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Crawford speaks to faculty

President Crawford
President Crawford

By Emily Tate, Managing Editor and Reis Thebault, Editor-in-Chief

Gregory P. Crawford, likely Miami's new president, wasted no time introducing himself to university faculty at yesterday's open forum.

"Hi, nice to meet you, my name's Greg," he said, shaking the hands of those sitting in the front row of Wilks Theater.

He maintained that energy, a quality so many of his current and former colleagues praise him for, throughout the hour-long forum - even as faculty members challenged the president-to-be with questions about the university's most complex problems.

Gael Montgomery, a visiting assistant professor of Italian, asked Crawford how contingent faculty like herself would be included in university decisions and how Crawford would address the compensation of those faculty members.

"How are we going to be included in decision-making and governance?" she asked. "What will you do about changing the unethical and socially unjust salary structure and labor structure at this university?"

Crawford answered diplomatically, with promises to re-examine Montgomery's concerns in the future.

After the forum, Deborah Lyons, associate professor of classics and secretary of Miami's chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), reacted to Crawford's first campus appearance.

"He's very practiced, and obviously very good at what he does and part of that means not giving too precise an answer," she said. "I can respect that he isn't ready to be too precise because he's new here."

Though he was sure to speak only hypothetically about his official hiring to the position, the Board of Trustees will, in all likelihood, vote to hire him as president Friday, Feb. 19 at a regularly scheduled meeting.

This will conclude the six-month, divisive search for Miami's 22nd president that the Board of Trustees chose to conduct in secret.

"The nature of the search is really not okay and increasingly common at universities in the United States," said Cathy Wagner, professor of English and vice president of the AAUP. "The community needs to take our public universities back and make sure that they are not being run in this top-down fashion that's so non-transparent."

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The conditions surrounding this search also impact the way Crawford is perceived by the Miami community, said Karen Dawisha, director of the Havighurst Center and co-president of the AAUP.

"I don't think that [this secret search] aids in the legitimacy of any selection, however good that selection is," Dawisha said. "To have the person chosen by a small group of people and vetted really, solely by a search firm, I don't think it's the best way for anyone to start a new job."

Despite the uncertainty of the search, Crawford seemed determined to prove himself to the nearly 100 faculty members and others in attendance. He fielded questions about shared governance, student learning outside of the classroom and campus life issues.

Kathleen Knight Abowitz, chair of the Department of Educational Leadership, asked about Crawford's preparedness for addressing diversity at Miami.

"It's dangerous times for college presidents who aren't ready to step up and engage students in real ways and lead in different ways around issues of diversity," she said. "I'm wondering what your thoughts are and what implications there might be for you if you are our next president."

Crawford appeared to be most comfortable and confident when answering Knight Abowitz' question.

"Diversity could be an add on, but we don't want it to be an add on," Crawford said. "We want it be a part of our fabric of what we are as a university, in the culture of the university. And it should play a role in everything that we do and everything that we think about."

Lyons pressed Crawford about his opinions on the dwindling funding of the humanities, asking him how he would allocate resources to include and develop programs in the arts and sciences.

"At a residential, liberal arts campus, everything matters because we are a university number one," Crawford answered. "We want to have collaboration, we want to have a strong liberal arts program and we want to keep that alive."

Crawford will attend three more open forums this week. Today, he will speak to the Hamilton campus at 9:45 a.m. in the Wilks Conference Theatre and to the Middletown campus at 1 p.m. at Johnston Hall in the Knoll Community Center. Crawford will conclude the forums at 9:45 a.m. tomorrow at the Wilks Theatre in Armstrong Student Center.

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