusion that the
entire university was in “imminent financial crisis” or
that the university, at least for the immediate future,
could not have absorbed the college’s financial crisis.
Not only were alternatives to the declaration of finan –
cial exigency not explored, but, after the board did
decide to declare financial exigency at the college,
there was also no opportunity for the community to
consider alternatives to suspending operations at the
college. The investigating committee was able to iden –
tify a variety of suggestions that had been made before
the declaration of financial exigency by, for example,
the Gateway Commission and past presidents of the
college that appear not to have been explored. Among
these suggestions were salary and benefit concessions
from the college faculty and staff; a larger payout of
endowment income; an appeal to alumni prior to the
declaration of financial exigency; the sale of certain
assets, including the license of the college’s public
radio station; merging the college and Antioch
McGregor and creating a separate board of trustees for
the college, the absence of which was identified as a
deterrent to alumni giving; and streamlining the uni –
versity administration. The alumni, when they learned
of the college’s closing, proposed purchasing the col –
lege. As of the writing of this report, agreement has
been reached for the alumni to purchase and reopen
the college under its own governing board. Had the
alumni known earlier of the severity of the financial
crisis and, further, of the board’s plan to close the col –
lege, they might have been able to work with the board
to formulate a mutually acceptable resolution to the
crisis without resorting to suspension of operations.
It may well be that a series of years like the
2007–08 academic year, with the college remaining
open, would have ultimately led to the closing of the
entire university. There is little evidence, however, that
any alternatives to closing the college were given seri –
ous consideration.
D . D EN IA L O F EM ERITU S STA TU S
All members of the Antioch College faculty received
notice of termination of their appointments effective in
summer 2008. Faculty members who had worked for
the college for many years knew that this would be
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
57
their last academic position. On March 11, 2008,
Interim President Andrzej Bloch solicited requests for
emeritus status, summarizing the criteria in the faculty
personnel policies: the candidate “(1) has completed at
least ten (10) years of service to the College; (2) is at
least 60 years of age; and (3) has attained the rank of
associate or professor or equivalent.” At least two of the
professors who requested emeritus status were not
favorably recommended to the board by that body’s
joint academic affairs and finance committees, even
though both had fulfilled the criteria enumerated by
President Bloch. Each professor had been at Antioch
College for more than thirty years. One had served as
the college’s president; the other professor had in 2005
negotiated retirement commencing January 2009. In
the letter communicating the decision of the joint
committees, which had considered five candidates for
emeritus status, Chancellor Murdock stated that “the
primary consideration for award of Emeritus is out –
standing contribution to the institution in the areas of
academic achievement/scholarship, teaching, and
service. . . . Those candidates who were not recom –
mended to the board were recognized as having
excelled in a sustained way in the areas of service and
teaching; however, there was no evidence of scholarly
activity in many years, or the overall results of scholar –
ly work were far below expectations set by the policy for
the award of the title Professor Emeritus. Since scholar –
ly activity is a prime consideration for the award of the
honor of Emeritus, your name was not recommended
by the joint committees to the Board.”
The two professors denied emeritus status, with
whom the investigating committee spoke, were not
aware of the criteria stated by Chancellor Murdock.
They were surprised to learn that the finance commit –
tee of the board was involved in the decision, since vir –
tually no financial obligations were involved in the
decision to confer emeritus status and historically the
finance committee had not been involved. The profes –
sors were never asked to provide supporting material
regarding their scholarship or professional activity and,
therefore, questioned the evidence on which the deci –
sions were made. Finally, while the status of the
Antioch College Faculty Personnel Policy in relation to
a draft of a university policy on emeritus status is not
clear to the investigating committee, even the February
2, 2007, draft of the university policy does not specify
scholarly activity as the “primary consideration.” If a
new policy succeeded the old policy, no faculty member
with whom the investigating committee spoke was
aware of any distributed announcements of changes in
criteria developed by the board. In fact, there seems as
late as June 2008 to have been some confusion at the
board level about criteria as evidenced by a description
of the academic affairs committee meeting where fac –
ulty members’ requests for emeritus status had been
discussed.
