Editor’s note: This is a jointly written op-ed expressing the concerns of numerous faculty across campus. It follows this PowerPoint presentation to the Faculty Senate on February 26, 2024. The authors and other signatories of the letter are listed below. I am not one of the authors. As editor, I chose to publish it because The Faculty Herald should provide opportunities for faculty and librarians to express their ideas and concerns about our community of educators.

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Temple University – an institution central to our city and Commonwealth – is facing multiple crises and in need of a fundamental change in leadership. Due to gross mismanagement, Temple has in the last few years suffered a massive decline in enrollment and loss of faculty. Yet, despite repeated calls from the faculty, the Board of Trustees chaired by Mr. Mitchell Morgan, has shown that it does not grasp the depth and causes of these crises and thus does not know how to fix them. Change is urgently needed.

We regretfully state this as faculty members wholly dedicated to Temple’s mission of providing access to an excellent education and pursuing groundbreaking research and creative activity to benefit our students and society as a whole. That mission has been imperiled by bad leadership that has led to:

• a precipitous decline of 10,000 students–25% of enrollment—while enrollments of our PA peers (Pitt and Penn State) have remained essentially flat.  Our decline is much worse than other urban research universities faced with similar demographic and safety challenges;
• 4-years of consecutive budget cuts totaling more than 20%, with another year of cuts in the offing;
• increases in budgets, headcounts, and salaries in central administration while the colleges and schools are absorbing disproportionately high cuts—to cite just one particularly troubling case, there have been increases of 75% or more in administrative and staff salaries in athletics and human resources in less than a decade;
• a significant decline in faculty ranks due to budget cuts—many faculty have either taken jobs at other universities or been laid off, resulting in a loss of excellent researchers and teachers;
• a dean sentenced to federal prison for fraud, profoundly damaging Temple’s reputation —a result primarily due to bad actions without proper oversight.  This dean, like some others, was in his position for more than two decades, a length of service rare, for good reason, in American higher education;
• a graduate student strike that resulted in the cruel and unprecedented move by the administration to cut their healthcare along with a demand that students pay back their tuition remission.

Recent actions and inaction by our leaders have given us little hope for meaningful improvement.  Enrollment continues to decline. Faculty and librarians have been working under an expired contract since October, and the administration has refused to respond to key proposals on job security and other issues.

While the University has grossly reduced support for faculty to conduct research and teach, wasteful administrative spending continues: from $4.5 million a year to use Lincoln Financial Field to a $150,000 per year luxury box at that same stadium to tens of thousands of dollars spent at the Union League and the Philadelphia Cricket Club.

Amidst all the exceptional challenges Temple is facing, the Board of Trustees is conducting a presidential search in a manner similar to the recent ones that have led to the hiring of ineffective or calamitous presidents, the last two hired through a search (Theobald and Wingard) fired or pressured into resigning. While we, along with the rest of the Temple community, still hope that the current presidential search will result in a leader who can help reverse this tide, we lack confidence in the process.

Among the 17 Search Advisory Committee members, 10 are trustees and 6 of those 10 were on the committee that selected Jason Wingard, who was forced to resign by the same Board after serving less than 2 years. That profound mistake would have been avoided had the Board done its due diligence and understood the mission of universities in general and Temple’s in particular. The current search committee has only two faculty members, one undergraduate, no graduate students, and no staff members.

To make things worse, there is no plan to bring finalists to campus to meet faculty and other stakeholders. While we are certain the committee is doing its best within the parameters the Board has set, this is not the route to the best outcome. 

The faculty has repeatedly attempted to call attention to these failures in leadership. A vote of No Confidence last April led by TAUP, the union representing faculty, librarians, and academic professionals, elicited over 1,000 votes. Overwhelming majorities (>80%) expressed no confidence in the Chair of the Board, the former President, and the Provost.

Apparently, the Board has not learned from this remarkable expression of faculty dissatisfaction, the strongest seen at Temple since the strike of 1991. So while we thank members of the Board for volunteering so much of their time to Temple and for their generous financial contributions, their performance obliges us to call for: the resignation of the Chair of the Board of Trustees; the restructuring of the Board under the state’s supervision; and the stepping down of the provost. 

If the presidential search has not been concluded by the time this op-ed is published, we call for a pause in the presidential search to allow for a more transparent and inclusive process. No matter the eventual outcome of the presidential search, we say this to the next president, to whom we wish the best: We all want Temple to be strong and prosper again so that it can fulfill its education missions, but we hope this letter makes clear that much work will have to be done to bring Temple out of the current crises and that the concerns we have articulated must be addressed.  We will do our share to accomplish these goals.  But we insist that these problems be acknowledged and that faculty, librarians, students, and other stakeholders be truly included in key decisions going forward.

