NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
PRESIDENTIAL WOES
The effects of UO president Gottfredson’s swift exit
hen the abruptly former UO
president Michael Gottfredson
first took office in 2012, even
the university’s resident
muckraking blogger, economics
prof Bill Harbaugh of UO Matters, was hard-
pressed to dig up dirt on the unassuming
administrator. Barely two years later on Aug.
6, Gottfredson announced he was stepping
down immediately, and the next day the UO’s
new independent governing board voted to
give the man, who was giving up the
presidency as well as a tenured professorship,
a nearly $1 million buyout.
Gottfredson’s resignation in the wake of the
UO’s struggle to deal with allegations of a
sexual assault on a student, and the swift $940,000 severance
he received, has led many to wonder if Gottfredson chose to
step down or was forced to, and what the role of faculty
governance will be as the school searches for yet another
leader. The UO’s quest for leadership also demands an
answer to the question of whether it is an academic
institution or a sports conglomerate.
Gottfredson was following in the footsteps of the
independent-minded and controversial Richard Lariviere,
who helmed the UO for less than three years before being
fired by the Oregon State Board of Higher Education.
While Lariviere was easily spotted around campus in his
signature hat, Gottfredson was more of a “where’s Waldo?”
The only prior scandal Harbaugh was able to unearth
was when famed philosopher Jacques Derrida took
Gottfredson and other UC-Irvine administrators to task
for firing his friend, vampire expert Dragan Kujundzić,
who had been accused of sexual harassment.
Now, as Gottfredson steps down with a hefty payout,
Harbaugh points out that this is not the first time an
administrator recommended by former interim UO
president Bob Berdahl has left linked to a possibly
expensive buyout. Former University of Hawaii president
M.R.C. Greenwood offered to retire in exchange for $2
million after a controversial period of leadership at that
school. She later rescinded the demand, according to
media reports that criticized her for letting the school pay
U O M E D I A R E L AT I O N S
W
$200,000 for a scam Stevie Wonder concert.
Harbaugh tells EW that in Gottfredson’s case, “for a
modest institution like UO, and for a president who served
two very unsuccessful years, $940K is a lot of money.” He
says that the chair of the UO’s Board of Trustees, Chuck
Lillis, “noted it would come from UO Foundation
unrestricted funds.”
According to the most recent data Harbaugh could
find, culled from the fiscal year ending in 2013, “it had
the foundation spending $16 million on scholarships, of
which about $9 million is for athletes. So Gottfredson got
about 10 percent of what the foundation spends on
academic scholarships in one year.”
Media reports speculating that Gottfredson was forced
to step down cite the size of the buyout, the speed of the
departure and the “classic” excuse that he wants to spend
more time with family, as well as the fact Gottfredson
doesn’t have another job lined up. When neither Athletic
Director Rob Mullens or basketball coach Dana Altman
were fired after the sexual assault scandal involving three
basketball players, some began to speculate that non-
sports-oriented Gottfredson would take the fall.
Provost Scott Coltrane is serving as interim UO
president.
For emeritus biology professor Franklin Stahl, a long-
time proponent of faculty governance, the furor swirling
around the UO presidency is just as much about how the
next leader will be hired as it is about how the last one left.
Stahl, who was recruited by the UO in 1959, says one
attraction the school held was its strong system of shared
governance. When Stahl, who retired in 2005, started, the
entire faculty met on Wednesday afternoons for meetings
of the Faculty Assembly (the governing body of the
statutory faculty). When it comes to the UO’s shared
governance, these days the statutory faculty is represented
by the Faculty Senate, though Stahl says the Assembly
can convene and vote, and its vote supercedes that of the
Senate.
The search process that resulted in Gottfredson’s
hiring was secretive, with no candidates revealed except
Gottfredson as the top choice. According to Harbaugh’s
UO Matters, the Oregon University System board held a
secret review of Gottfredson in spring 2013, “and renewed
his contract through July 2016, without input from the
UO faculty (excepting apparently, a few token insiders).”
Stahl says the UO’s Constitution, which Lariviere
signed in 2011, is a strong one that clearly calls for shared
faculty governance. He and his partner Jette Foss say they
will ask the UO Senate to have the search committee send
a copy of the UO’s Constitution to each of the presidential
candidates, and ask them what they think of leading a
school with strong faculty involvement in its governance.
Stahl says that Dave Frohnmayer, the president who
preceded Lariviere, strongly resisted faculty governance.
Frohnmayer previously served as Oregon attorney general
and, after leaving the UO, joined the law firm Harrang
Long Gary Rudnick in 2009.
Critics of the UO’s focus on sports over academics
point to Frohnmayer’s tenure as president as the turning
point from a scholarly mission to a “Go Ducks!” focus.
According to an Aug. 8 article in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, “his leadership spurred harsh criticism from
some faculty members who blamed him for what they
saw as a decline in the university’s academic quality.”
Harbaugh says he wonders how much the UO might
have paid Harrang Long to negotiate Gottfredson’s
settlement. He alleges, “the Foundation probably paid
Sharon Rudnick’s fee, to keep it out of the public record.”
Harbaugh has documented the thousands the UO paid to
Harrang Long to bargain with the graduate teaching
fellows union this summer on UO Matters.
Stahl says, “If we get the right president we have a
bright future.” He thinks Oregon can still earn back the
tenuous position many predict it is about to lose in the
Association of American Universities, an elite group of
top research institutions. “I like a good football game,” he
says. “But I don’t like football to run the university.” ■
with over
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