Landscape Architecture Magazine

Update, June 28

We can now safely report than Teresa Sullivan has her job back as president of the University of Virginia. She and her main antagonist, the school’s rector, Helen Dragas, walked into the Rotunda together on Tuesday before the unanimous vote to reinstate her by the same Board of Visitors let her walk out the door a couple of weeks ago.

Update, June 18

For a Sunday in June, it was extraordinarily busy around the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. The Faculty Senate met yesterday afternoon to voice its almost unanimous support for the departing president, Teresa Sullivan, and to make known its lack of confidence in the school’s Board of Visitors. At that meeting, the provost, John D. Simon, indicated he may leave within the next few days if the crisis is not resolved in a way he considers acceptable. The most potent news yet? A number of university donors are upset. One donor, Hunter Smith, who has given the school $60 million, told the Washington Post that she’s holding on to her money until there are changes among the Board of Visitors. She does not condone Sullivan’s removal, she said. “It’s disgraceful.”

June 17, 2:00 p.m.

Much intrigue and anger is afoot at the University of Virginia since the school’s Board of Visitors suddenly gave the gong to the university’s president, Teresa Sullivan, last week, having grown impatient with the speed of Sullivan’s changes during her whole two years in office. Many faculty and students have taken to their keyboards in reaction, including the dean of architecture, Kim Tanzer. Some of the responses are quite sharp in their protests; others are clearly treading water, and many interesting comments follow. Faculty members seem to feel safest speaking collectively—the message from the Faculty Senate says it was “blindsided” and that the explanation given by the Board of Visitors for pushing out Sullivan is “inadequate and unsatisfactory.”

More explanation for Sullivan’s departure than the Board of Visitors probably wants out there appears in an excellent piece in Slate magazine by Siva Vaidhyanathan, a UVA media studies professor. It includes details of an email mis-sent by a Darden School of Business foundation board member, the investment banker Peter Kiernan, which described what he said was his role behind the scenes in Sullivan’s ouster. Kiernan is no longer a foundation board member, by the way, having resigned in embarrassment after sending the email. A local Charlottesville weekly, The Hook, has more details of the shadowy role that philanthropy among “important alums” may have played in the Sullivan affair.

A devastating story in the Washington Post describes at least part of the tale that led to Sullivan’s departure—it includes a unanimous round of applause by the Board of Visitors for Sullivan as recently as May 21, even though at least 11 of its members had agreed to get rid of her. The story is in no way flattering to the woman seen as the chief agitator against Sullivan, University Rector Helen Dragas, who has made a fortune by selling middling homes in sprawling subdivisions in Virginia’s Tidewater area. Dragas has spoken of Sullivan’s departure as necessary to face an “existential threat” to the university’s business. Otherwise she has thanked the university community for not bothering her about the topic any more.

Now the question becomes one of who will lead the university next—who next will be called “an extraordinary talent” and an “excellent sucessor,” as the Board of Visitors called Sullivan in January of 2010—and whether there is confidence in this Board of Visitors to make that decision (again).