The president of the Universities of Wisconsin — the sprawling system that is the backbone of higher education in the state — is in a standoff with regents who want him to resign, according to two letters reviewed by The New York Times.
The president, Jay O. Rothman, told a regent in a March 26 letter that he had not been given “any substantive reason or reasons for the board’s finding of no confidence in my leadership.” In another letter, dated Wednesday, he said that any board conclusion that it would not back him would be “at best, an after-the-fact rationalization of a decision that clearly has already been made.”
He said in both letters that he would not resign, defying what he depicted in the missives as a weekslong effort to oust him without public scrutiny or private explanation.
Neither Mr. Rothman nor the board’s president, Amy B. Bogost, immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday. In a statement shared by a university system spokesman, though, Ms. Bogost said that the board was “responsible for the leadership of the Universities of Wisconsin and is having discussions about its future.” The regents, she added, did not comment on personnel matters.
The spectacle of the clash is coming at a consequential moment for the university system, which has more than 164,000 students. The flagship campus in Madison is searching for a new chancellor after Jennifer L. Mnookin was named as Columbia University’s next president.
The university system has also, as ever, found itself in budget battles at a statehouse where a Democrat is a governor and Republicans control the Legislature. Under Mr. Rothman, the president of the 13-university system since 2022, the system has closed a succession of two-year campuses.
“In light of the current circumstances, I do not believe my resignation at this time is in the best interests of either the Universities of Wisconsin or the state of Wisconsin,” Mr. Rothman, a former chairman of the law firm Foley & Lardner, wrote in one letter.
Although regents held a closed meeting on Wednesday “to discuss ongoing personnel matters,” the dispute between Mr. Rothman and the board did not come into public view until Thursday, when The Associated Press reported the March 26 letter to Ms. Bogost.
In that letter, Mr. Rothman recounted a meeting he said he had recently held with Ms. Bogost and another regent. He said he had been “surprised” to be told that “an unidentified majority” of regents had lost confidence in him.
By Mr. Rothman’s account, the board’s “preferred path” was for him to announce his exit effective at the end of this year. But, he told Ms. Bogost, “You made clear that if I did not resign, the board was prepared to terminate my employment despite all that has been accomplished.”
Mr. Rothman, in the letter he sent this week, said he later met with two more regents who also urged him to resign and said that regents were “prepared to meet over the Easter weekend to terminate my employment.”
Mr. Rothman said the regents had indicated that the basis for any dismissal was still to be discussed by the board, and he said the regents “made it clear” that he would not be allowed to address the group. The regents to whom Mr. Rothman sent that letter, Ashok Rai and Jack Salzwedel, did not immediately respond to messages on Thursday.
Regents can schedule meetings on short notice, but they have not yet announced plans to meet in the coming days.
Although university governing boards routinely replace system and campus leaders, a skirmish like the one unfolding in Wisconsin is unusual. Still, public tussles over leadership changes have sometimes led to campus pushback.
In 2015, for instance, a surprise decision to oust Daniel W. Jones as the University of Mississippi’s chancellor led to an enormous protest in Oxford.
The board ultimately made a limited retreat from its effort and extended an offer that would have made Dr. Jones a lame duck. He refused.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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