March Madness Becomes More Turbulent
This is the time of year when the men’s and women’s basketball games facilitate a spirit of March Madness. And yet today, March Madness has become even more turbulent with so many recent decisions by the current president of the United States and his leadership team.
Evan Goldstein, the managing editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, recently posted an article with the headline, “We Are in the Midst of an Authoritarian Takeover” and then said, “higher ed must fight back.” And another Chronicle article written by Megan Zahneis had the headline, “This Time, Higher Ed’s Resistance to Trump is Being Led by Its Associations.” She writes, “As the Trump administration has issued a volley of executive orders and policy directives aimed at higher education over the past two months, the sector’s fight back has been led not by individual institutions — like often happened during his first term — but by its acronym-heavy associations.”
The same article also had some very informative insights via CIC’s president. Most institutions and leaders — with few exceptions — have taken a quieter approach, as Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, wrote in Higher Ed Dive. “The relative lack of public statements is not a sign of cowardice as some have suggested,” Hass wrote. “It’s that many college presidents have rightly concluded that quiet resistance rather than public protest is a more effective strategy.”
She goes into more detail in her Hass Newsletter, noting:
In times of danger, our natural impulse is to flee, freeze, or fight. The first two can delay an open announcement of the crisis and are rarely useful in protecting the institution in your care. Fighting may be called for but if you fight impulsively and without a strategy, you risk personal failure and institutional destruction. Fortunately, there is another way—one that not only helps you meet the crisis head-on but sets the stage for future flourishing.
I’ve come to call this path “the way of communion,” that is the gathering together of those most deeply affected in an open exchange of support, resistance, and strategy. It means reaffirming the deepest values that shape the institution and encouraging responses that lift those values up. In practice, this is a willingness to boldly reject efforts to undermine the things that matter and an embracing of collective power and decision-making.
To practice it, you need to think in terms of the collective power and wisdom of your stakeholders. Engage your community—trustees, faculty and staff, and students—in interpreting and responding to executive orders, in discerning and sharing accurate information, in defining appropriate strategies of resistance and/or compliance to mandated change, and in fostering your mission and vision even in the face of external attacks.
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These are definitely words of wisdom for all of us to think about and implement during these turbulent times. As we have noted previously, colleges and universities are experiencing so many items that impact their feelings about being on the edge of a demographic cliff. There is the constant thinking about what matters and what doesn’t matter; lots of uncertainty and consternation; and plenty of difficult and challenging problems. Overall, continue to stay positive, embrace innovation, and have a mindset about being edupreneurial. In addition, focus on alumni and friends of the college or university because the more they know about the institution’s situation, many will be predisposed to helping your college or university overcome obstacles and helping you create enhanced value and more longevity. And as Marjorie Hass noted, “Active campus-wide engagement is a way to seize the moment rather than flee from it.”