The investigating committee sees the criteria out –
lined by President Bloch as reflecting those criteria
normally used by boards to reward emeritus status to
professors whose scholarship, teaching, and service had
already been evaluated as they moved through the ranks
over their years at an institution. These evaluations are
made primarily by those most capable of doing so: the
faculty. Members of the board are not the appropriate
persons to assess the scholarship of faculty members. If
the university board did decide to use achievement in
scholarship as a criterion for emeritus status, it should
have developed with the faculty a procedure by which
scholarship would be evaluated by those qualified to do
so. The investigating committee finds that the two fac –
ulty members, both full professors with more than
three decades of service to Antioch College, were denied
emeritus status based on criteria previously unknown
to them and applied without supporting evidence by
persons, namely members of the board, not in an
appropriate position to make such judgments.
E. T H E FU TU RE O F A N TIO CH U N IVERSITY A N D A N TIO CH CO LLEG E
Questions of faculty governance and academic due
process will undoubtedly remain of paramount impor –
tance to Antioch College’s former faculty and will be
critical for the future of Antioch University as a whole
and for Antioch College, if, as now planned, it reopens
as an institution independent of Antioch University. 17
With Antioch College the only part of the university in
which a tenure system was in place, issues of faculty
17 . On June 30, 2009, the governing boards of Antioch
University and of the Antioch College Continuation
Corporation (an organization founded and funded by col –
lege alumni, members of the faculty and staff, and stu –
dents) announced an agreement to establish a new
Antioch College in Yellow Springs, legally separate from
Antioch University and separately accredited, with its own
governing board and administration. In addition to the
Antioch name, the two institutions “will share common
history and a continuing commitment to innovation in
higher education.” The announcement anticipates the col –
lege’s reopening, with a very small entering class, for the
2011–12 academic year.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
governance will continue to be a concern for the
remainder of the university as well as a concern for a
reopened college.
Currently Antioch University is more like a universi –
ty system than a single college or university. Each
campus sets its own tuition, with approval from the
university’s board of trustees, and its own salary scale
and some fringe benefits, excluding retirement plans
and health-care coverage common to all. Each cam –
pus currently has its own faculty handbook, although,
as a result presumably of the recommendations of the
Blue Book Commission, efforts appear to be under way
to standardize faculty policies across the university. 18
Faculty appointments are made and evaluations are
conducted through separate sets of procedures devel –
oped at each campus, and degrees, programs, and cur –
ricula are also determined on a campus-by-campus
basis. Similarly, each campus appears to formulate its
own admissions standards, online and team-taught
courses, and grading systems. There is very little con –
tact between and among faculty members at the differ –
ent campuses. With the decision by the Antioch
University board to move to amend its bylaws effective
February 2009 in order to create a new board of gover –
nors overseeing the entire university and new boards of
trustees for each campus, the movement toward the
university’s becoming in fact a university system has
accelerated.
The new campus boards will become the operating
boards of each unit and will be expected to expand
and encourage philanthropic support for each unit; to
review and approve campus budgets, new programs,
and new construction; to select the campus presidents;
to review the campus president’s performance; and
actively to involve local and regional citizens who are
committed to the values and traditions of a “true
Antiochan education and philosophy.” Simply put, the
units will be functioning largely as independent insti –
tutions that are part of a university system, with the
new board of governors acting as a planning and goal-
setting body that will maintain ultimate control over
the decisions of the campus boards and ownership of
58
the university’s assets. A sound structure of faculty
governance at each of the individual campuses, and at
the university level when decisions of concern to the
entire faculty are made, will be essential for the quality
of higher learning in the system’s future.
The 1994 AAUP statement On the Relationship of
Faculty Governance to Academ ic Freedom empha –
sizes that “a sound system of institutional governance
is a necessary condition for the protection of faculty
rights and thereby for the most productive exercise of
essential faculty freedoms. Correspondingly, the pro –
tection of the academic freedom of faculty members in
addressing issues of institutional governance is a pre –
requisite for the practice of governance unhampered
by fear of retribution.” Similarly, the 1940 Statem ent
of Principles on Academ ic Freedom and Tenure ,
which the AAUP jointly authored with the Association
of American Colleges (now the Association of
American Colleges and Universities), emphasizes the
fundamental importance of a tenure system for the
protection of academic freedom in teaching and
research and for the provision of “a sufficient degree
of economic security to make the academic profession
attractive to men and women of ability.” The Statem ent
on Governm ent of Colleges and U niversities calls for
the faculty, because it has primary responsibility for
the teaching and research done at an institution, to
have the key role in decision making in matters deal –
ing with the academic program.
