University of Michigan faculty, staff and students gathered for “The Next U-M President: A Town Hall,” on Sept. 3 to discuss both the presidential search process and the priorities they hope to see valued by the next U-M president.
The event was held in 1010 Weiser Hall, as well as on Zoom and YouTube, and aimed to amplify community voices in the presidential search process. About 200 people participated in the event, either in person or online.
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The town hall began with a short presentation from Judith Wilde, a research professor at George Mason University whose work has focused on presidential searches.
Wilde, joining via Zoom, noted that the vast majority of universities now rely on search firms when seeking a new president.
She raised concerns about the lack of due diligence during the search process and possible fallout from a secretive search process.
“We have certainly seen a greater number of presidents who have left within two and a half years,” she said. “And several cited the fact that they were selected secretly and that led to mistrust on the part of faculty and staff.”
Regent Paul Brown, participating via Zoom, asked to speak after Wilde’s presentation and shared that U-M’s search process does include the kinds of due diligence background checks Wilde recommended.
“I can assure you every one of those things that you listed to be added is done either by the search firm or internally or other third parties that we deem more capable or competent,” he said.
He also challenged Wilde’s point about secrecy and tenure length, saying the data she cited was not relevant to that point.
Wilde acknowledged the data gap. “We believe it to be true, but I don’t want to list it as fact until I have more data,” she said, noting that her team is preparing a study on the issue.
The event also included three U-M speakers:
- SACUA and Faculty Senate Chair Derek Peterson, the Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor of History and African Studies, associate chair, department of history, professor of history and professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, LSA
- Nathan Sadowsky, treasurer, University Staff United, and academic program manager, Earth and Environmental Science, LSA
- Eric Veal Jr., president, Central Student Government, and an undergraduate student in LSA and the Marsal Family School of Education.
Kentaro Toyama, W K Kellogg Professor of Community Information and professor of information in the School of Information, acted as moderator.
Peterson emphasized the need for elected faculty governance to play a part in the search. “The faculty members who are on the search committee are distinguished colleagues,” he said.
“But none of them have served, with one exception, in faculty government previously, and none of them are currently engaged with the work that we in faculty government are trying to do to shape the future of the university. What is faculty government for, if not for offering advice to the university’s leadership about the shape of our new presidency?”
Sadowsky called for a president who respects the contributions of everyone across campus. “Respect the work that we do as staff, respect the labor organizations that we’re part of, and … honor that work through a living wage so that staff aren’t working multiple jobs to support themselves and their family,” he said.
Veal, who is on the search committee, said students need a leader for all people. “I hope when we get it right, we have someone who cares and supports all of the communities on our campus. Someone who has character, someone who ensures that our university is leading and headed to success for a plethora of years to come, but centers that in the people this university serves,” he said.
During an extended open-mic period, in-person and remote participants highlighted their priorities for the next president, including:
- Moving faster on U-M’s carbon neutrality plan and evaluating the energy profile of the proposed computational facility.
- Championing the humanities alongside data-focused fields.
- Maintaining a good-faith posture with unions and student conduct processes.
- Exercising cautious oversight of artificial intelligence.
- Elevating the priorities of the Dearborn and Flint campuses.
Several attendees also suggested there should be a post-mortem analysis of recent presidential searches and presidencies.
“If a student of mine was 0 for 2, I’d say think about some other way of doing it,” said John C. MGee, Jeremiah and Claire Turcotte Professor of Transplantation Surgery, and professor of internal medicine, of pediatrics, and of surgery in the Medical School.
“If history repeats itself, that will be a real threat to the University of Michigan, because we’ve now shown we can’t learn from our mistakes.”
A number of faculty and staff stressed that their attendance at the town hall was motivated by their belief in the mission of U-M and their desire to see the future president succeed.
“Why are we all here?” said Samuel R. Bagenstos, Frank G. Millard Professor of Law, Arlene Susan Kohn Professor of Social Policy in the Law School and professor of public policy in the Gerald R Ford School of Public Policy.
“We want our voices to be heard by the people who are making the decision about who’s going be our next president … we care about this school.
“We need to be making the case that this university matters to the state of Michigan and to our American democracy and to the world. And we need a president who’s willing to stand up and fight for this university and the values it stands for — the values of academic freedom, of free inquiry, of free speech on campus, of being an independent knowledge-generating institution, a central part of our civil society. That’s what I want to see in the new president.”
At the conclusion of the town hall, Toyama indicated that the event had been recorded and notes would be sent to both the presidential search committee and the regents.
The town hall was co-organized by the Faculty Senate, Central Student Government, and the Ann Arbor Chapter of the AAUP and was part of the Faculty Senate Office’s 2025 Academic Governance Series.
Silke-Maria Weineck
That’s a good summary! Just to clarify, the remarks here summarized as “exercising cautious oversight of artificial intelligence” were:
“We need a president to control and ideally roll back the fungus-like spread of generative AI at this university, which is currently proceeding without any apparent oversight, thought, or awareness and acknowledgement of the dangers AI poses to the environment, to intellectual property rights, to mental health, and to the integrity of teaching, learning, and intellectual and creative life at this university. While AI is without doubt useful to some extent, it is mainly a de-skilling machine. A university worth of its name needs to take a critical and cautious stance rather than allow itself to be captured by technologies championed by the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, openly right-wing ideological operators and declared enemies of higher education.”