Before becoming a college president, I helped over a dozen organizations find strategies to get through some very ugly crises.
Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
C'mon kids! Wake up and smell the CO2! Take over your administration building, occupy your university president's office, or storm in on the next meeting of your college's board of trustees until they agree to make your school carbon neutral.
I'm a psychologist. I was a psychology faculty member, and then I became an administrator of the department, then the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. At the time of the presidential search, I was the dean.
I get invited to a lot of college campuses, and administrators think it's going to be a lecture on 'trans-ness' or whatever. But when young people get there, their questions are about just life.
Usually on Sundays, I won't cook because I'll have dinner at my mom's. She's the provost of Mills College in Oakland and lives on campus. It's a very beautiful school in a very bad part of town.
At best, most college presidents are running something that is somewhere between a faltering corporation and a hotel.
So far as the colleges go, the side-shows have swallowed up the circus, and we don't know what is going on in the main tent: and I don't want to continue as ringmaster under those conditions.