Clearly the current policies at the functioning units
of Antioch University do not conform with the princi –
ples espoused in the above documents. Faculty mem –
bers are not appointed under a system of indefinite
tenure following a successful probationary period.
Until the recent report of the Blue Book Commission,
almost all full-time faculty members worked under
one- or two-year appointments, renewable at the
administration’s discretion. The report urges the
trustees to provide for three-year or longer term
appointments. The investigating committee’s inter –
views with faculty members from two of the campuses
(Seattle and McGregor) suggest that their short-term
appointments have an adverse effect on the expression
of loyal opposition. According to these individuals,
faculty members have felt they had to respond in a
“hush-hush” manner to avoid possible negative
repercussions.
Indeed, efforts to establish an AAUP chapter at
Antioch McGregor collapsed when a key leader of the
chapter being formed was peremptorily dismissed. The
investigating committee cannot say whether this
18 . “Report and Recommendation from the Blue Book
Commission” (February 2008). This commission was cre –
ated by the university, and its members included university
administrators and a core faculty member from each of
the university’s units. Its charge was to analyze university-
wide academic policies, employee contracts, and faculty
evaluations.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
5 9
action was retribution for his AAUP activities. Several
faculty members interviewed from Antioch Seattle also
report that during Chancellor Murdock’s presidency of
the Antioch Seattle campus, they perceived the academ –
ic environment as oppressive and hostile to faculty
activists, especially those colleagues who were involved
in a no-confidence vote against her.
The Antioch University administration has demon –
strated a strong inclination toward secrecy. At times,
the emphasis on secrecy effectively created gag orders
in which faculty members were prohibited from speak –
ing to the press on particular issues (such as a major
capital project for Antioch McGregor) without specific
permission from the administration and prohibited in
general from communicating with trustees. Cases were
reported in which a student newsletter was removed
from campus mailboxes because of criticism of the
McGregor building project (which also led to attempted
censorship of the student graduation speaker), and the
mere possibility of a faculty newsletter’s reaching
Antioch trustees was sufficient to prompt threats of dis –
ciplinary action against faculty members by the
administration at Antioch Seattle. The emphasis on
secrecy and top-down command and control of com –
munication, it seems fair to say, has not been con –
ducive to freedom of expression on Antioch campuses.
Faculty government at the campus level varies from
campus to campus, with most campuses having faculty
councils or assemblies. The Blue Book Commission
survey of core faculty members at all of the campuses,
which had a response rate of almost two-thirds, con –
cluded that while a high percentage of faculty mem –
bers were satisfied with the (then) current state of
shared governance at their department level, only a
small percentage (28 percent) agreed or strongly
agreed with the statement that they were satisfied with
campuswide governance, and the vast majority were
dissatisfied with governance at the university level. The
investigating committee’s interviews with faculty mem –
bers from the two campuses suggest that, absent
tenure, while faculty members have some influence on
academic matters, the lack of protection that tenure
would afford them makes them unwilling to stand up
to administration directives.
The Blue Book Commission report was written in the
midst of a period when Antioch University was grap –
pling with the question, “What is Antioch University
without Antioch College?” The commission’s recom –
mendations were proposed “as initial steps within the
context and vision of creating and nurturing an
Antioch University with a new compact between faculty
and the institution; a robust academic environment
built on our best traditions; a strong collaborative and
supportive academic integrative center; security and
growth for faculty and improved faculty work-life; and
high expectations for engagement in scholarship, stu –
dent learning, service, and institutional citizenship.”
Without developing a tenure system and a strong sys –
tem of shared governance in which faculty members
have the freedom to express their viewpoints without
fear of repercussion, what is envisioned is highly
unlikely to be achieved.
What about the new Antioch College? The committee
is concerned about the role that the Antioch faculty
members who were released when operations were sus –
pended will play in the development of the academic
program at a reopened Antioch College and in teaching
there when operations resume. The investigating com –
mittee trusts that the Antioch College Continuation
Corporation will appreciate the fundamental impor –
tance of the tenure system and will offer reinstatement
to those whose appointments were terminated with the
closing, restoring their tenure rights. Moreover, the
committee trusts that the corporation will approve a
system of shared governance when the college reopens,
ensuring primary faculty responsibility for academic
matters as called for in the Statem ent on Governm ent
of Colleges and U niversities.
