Vote Pending For Case Western Chief

Citing University President Lawrence H. Summers’ resignation in face of faculty pressure, a Case Western Reserve University professor called for a vote of no confidence in the Cleveland university’s own president last week.

Physics professor and renowned author Lawrence M. Krauss e-mailed the faculty of the Case College of Arts and Sciences Wednesday, requesting that they sign a petition to hold the vote.

Twenty percent of the faculty expressed support for the petition within 24 hours of his message, surpassing the 10 percent required to convene a vote, Krauss said Sunday. Professors are set to cast their ballots Thursday.

“Whether we do this has been brewing for some time,” Krauss said. “It happened coincidentally with Larry Summers’ resignation, but I thought that events at Harvard might motivate some of the faculty who are much less outspoken.”

Summers resigned Feb. 21, one week before a Faculty meeting in which he would have faced the second no-confidence motion of his career. In the first vote, held last March, the Faculty of Arts and Science voted a lack of confidence in Summers by a margin of 218-185.

Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan, who had proposed the second no-confidence motion, cautioned against overextending the national influence of Summers’ resignation. “There is no reason to start imagining a rash of copy-cat motions,” she wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Krauss said he was driven to ask for the vote against Case President Edward M. Hundert by concerns over fiscal management and administrative secrecy, as well as Hundert’s approach to relationships with the faculty.

“I thought that I could take advantage of the momentum” of Summers’ announcement, Krauss said.

Requests for comment were not returned by Hundert’s office.

Case’s Board of Trustees, which alone has the authority to fire the president, announced yesterday its continuing support of Hundert’s leadership after a regular weekend meeting.

Although Krauss said he would not characterize his decision as “if Harvard did it, so can we,” he acknowledged that the close timing makes comparison unavoidable. The news from Cambridge indicates that faculty can influence the university president’s behavior, Krauss said.

And his discontent is not unique on Case’s campus.

“Everyone’s counting noses now,” said Case Associate Professor of History and Law Kenneth F. Ledford. “But there certainly is no reservoir of support for the president.”

Ledford said that Hundert’s three years in office have been marked by “mal-administration” of major initiatives.

Krauss’s decision, however, was motivated primarily by what he identified as the administration’s attempt to control information. He said the administration has misrepresented the university’s financial situation to the faculty, and recalled professors’ surprise at a 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education report that Hundert is among the highest paid of any research university president.

For Krauss, the decision to speak out was not an easy one.

“After writing my e-mail, I sat and stared at the send button for about 25 minutes,” he said. “In the end, I’ve decided that it had to be done. I’m just going to hope that things turn out better for the university.”

Ledford, who said he plans to vote no-confidence, also said he intends to commend Krauss for his “civil courage” at Thursday’s meeting.

“I think it’s very, very telling, at Harvard or any university, when you have the arts and sciences faculty mobilized enough to start talking [about removal],” Ledford said. “It means they feel very strongly.”