University Board of Trustees Chair Ramanan Raghavendran denied the Faculty Senate’s request to change the composition of the committee searching for Penn’s next president.
The Senate’s request, sent in a letter to Raghavendran last Friday, cited the committee’s gender imbalance and limited faculty representation. Multiple members of the Senate Executive Committee with direct knowledge of the matter told The Daily Pennsylvanian that Raghavendran said the search process was too far along to substantially change.
Announced on Oct. 5, the committee’s membership includes six trustees, a trustee emerita, and two professors. Only two women were tapped, both of them trustees. In the letter, the Faculty Senate tri-chairs argued that “the faculty representation on the Committee does not reflect our faculty, which is composed of approximately 50% women.”
In addition to addressing the gender imbalance, they asked Raghavendran to strengthen the overall presence of faculty and include student input.
The Statutes of the Trustees mandate that the search committee includes a maximum of eight members in addition to the Trustees chair, with at least two trustees and at least two faculty members. There is no requirement for student representation.
One solution to the membership cap, according to the letter, would be for one of the seven trustees on the committee to “step aside or to become a non-voting member” — making room for a faculty member to participate.
Raghavendran’s response was that “it’s too late to try to involve somebody new meaningfully in the process,” one member of SEC said in an interview.
“What we heard is that the search committee has gotten started very, very quickly,” the SEC member said. “They’ve already done quite a lot.”
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The professor stated that they don’t “personally” find Raghavendran’s explanation “all that compelling.” Raghavendran declined a request to comment.
SEC convened for an emergency meeting on Thursday to brief its members on the ongoing discussions.
Raghavendran was “open” to providing a nonvoting “window into the process” for faculty who served on the consultative committee but not the search committee, the SEC member said.
They characterized that proposition as “a very small olive branch,” adding that Raghavendran offered to work with the Faculty Senate to revise the search process in the future.
“That is a positive outcome of this dialogue, and I want the record to show that he made that offer and we will be doing that,” the professor said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not concerned about this search.”
They stated that Raghavendran raised concerns that press coverage of the dispute would “scare away potential presidential candidates who are getting to see a disagreement between the trustees and the faculty.”
“We really hope that we would find a president who is not scared away by a pretty friendly debate between the trustees and the faculty about a process matter,” the professor said. “That’s very common, and we want somebody who is interested in the challenges of shared governance and in a faculty that has a strong position, and a strong voice, and wants to be involved in the way the University is run.”
The committee is the second group in Penn’s presidential search process, following the work of a consultative committee — but it is not the last. An executive committee will review the search committee’s report and present a final nomination to be voted upon by the Trustees.
Another member of SEC called the composition of the search committee “potentially irrelevant” as a result, a realization they described as “really depressing.”
“Presidents come and go. But what is much more important is how this process affects the trust in the community,” that SEC member said in an interview. “Trust means that you can believe what the leadership tells us, and if we can’t believe their promises, then top talent won’t come and won’t stay.”
At Wednesday’s University Council meeting, College senior and Undergraduate Assembly President Musab Chummun similarly criticized the “lack of student and faculty representation” on committee. He said that student involvement is a “precondition to progress” and expressed the UA’s intention to propose amendments to the Board of Trustees’ bylaws.
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Senior reporter Alex Dash covers administration and can be reached at dash@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies history and political science. Follow him on X @AlexBDash.
Finn Ryan is a News Editor at The Daily Pennsylvanian and can be reached at ryan@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies political science and Russian. Follow him on X @FinnRyan_.
