Where Does the College Presidency Go From Here? - Commentary

Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, and former provost of Washington University in St. Louis and chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes: Since the disastrous congressional hearing on December 5, national news outlets have become obsessed with the presidents of three private universities that represent a tiny percentage of the roughly 4,000 colleges in the United States. The presidents made missteps in the hearing, which centered on whether they could have done more to stop antisemitic actions that took place on their campuses: Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.