Arizona President Refuses to Sign Shared Governance Memo

"An updated copy of the memorandum from 2022 defines shared governance at the university as 'meaningful participation in institutional governance, emphasizing the importance of faculty involvement in selecting, hiring and reviewing faculty and academic administrators, informing budgetary policy and strategy, and establishing academic and curricular policies.' It outlines processes for appointing search committees, undertaking administrative reviews and negotiating disagreements between faculty and administrators."

"[The board] selected our current president in a process which did not include the elected representatives of the faculty. I couldn't help but notice that part of his first assignment was to restructure governance, which may well have been a euphemism for putting the faculty in their place."

"She calls shared governance a 'feature, not a bug' of higher education management. But as American colleges and universities 'corporatize' their leadership, shared governance is being treated as a burden."

University of Arizona president Suresh Garimella has declined to sign a memorandum of understanding establishing shared governance standards, becoming the first president to do so. The memorandum defines shared governance as meaningful faculty participation in hiring, budgetary policy, and academic decisions. Faculty chair Leila Hudson attributes this refusal to the corporatization of university leadership, which increasingly treats shared governance as a burden rather than a feature. Garimella's appointment occurred without faculty representation in the selection process, and his administration's restructuring of governance may limit faculty influence. The previous president, Robert Robbins, signed the memorandum before departing amid a $177 million budget shortfall that shared governance helped expose.

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