Ripped from the Orban Playbook: Attacking Higher Ed

The Disturbing Case Study at Youngstown State

This week, the Kettering Foundation posted an article I wrote about how the year 2023 appears through a broader democracy lens. As I wrote, “2023 turned out to be a surprisingly important year that included significant progress.” You can read why I say so HERE.

But amid that progress, I also highlighted the troubling developments of 2023 that should concern us. Ones we need to combat.

One in particular is a newly energized effort to attack the independence of higher education. This is not often viewed as a topic of democracy, per se, but it needs to be. I explain why in the Kettering article:

“[A] core element of a healthy democracy is a system of higher education that stands largely independent from the day’s politics. The erosion of academic independence is a vital step in the path away from democracy.

We can look to Hungary for a preview of how an ailing democracy plays out. As part of his ever-tighter grip on power, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has asserted control over what had been a previously robust and independent higher education infrastructure. These measures included upending the structures of leadership of public universities and replacing academic leaders with party and financial cronies. Human Rights Watch warned “these autocratic and illiberal moves have become trademarks of the Orban government.”

In 2023, we witnessed similar maneuvers in a number of American states:

• “[L]legislatures attacked the independence of their states’ universities and colleges on everything from curriculum to tenure to policies that assure diversity and inclusion….Another emerging target is the process in which colleges and universities receive accreditation, which plays a crucial role in assuring a higher quality and independent academic sphere.”

• “[T]he year also witnessed an even more aggressive Orban-style maneuver of installing politicized, highly partisan figures to lead higher education institutions. In Ohio, a board of political appointees named an election-denying member of Congress with no education credentials to become the next president of Youngstown State University, which is arguably the most important institution in a struggling economic region….These moves in Ohio mirror similar developments from North Carolina to Texas. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is perhaps pushing most aggressively along these lines by installing a slate of new board members to lead the public New College of Florida. One of those new members, a conservative activist named Christopher Rufo, made his goal clear: “We are recapturing higher education.” 

• “With their own separate boards, private higher education institutions are more insulated from outright takeovers. But it’s no coincidence that the partisan players, including Rufo, were among the loudest voices calling for the resignations of presidents of Ivy League colleges. And rather than leaving it up to those independent boards to decide what was best for those institutions, the US House took it upon itself to call for their resignations. Congress has not stepped in for any other private institutions, even when those institutions have been caught up in public controversy.”

The Youngstown State Case Study

To understand the intensity of these maneuvers, take a look at the roiling scandal at Youngstown State—which has sparked controversy on campus, in the surrounding region, and up to the highest level of Ohio politics.

As background, there may be no more important institution in the multi-county region around Youngstown (Ohioans refer to it as “The Valley”) than Youngstown State. Columnist Brent Larkin wrote that “Youngstown State University might be the economically challenged region’s most important asset.” Or, as the former YSU President wrote in a letter this week, the collapse of YSU (which he fears may happen) would “be a death blow [to the region], like the closing of the steel mills was fifty years ago.”

Now what has the former YSU President so concerned?

It’s that late last year, the Youngstown State Board of Directors (all political appointees—although one dissented in the decision) stunned the community by announcing that YSU’s next president would be Congressman Bill Johnson—a back-bench conservative with no academic credentials to speak of but a polarizing voting record that includes election denialism, hostility to higher education, climate change denialism, and opposition to same sex marriage. As Larkin put it, “Fred Flintstone would have been a more enlightened choice.”

The surprise announcement was met with an avalanche of questions, and fierce pushback. From students, faculty, community leaders, major benefactors and business leaders, and some of the schools most prestigious alumni—from YSU’s first Rhodes Scholar recipient, to actor Ed O’Neill (who told MSNBC the selection was a “slap in the face”), to Nanette Lepore.

While the Youngstown State board has ignored the outcry, and Johnson has resigned from the House and is planning to assume the office next week, more and more questions have emerged about the process that led to this selection.

A Report by Concerned Alumni reviews the suspect timeline (including a late “emergency session” that led to Johnson’s hiring), the use of a controversial search firm, the closed-door (“opaque and exclusive” versus past open processes) and conflict-laden nature of the search process, all in painstaking detail: “Simply stated, the Board’s actions and the Congressman’s public track record have threatened the University’s reputation.”

And the letter from YSU President Emeritus Les Cochran—which was sent to Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine this week—raises even more concerns and questions:

“[T]here’s a growing indication a coup to select the Congressman was initiated by a group that included both insiders and outsiders to the campus….It builds upon the unwillingness of three, maybe as many as five, Board members to fully disclose their conflicts of interest, and their unwillingness to recuse themselves in committee deliberations and from voting for Mr. Johnson’s appointment. From the beginning, individuals from this group were in charge; they controlled the “all powerful” selection committee; they picked the national selection firm and the finalist to be interviewed.” Cochran says this sequence begs several questions:

• “Was there a preconceived agenda by a few members of the Board?

