Cornell President Lehman Resigns

Stunning the university community he has led for the past two years, Cornell University President Jeffrey S. Lehman announced earlier this month plans to step down from his post. The president said his resignation comes in the wake of differences with the school’s Board of Trustees, but declined to explain precisely what those differences entailed.

Lehman said only that he and the trustees had clashed over how to effect their goals for the University, not over the goals themselves.

Lehman—who revealed his decision to a crowd of about 700 alumni, faculty members, and other university officials at a June 11 reunion—plans to step down this Thursday. Hunter R. Rawlings III, who served as Cornell’s president before Lehman, will temporarily take the reins as interim president.

Lehman’s June 11 speech centered on the University’s recent accomplishments, ranging from a sharp increase in application numbers to alumni donations of record levels. His resignation announcement—unexpected by most audience members—came only in the final minutes of his address.

“Over the past few months, it has become apparent to me that the Board of Trustees and I have different approaches to how the university can best realize its long-term vision,” Lehman told the crowd. “These differences are profound, and it has now become absolutely clear that they cannot be resolved.”

The first Cornell graduate to serve as the university’s president, Lehman was generally popular among students, faculty, and alumni. Yet his presidency, the eleventh in Cornell’s history, has not been free of controversies.

BREAKING AWAY

As president, Lehman promoted a transnational vision for the University, espousing three areas of focus as his guiding lights: “life in the age of the genome,” “wisdom in the age of digital information,” and “sustainability in the age of development.”

Still, since taking office in July, 2003, Lehman has seen a failed deanship appointment, the departure of a top development official from a nascent but important fund-raising effort, and controversy over his wife’s appointment to a high-level administrative position within the university’s ranks.

Lehman, who served as dean of the University of Michigan’s law school before coming to Cornell, was also taken to task for tapping a many of his former Michigan colleagues for top posts at Cornell.

Yet none of these controversies seems to have motivated his resignation. Lehman could not be reached for comment, but he told the Cornell Daily Sun that his resignation had been an “evolving decision” that “happened over a period of months.” He also said that he hadn’t been sure he would resign until after the school’s commencement events in late May.

“There’s no small, no single incident or decision or disagreement that was pivotal or decisive,” he told the Sun. “There is a larger strategic question that is still open, and I don’t want to put that out in public, because I think that could distort the way that is discussed by the Board. I think that it’s become clear to me that I’m not the right person to lead that internal conversation in a way that is effective.”

Peter C. Meinig, chairman of Cornell’s Board of Trustees, said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed that he appreciated Lehman’s decision to resign. He also noted that Lehman had been speaking with the Board about their differences for several months.

Meinig added that Lehman’s resignation had “been on the table for a while.”

Meinic also declined to elaborate on differences between Lehman and the Board in Inside Higher Ed. He could not be reached for further comment.

The circumstances leading to Lehman’s resignation differed markedly from the recent fracas that grew around University President Lawrence H. Summers, whose leadership style came under fire after his Jan. 14 remarks on women and science.

Summers, who has repeatedly affirmed that he has no plans to resign, received a lack-of-confidence vote from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on March 15. The Harvard Corporation—the University’s seven-member governing body that has the sole power to remove the president—has consistently voiced its support for Summers throughout the crisis.

Lehman, in contrast, stood at odds with Cornell’s Board of Trustees, but received general approval from the university’s faculty.

Lehman described what he hoped his legacy at Cornell would be in a statement released after his resignation announcement.

“I’d like to be remembered as a president who brought the community together for a moment to think about what Cornell means for the world,” he wrote.

After he steps down, Lehman will return to work as a professor at Cornell’s law school, following a one-year sabbatical. He will also serve as a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.