While the specifics of restructuring the Board would be largely up to the state in consultation with the current Board, the goal should be to make Temple University truly a university of the stakeholders–its undergraduates, graduate and professional students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the Temple community so that they can all gain a real voice in the direction of our university.

Less than a decade ago, Temple was enjoying record enrollments and unprecedented accomplishments in research and creative activity. With Temple’s reputation at an all-time high, we were able to expand the reach of our Conwellian mission of bringing access to a great university education to the “acres of diamonds” in our own backyard and around the world.  We are certain that if the changes we all urgently need to see in Philadelphia’s public university are made, we can again become the university our city, the Commonwealth, our nation and the world deserve. 

The signatories speak on behalf only of themselves, not Temple University. We invite our colleagues to join us; anyone wishing to sign can do so here.

Nora Alter, Professor, Film and Media Arts

Lynne M. Andersson, Associate Professor of Management

Molefi Kete Asante, Professor of Africology

Kate Auerhahn, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice

Darius Balciunas, Professor of Biology

Gary Blau, Professor of Management

Eric Borguet, Hazel Tomlinson Professor of Chemistry

Seth Bruggeman, Professor of History, Director, Center for Public History

Vincenzo Carnevale, Associate Professor of Biology

Erik Cordes, Professor of Biology

Parkson Lee-Gau Chong, Professor of Medical Genetics and Molecular Biochemistry

Richard S. Cohen, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering (Emeritus)

Hai-Lung Dai, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry (former Provost)

Philip Dames, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Franklin A. Davis, Laura H. Carnell Professor (Emeritus) of Chemistry

Mark Feitelson, Professor of Biology

Arthur M. Feldman, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Medicine (former Executive Dean of Medicine and Chief Academic Officer at Temple Health System)

Barbara Ferman, Professor of Political Science

Paul B. Garrett, Associate Professor of Anthropology

Yury Grabovsky, Professor of Mathematics

Peter Gran, Professor of History

Cristian Gutierrez, Professor of Mathematics

Victor Gutierrez. Associate Professor of Geography, Environment and Urban Studies.

Raymond Habas, Professor of Biology

Donald Hantula, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

Jillian Harris, Associate Professor of Dance

John J Helferty, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Jody Hey, Professor of Biology

Art Hochner, Associate Professor (Emeritus) of Human Resource Management, past President of TAUP

Tonia Hsieh, Associate Professor of Biology

Trish Jones, Professor of Communication and Social Influence, Director of the Center for Conflict Management and Media Impact, past President of the Faculty Senate

Priya Joshi, Professor of English

Artemy M. Kalinovsky, Professor of Political Science

Adil I. Khan, Professor of Pathology

Mohammad F. Kiani, Professor and former chair of Mechanical Engineering

Michael Klein, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science (former Dean, College of Science and Technology)

Joshua Klugman, Associate Professor of Sociology

Rob Kulathinal, Associate Professor of Biology

Peter I. Lelkes, Laura H. Carnell Professor and Chair of Bioengineering

Michel Lemay, Professor of Bioengineering

Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion

Haijun Liu, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Joyce Zankel Lindorff, Professor of Keyboard Studies

Ling Liu, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Lee-Yuan Liu-Chen, Professor of Neural Sciences

Jay Lockenour, Professor of History

Hilary Iris Lowe, Associate Professor of History 

Marjatta Lyyra, Professor of Physics

Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Professor of Classics

Steve Newman, Associate Professor of English

Iyad Obeid, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Miles Orvell, Professor (Emeritus) of English and American Studies

Pepón Osorio, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Community Art

John Perdew, (former) Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics and Chemistry, now at Tulane University

Joseph Picone, Professor and former chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Fei Ren, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Brian Rider, Professor and Chair of Mathematics

Adrienn Ruzsinszky, (former) Professor of Physics, now at Tulane University

Eileen Ryan, Associate Professor of History

Justin Y. Shi, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science

Bryant Simon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of History

Laura Siminoff, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences (former Dean, College of Public Health)

David V. Smith, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

Miriam Solomon, Professor and Chair of Philosophy

Jeffrey Solow, Professor of Cello

Rachel Spigler, Associate Professor of Biology

Robert Stanley, Professor of Chemistry

Yugang Sun, Professor of Chemistry

Daniel Szyld, Professor of Mathematics

Rongsheng (Ross) Wang, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Katherine Willets, Professor of Chemistry

Byron Wolfe, Professor of Art, Chair of Art Department

Maurice Wright, Carnell Professor of Music Studies

Stephanie Wunder, Professor of Chemistry

Xiaoxing Xi, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics

Xifan Wu, Professor of Physics

Weidong Yang, Professor of Biology

Michael Zdilla, Professor of Chemistry