• Were any of the three Board members who contributed $86,000, aware of or involved inmeetings with individuals outside the University, where the selection of the next presidentfor YSU was discussed?

• Were any of the three Board members influenced by outside individuals of power, a particular political persuasion, or individuals interested in selecting the next president?

• Were any other Board members aware of or in meetings with outside members where the selection of the next president was discussed?

• Were any University administrators involved in these meetings?”

Cochran then asks pointed questions about the search itself:

1. “Was the outcome of the search process predetermined? Was the entire search process a fiasco?

2. What were the chances a national search firm would identify Bill Johnson as a candidatefor the presidency of YSU? Zero to none!

3. What were the chances, if Mr. Johnson, had somehow been a finalist, in an open search, where faculty, staff, students, and members of the community effectively vetted him, that he would be recommended to serve as the President of YSU? (I’ll give him the benefit ofdoubt). One to none!

4. And, why didn’t the Board follow normal protocol for a closed search, which calls for finalist tovisit campus for public interviews; thereby ignoring accreditation standards and preventing an opportunity for Mr. Johnson to be vetted? Because they knew he would “not pass” the test!”

Cochran underscores the secretive nature of the process: “to make sure total secrecy was maintained, each of the members involved in the selection process was required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, which meant they could not disclose any information about the search process. Again, total secrecy was maintained.”

The behavior of the YSU Board in this entire process is so troubling, Cochran maintains, that it risks the school’s overall accreditation—violating eight separate standards that are considered as part of the accreditation process. (Cochran himself has overseen numerous accreditation processes involving other schools, so he knows of what he speaks). Which is why this statement should worry us: “an institution found in non-compliance of [accreditation] standards cannot survive.”

To pull YSU back from the brink, he calls on the Governor to dismiss members of the Board who behaved unethically, and rescind the appointment of President-elect Bill Johnson.

Why YSU Matters

Why does all this matter so much?

First, because as I outlined at the very top, independence in higher education is a critical plank of a healthy democracy. And while elite private schools get most of the attention, it is public colleges and universities that actually do most of the heavy lifting of educating America’s future generations. As my friend and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch wrote recently, schools like Youngstown State not only educate far more kids than the private schools that get more attention, but their students are far more likely to be “the middle-class offspring of Middle America [who] are the ones most in need of what college has to offer.”

But these are also the schools where politicians and ideologues have far more free rein to directly impose their ideological will and power-driven politics if they so choose. And lately, that’s exactly what they’re choosing—with politicians and “their functionaries…busy installing conservative political hacks and hedge funders to lead universities that educate far more people.” The former President’s questions above are basically all getting to that central question: was this just a political deal cooked up in a backroom somewhere.

As Bunch points out, “what took place at Youngstown State didn’t happen in a vacuum.” The YSU maelstrom follows a similar DeSantis putsch in Florida earlier in the year, and “[d]ays later, America’s oldest public university and one of its most prestigious, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, announced its interim leader to replace the outgoing president, Kevin Guskiewicz. Guskiewicz likely left his position because of political interference from Chapel Hill’s almost-all-Republican trustees.

The new guy probably won’t be complaining. Lee Roberts… — who’d been one of those trustees — was the former state budget chief for North Carolina’s last, reactionary Republican governor, and has spent the rest of his career in high finance. He’s taught a financial course at his nearby alma mater Duke but — stop me if you’ve heard this before — has no substantive experience running a large university.”

Keep Fighting

The only good news amid this bad news is the fierce pushback I’ve outlined above.

The way these maneuvers truly win is when they are greeted by silence. And acceptance.

But those who care about YSU are doing the exact opposite. They’re fighting back!

So whether it’s Ed O’Neill or Nanette Lepore or a recent Rhodes Scholar or a President Emeritus or thousands of students, alumni and faculty (** if my former boss, mentor and proud grad of both YSU undergrad and law school Nathaniel Jones were still with us, he’d be putting up one hell of a fight), that outcry matters.

Together, they are demanding answers to absolutely appropriate questions, and making clear how such a grotesque and blunt-force attack on independent higher ed can do great damage to a vaunted community institution such as YSU.

Now, Johnson is scheduled to assume the YSU presidency next week. And Larkin explained in his column that the YSU Board members’ strategy is driven by “confiden[ce] that anger over their betrayal of the public trust will eventually dissipate.”

But….up to, during, and even after Johnson is installed (assuming he is), DO NOT let the pushback dissipate.

If we do—if we move on, if we let it happen without continued outcry—not only will this grotesque decision afflict Youngstown State and the community that depends on it, but the disturbing pattern we see playing out here and elsewhere will only accelerate and broaden.

Keep going!