VI. Conclusions
The Statem ent on Governm ent of Colleges and
U niversities , section 2b, paragraph 2, states, “When an
educational goal has been established, it becomes the
responsibility primarily of the faculty to determine the
appropriate curriculum and procedures of student
instruction.” The Antioch University administration
usurped the faculty’s responsibility for the Antioch
College curriculum by mandating the adoption of a
renewal plan that called for a completely new curricu –
lum that the faculty neither initiated nor approved.
The ensuing events are an object lesson in the dangers
of usurping the faculty’s role; the administration- and
board-mandated curriculum had a devastating effect
on enrollment, student retention, and the general state
of Antioch College. The intrusions of the administra –
tion and governing board into areas of primary faculty
responsibility culminated in the decision to declare
financial exigency for Antioch College and suspend its
operations, terminating the employment of almost the
entire faculty and staff, without meaningful prior con –
sultation with a faculty whose normal governance
responsibilities in the area were ignored. Members of the
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
60
Antioch College faculty, despite the difficult administra –
tive conditions under which they served the institution,
went on record with persistent analyses and warnings
that, had they been heeded, might have averted the
fiscal crisis.
The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and Salary
M atters , moreover, provides that “the faculty is expected
. . . in its primary responsibility for the educational
function of the institution, to participate also in broad –
er budgetary matters primarily as these impinge on
that function.”
The investigating committee, believing that the
impetus for the new curriculum was primarily finan –
cial, finds that the administration and the board pro –
ceeded with its implementation without having revealed
to the faculty the reasons for their decision to mandate
a new curriculum and without having included the
faculty in considering alternative solutions for the col –
lege’s financial problems.
The Role of the Faculty in Budgetary and Salary
M atters further states:
At institutions experiencing major threats to their
continued financial support, the faculty should
be informed as early and as specifically as possi –
ble of significant impending financial difficul –
ties. The faculty . . . should participate at the
department, college or professional school, and
institution-wide levels in key decisions as to the
future of the institution and of specific academic
programs within the institution. . . . The faculty
should play a fundamental role in any decision
that would change the basic character and pur –
pose of the institution, including transformation
of the institution, affiliation of part of the exist –
ing operation with another institution, or merger,
with the resulting abandonment or curtailment
of duplicate programs.
The committee finds a lack of consultation with the
faculty regarding both the college’s financial condition
prior to the June 7, 2007, declaration of financial exi –
gency and the process by which university administra –
tors and board members had reached that decision. The
determinations about the college’s state of financial
exigency and the decision to suspend operations were
unquestionably reached without faculty participation.
While the 1940 Statem ent of Principles provides for
the termination of a continuous faculty appointment
under extraordinary circumstances because of a
demonstrably bona fide condition of financial exi –
gency, Regulation 4c(1) of the Association’s derivative
Recom m ended Institutional Regulations defines
financial exigency as an “imminent financial crisis
that threatens the survival of the institution as a whole
and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means”
and calls upon an institution to pursue “all feasible
alternatives” to terminating faculty appointments. The
investigating committee finds that the Antioch
University administration violated these essential stan –
dards for continuing faculty appointments by issuing a
declaration of financial exigency without having con –
sidered feasible alternatives.
Regulation 4c(2) of the Recom m ended Institutional
Regulations states that “if the administration issues
notice to a particular faculty member of an intention to
terminate the appointment because of financial exigency ,
the faculty member will have the right to a full hearing
before a faculty committee.” Since no hearings were held,
Antioch College faculty members were denied the right
to examine or challenge the decisions both to declare
financial exigency and to invoke the most drastic abate –
ment approach by ceasing the operations of the college.
* * *
In the remainder of this section of its report, the inves –
tigating committee sets forth a number of violations of
cited provisions of the Statem ent on Governm ent
resulting from actions taken by the Antioch University
administration and board of trustees.
Section 2c, paragraph 2 states, “Effective planning
demands that the broadest possible exchange of infor –
mation and opinion should be the rule for communi –
cation among the components of a college or universi –
ty. The channels of communication should be estab –
lished and maintained by joint endeavor.” The Antioch
administration and board violated this standard by
moving budgetary oversight from Antioch College to
the Antioch University administration without provid –
ing a direct mechanism for the exchange of informa –
tion between the Antioch College faculty and Antioch
University administrators and trustees. Antioch College
faculty members were discouraged and even prohibited
from communicating directly with Antioch’s board of
trustees. Even the president of Antioch College was
eventually barred from communicating with board
members except through the university chancellor.
