Legitimacy in the Academic Presidency: From Entrance to Exit (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Legitimacy in the Academic Presidency: From Entrance to Exit
Lately, we have witnessed a stream of books written by former university presidents who address the changing role of the academic presidency and some of the more troubling issues confronting American higher education at the advent of the 21st century. Notable examples include The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University (Rhodes, 2001), Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University (Duderstadt, 2003), Universities in the Marketplace (Bok, 2003), and Liberal Education and the Public Interest (Freedman, 2003). Until recently, the voices of women presidents—who comprise 21% of college and university presidents—have been absent from this narrative.
In this book, Rita Bornstein, president of Rollins College from 1990 to 2004, offers her perspective on the presidency. Her study is much more than a presidential memoir of the trials and tribulations involved in leading a contemporary American college. It is a scholarly treatise in which the author draws on multiple sources: the literature of social science, interviews with 13 other presidents, a mail survey of almost 200 college and university presidents, and her own journal and files, maintained throughout her tenure at Rollins.
By her own account, Bornstein was a nontraditional choice for the presidency, having spent most of her career at the University of Miami, first in soft-money positions and then as vice president for development. Her story is one of gaining academic legitimacy and using her social capital to become a transformative leader and institutional change agent. This is not a self-congratulatory memoir but a sober analysis of the complex and often difficult job of leading a traditional liberal arts college, conceptualized in theories of legitimacy and leadership.
She structures the book into four sections: Part 1, "New Roles for the Millennium," is very brief and sets the stage for a review of the multiple challenges to presidential legitimacy—socioeconomic, political, and symbolic—and the high expectations that stakeholders convey to those who have assumed the leadership of their institutions.
In Part 2, "Achieving Presidential Legitimacy," Bornstein explores the process through which college presidents achieve legitimacy. Drawing on social science research, she defines the concept as a multilayered construct consisting of five elements: individual, institutional, environmental, technical, and moral legitimacy. Each of these, she asserts, influences a president's ability to lead an institution, to gain the respect and confidence of multiple stakeholders, to address external demands and to meet organizational requirements. In exploring the causes of failed presidencies, Bornstein cites evidence of incompatibility with governing boards, management incompetence, unethical or illegal conduct, and idiosyncratic behavior indicative of lack of cultural fit.
She warns that no president is immune to threats to his or her legitimacy and that the interplay of factors can have negative as well as positive outcomes. Bornstein offers 10 strategies for enhancing legitimacy, admonishing presidents to resist major systemic changes without thorough review and constituent involvement, to respect the mechanisms of faculty and board governance, to stay attuned to trends in higher education and society, and to develop a vision consistent with the culture and aspirations of the campus community. She concludes this section with an engaging and candid reminiscence of the learning curve she followed as a fund-raiser at the helm of a traditional private liberal arts college, the criticisms that tested her leadership abilities in the early years of her presidency, and her eventual acceptance by faculty, alumni, trustees, and students.
Having achieved legitimacy, how does a president sustain her momentum and become a successful change agent? In Part 3, the author weighs the importance of strategic leadership in establishing one's legacy. She ponders whether attaining the pinnacle of leadership is a radical or incremental process and to what extent the terminology surrounding leadership is a useful guide to those at the top of the power structure, given the contexts in which presidents must operate. She has evidently given much thought to this matter and proposes a construct for legitimate change that encompasses presidential leadership, governance...
