The DePaul Law School Debacle, Continued

In June, 2009, De Paul had a little problem.  The University fired the law school dean, Glen Weissenberger, after Weissenberger – fed up with negotiations between the law school and university – notified the ABA of what he considered the university's failure to comply with its financial commitments.  That was the start of the train wreck.  Then, as day follows night, the U canned Dean Weissenberger.  Next, the associate dean Stephen Siegel, notified that university provost that if a non-faculty member was named the interim dean he'd step down.  The U promptly named Judge Warren Wolfson interim dean over the unanimous opposition of faculty.  Siegel resigned.  Train wreck complete.  Things were as bad as they could get.

Not so much.  Here's the problem with hiring  non-academics to run academic institutions.  They don't always cotton to the idea of faculty governance.  (Honestly, faculty governance must seem insane to Judges.)  And now the university's risky choice is paying (negative) dividends. According to a letter posted over at TaxProf, the chair of the law school's strategic planning committee has just resigned.  Why? Because (without consulting the chair or any faculty member of the strategic planning committee) Dean Wolfson submitted a  compliance report to the ABA including strategic planning materials the faculty had explicitly declined to appove last spring.  (It had deferred further consideration on the matters until this fall.)  You just…can't…do…that.  The generous interpretation is that the Dean didn't realize he was spitting in the eye of his faculty.  The less generous interpretation is that he didn't care. 

Of course, the cost of this misjudgment is that faculty trust and support is further undermined.  (To say nothing of the bad press  here, here, and of course…here.)  It seems that the U hired a CEO as the interim dean, when what the school really needed was a senior faculty member with some sechel.