According to section 2c, paragraph 4 of the Statem ent
on Governm ent ,
The allocation of resources among competing
demands is central in the formal responsibility of
the governing board, in the administrative
authority of the president, and in the educational
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
61
function of the faculty. Each component should
therefore have a voice in the determination of
short- and long-range priorities, and each should
receive appropriate analyses of past budgetary
experience, reports on current budgets and
expenditures, and short- and long-range budget –
ary projections.
The Antioch University administration systematically
reduced the flow of budgetary information to the
Antioch College faculty and its governance bodies,
including the Administrative Council. The Antioch
University administration eliminated the position of
chief financial officer at Antioch College, decreased the
amount of financial information to basic levels, and
eliminated any real input into the budget from the
Antioch College faculty.
Section 2c, paragraph 5 of the Statem ent on
Governm ent provides that
Joint effort of a most critical kind must be taken
when an institution chooses a new president. The
selection of a chief administrative officer should
follow upon a cooperative search by the govern –
ing board and the faculty, taking into considera –
tion the opinions of others who are appropriately
interested. The president should be equally quali –
fied to serve both as the executive officer of the
governing board and as the chief academic offi –
cer of the institution and the faculty. The presi –
dent’s dual role requires an ability to interpret to
board and faculty the educational views and con –
cepts of institutional government of the other.
The president should have the confidence of the
board and the faculty.
The Antioch University administration named new
presidents for Antioch College without meaningful con –
sultation with the Antioch College faculty.
According to section 2d, paragraph 3 of the
Statem ent on Governm ent , “The right of a board
member, an administrative officer, a faculty member,
or a student to speak on general educational questions
or about the administration and operations of the indi –
vidual’s own institution is a part of that person’s right
as a citizen and should not be abridged by the institu –
tion.” The Antioch University administration repeatedly
acted to limit the speaking rights of faculty members.
Direct faculty communication with trustees was prohib –
ited, and, as reported by faculty members interviewed,
the mere possibility of a faculty newsletter reaching a
trustee was sufficient to prompt threats of disciplinary
action. Antioch McGregor faculty members were pro –
hibited from speaking to the press regarding a major
capital construction project without specific permission
from the Antioch McGregor administration.
Section 3, paragraph 1 of the Statem ent on
Governm ent provides that “[t]he governing board has
a special obligation to ensure that the history of the
college or university shall serve as a prelude and inspi –
ration to the future.” It hardly needs saying that the
Antioch University board of trustees fell vastly short of
meeting this special obligation.
According to section 3, footnote 3 of the Statem ent
on Governm ent ,
Traditionally, governing boards developed within
the context of single-campus institutions. In
more recent times, governing and coordinating
boards have increasingly tended to develop at the
multi-campus regional, systemwide, or statewide
levels. As influential components of the academic
community, these supra-campus bodies bear par –
ticular responsibility for protecting the autonomy
of individual campuses or institutions under their
jurisdiction and for implementing policies of
shared responsibility. The American Association
of University Professors regards the objectives and
practices recommended in the Statem ent on
Governm ent as constituting equally appropriate
guidelines for such supra-campus bodies, and
looks toward continued development of practices
that will facilitate application of such guidelines
in this new context.
Not only did the Antioch University administration and
board of trustees fail to protect the autonomy of Antioch
College. They also significantly undermined it by ap-
proving a shift of administrative functions from Antioch
College to the university administration without ensur –
ing means for communication or sharing of governance.
Section 4, paragraph 4 states that
[i]t is the duty of the president to see to it that the
standards and procedures in operational use with –
in the college or university conform to the policy
established by the governing board and to the
standards of sound academic practice. It is also
incumbent on the president to ensure that faculty
views, including dissenting views, are presented to
the board in those areas and on those issues where
responsibilities are shared. Similarly, the faculty
should be informed of the views of the board and
the administration on like issues.
The chancellor, who is the chief administrative officer
of Antioch University, failed to execute (or effectively
delegate) these duties. Standards of sound academic
governance, such as primary faculty responsibility for
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
62
the curriculum, meaningful faculty involvement in
decisions on capital projects and resource allocation,
and communication between faculty members and
trustees all suffered at the hands of the university
administration. Voices of faculty dissent were stifled by
communication prohibitions.
According to section 5, paragraph 6,
Agencies for faculty participation in the govern –
ment of the college or university should be estab –
lished at each level where faculty responsibility is
present. An agency should exist for the presenta –
tion of the views of the whole faculty. The structure
and procedures for faculty participation should be
designed, approved, and established by joint action
of the components of the institution. Faculty rep –
resentatives should be selected by the faculty
according to procedures determined by the faculty.
