One Lawyer President Lasted Only Six Days Before Tendering Resignation

People are often curious as to the longevity in office for college and university presidents. While tenures are often brief, such brevity is typically counted in years, not weeks or days (In fact the ACE 2017 Study on the American College President reported that the average tenure had decreased to 6.5 years down from seven years in 2011 and 8.5 years in 2006).

In the case of Anthony Roberts Appel, his time as President of Franklin and Marshall lasted a mere 52 days in 1962! Appel submitted his resignation after just six days on the job but stayed until the Board of Trustees named his successor at the end of the following month. Appel, who was 47 years old when he was appointed as the 10th president of Franklin and Marshall, resigned due to faculty dissatisfaction with the manner in which he was appointed following a forced resignation of his predecessor (Frederick de Wolfe Bolman) by the board of Trustees.

Upon learning of both the forced resignation of President Bolman and the appointment of President Appel, the faculty through their AAUP Chapter wrote the following to the Chair of the Board of Trustees:

The undersigned members of the faculty of Franklin and Marshall College, in response to tour announcement by telegram informing us of the replacement of Dr. Frederick deWolfe Bolman Jr. by Mr. Anthony R. Appel as President of Franklin and Marshall College, wish to make the following observation:

(1) It is our understanding that Dr. Bolman was requested to submit his resignation without having been given information concerning the basis for the request, and furthermore, was denied the opportunity to appear in his own behalf at the special meeting of the Board of Trustees held on September 5, 1962. We deplore this obvious violation of academic due process in short, we find it contrary to the fundamental concept of fair play inherent in judicial procedure.

(2) We are extremely distressed at the violation of the tradition established on this campus in which the faculty has participated in the selection of a President. Indeed by the action of the majority of the Members of the Board of Trustees in attendance at the meeting of September 5, Franklin and Marshall has fallen from its leadership among enlightened institutions with regard to participation of the faculty in the selection of a President. This is a grievous blow to the prestige of our College. To foist a President on a faculty not only demeans the faculty, it compounds the burden of an office staggering even under auspicious circumstances.

Our only hope for the future of our College lies in the knowledge that a sizable minority of the Board of Trustees strongly opposed the malpractices giving rise to the action of which your telegram advised us. For their courageous stand we commend them most highly. In their stand we hope for the future of our College.

[names omitted]

According to the Student Weekly, Anthony Appel was the third member of his family to have been appointed as president of Franklin and Marshall (his great grandfather and great uncle also served). He was a 1935 graduate of the College and a 1938 graduate of Dickinson Law School. Prior to being appointed as president, Appel served on the College’s Board of Trustees for five years, served as alumni council president, and co-chaired the College’s annual giving campaign. According to the newspaper, his only other experience in the field of education was serving as chair of the board of the Lancaster Theological Seminary. Appel was a practicing attorney, he was active in the community serving on other non-profit boards, and he was active politically with the local Republican Committee.

His resignation letter to the Chair of the Board of Trustees read:

Dear Mr. Schnader:

In confirmation of our telephone conversation today, I hereby submit my resignation as President of Franklin and Marshall College effective at the end of the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Trustees on October27, 1962.

Just as I was motivated by my love for my Alma Mater in accepting the election, I am likewise so motivated in submitting my resignation. As you know, I did not seek the position and in giving it up I am not thinking of myself, but of the fragmentation my election has caused.

Without malice, but with goodwill to all . . . faculty, staff, trustees, students, alumni and friends . . . let us now forthwith direct ourselves to making our College the best College it can be.

My law partners and I have agreed that I will be on a leave of absence in the interim.

With my respectful regards, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Anthony R. Appel (signed)

When Keith Spalding was named President to succeed Appel, the editorial in the Student Weekly proclaimed, “…the College came to the end of a stormy period.”

The lessons learned from this story are multi-fold. Focusing on lawyers and leadership though, one can surmise that Appel was moved by the faculty concerns regarding lack of due process and that in analyzing the situation like a lawyer, Appel knew the faculty were correct and his sense of fairness and justice prevailed. Also, lawyers are problem-solvers, and in hindsight it seems clear that Appel didn’t want to be the problem, but rather he desired to be part of the positive solution to help an institution he cared about deeply. President Appel exhibited outstanding leadership by sacrificing his own opportunity for the good of the institution. This is a lesson all higher education leaders should follow.

Legendary University Lawyer President Touts Consecutive Appointments Spanning More than 40 Years

E. Gordon Gee, JD, EdD, has had seven presidencies at five institutions of higher education spanning from the 1980s to present. Time magazine named him one of the top 10 university presidents in 2009. A graduate of Columbia University School of Law, Gee clerked at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals for Chief Justice David T. Lewis, and he worked at the U.S. Supreme Court for Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Gee entered in the academy in between his work at the courts, serving as assistant dean for administration at the University of Utah School of Law from 1973-1974. In 1975 he joined the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University as Assistant Dean and Associate Professor where he later became Associate Dean and Professor. He then moved to West Virginia University College of Law in 1979 as Dean and Professor of Law until 1981.

Gee’s first presidency at age 36 was at the University of West Virginia from 1981-1985. He departed to assume the presidency at the University of Colorado System from 1985-1990. In 1990 he was appointed as president at Ohio State University, whe

re he led the campus until 1998 when he left to become the president of Brown University. He stayed at Brown until 2000 when he joined Vanderbilt University as president until 2007. Ohio State wooed him back in 2007 where he stayed through 2013, and in 2014 he rejoined the University of West Virginia where he still serves.

Gee has been touted as “America’s university president,” and a giant among higher education leaders. He has called for recalibrating higher education and has advocated for significant changes in higher education, urging people to “Forget the ivory tower: colleges and universities are catalysts or economic development, stewards of public health, incubators of social policy and laboratories of discovery.” During his career he led a national effort to push universities to do more to help students achieve degree completion, worked on a state-wide effort to improve the quality and value of institutions of higher education, he has advocated for universities to defend free speech, strongly encouraged his campus community to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and in his recent State of the University Address, Gee declared the debate over the value of higher education over, proclaiming that, “It is more than worth it.”

In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education discussing the need for positive, long-lasting, and sustainable change in higher education, Gee’s advice to new presidents includes: immediately put forward a plan; take strategic action rather than spending too much time on strategic planning; and keep it simple – don’t make things too complicated.

Another Government Lawyer Selected for a Campus Presidency

On Thursday, November 17, 2022 New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas was appointed as the next president of Northern New Mexico College. This continues the trend of not just lawyers being appointed to the campus C-suite but it also continues to reinforce the unique set of skills that government lawyers bring to the job.

Balderas will assume the campus leadership role when his second term as Attorney General ends on December 31, 2022. A graduate of the University of New Mexico School of Law, Balderas has had a distinguished career in public service that includes two terms as the New Mexico State Auditor, more than two years in the New Mexico House of Representatives and service as an Assistant District Attorney for Bernalillo County.

According to the news account, the campus community is extremely happy with the news of the selection and pending final negotiations the Board will formally approve the contract and confirm the Attorney General’s new role.

There are many skills that government lawyers bring to the table as detailed in the article linked above and discussed in Chapter 4 of May it Please the Campus: Lawyers Leading Higher Education.

Balderas’s official appointment will make him the first lawyer president appointed in 2023, and the 65th distinct lawyer president appointed (71 in total as a number had more than one appointment) in the 2020s.