The Antioch University administration violated this
basic principle of governance by not providing agencies
for faculty participation in governance at the university
level. The removal of administrative and budgetary
control from Antioch College to the university adminis –
tration deprived the faculty at Antioch College (and
other Antioch campuses) of the opportunity to partici –
pate significantly in budgetary decisions. Moreover, the
decision to cease operations of Antioch College raised
issues of possible conflict with the institution’s articles
of incorporation, and reaching the decision without
significant faculty consultation was clearly inimical to
fundamental principles of academic governance.
VII. Final O bservations
Antioch College was once a very special place with a
unique mission and a clear niche among liberal arts
colleges. Small residential liberal arts colleges can be
costly to run and, by their nature, filled with faculty
members and students who question decisions and who
wish to take an active part in decision-making process –
es. These fundamentals form the core of a liberal arts
education and make the best of these institutions
dynamic and creative, and often a challenge to admin –
ister. Over decades, as the Antioch University adminis –
tration turned its attention to other units—units with –
out significant physical plants to maintain, without
residential students, without tenured faculty members,
and without strong systems of faculty governance—
Antioch College gradually became the campus with the
problems. In the absence of a board or university
administration with a strong commitment to the cen –
trality of Antioch College among the other university
units, to the unique mission of this small residential
liberal arts college, and to an enduring system of shared
governance, these factors inevitably led to the eventual
closing of the college.
Just as violations of the AAUP principles enumerated
in this report reveal a dysfunctional governance system
at the college, as well as at the university, applicable
AAUP-supported principles also provide a blueprint for
shared governance designed to foster constructive
engagement among members of the university com –
munity. Had each group—governing board, admin-
istrators, faculty members, and other concerned
people—worked together, respected each other’s com –
petencies, and at the same time, not lost sight of the
college’s mission, Antioch University might have devel –
oped a sound renewal plan for the college’s future.
While respect for the principles of shared governance
may not have been sufficient to ensure the life of
Antioch College, without an active system of shared
governance, the college had little chance of surviving
as a healthy Antioch University institution. 19 I
DIANE C. ZANNONI (Economics)
Trinity College (Conn.), chair
RONALD G. EHRENBERG (Industrial and Labor
Relations and Economics)
Cornell University
RUDY H. FICHTENBAUM (Economics)
Wright State University
DUANE STORTI (Mechanical Engineering)
University of Washington
Investigating Com m ittee
19 . Chancellor Murdock commented on the foregoing
conclusion as follows: “As with ‘Monday morning quarter –
backing,’ second-guessing the actions of those in leader –
ship roles is always tempting, and hindsight is done at
leisure. In the real world of managing institutions of highe r
education, in real time, some decisions are difficult to say
the least and they bring a variety of consequences which
have [to] be weighed by those leaders. It is not surprising
that some past trustees knew as little as they did about the
non-residential campuses since the Board’s agenda was
always highly concentrated on college concerns and the
grave issues facing that campus. That some college faculty
were so ill-informed speaks to poor communication from
the college leadership and lack of involvement of faculty
within AdCil.”
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
63
The Committee on College and University Governance
has by vote authorized publication of this report in
Academ e: Bulletin of the AAU P.
Chair: LARRY G. GERBER (History), Auburn University
Members: LENORE A. BEAKY (English), LaGuardia
Community College, City University of New York;
MARSHALL S. CLOUGH (History), University of
Northern Colorado; NEIL W. HAMILTON (Law),
University of St. Thomas; IRENE T. MULVEY
(Mathematics), Fairfield University; PATRICIA A.
SIMPSON (Human Resources and Industrial
Relations), Loyola University Chicago; CARY R.
NELSON * (English), University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, ex officio; GARY D. RHOADES (Higher
Education), AAUP Washington Office, ex officio; MARY
A. BURGAN (English), Washington, D.C., consultant;
LAWRENCE S. POSTON (English), University of Illinois
at Chicago, consultant; DAVID T. WITT (Family and
Consumer Services), University of Akron, liaison from
Collective Bargaining Congress; CATHERINE WARREN
(English), North Carolina State University, liaison from
Assembly of State Conferences
*Did not participate in the deliberation or the vote.
www.AAuP.org 2010 Bulletin
