LOCAL COLUMN
OPINION: Thank God for the UNM Board of Regents
In my 45 years as a faculty member, and six years more as a regent, at the University of New Mexico, I never thought that I would say what I am going to say now: Thank God for the Board of Regents. Against the prevailing power politics of the state and the efforts of many well-meaning and well-situated people who are sure that they know best who should be the next president of UNM, the Board of Regents has conducted a fully transparent and highly substantive search that is about to bring an exceptionally well-qualified new president to the university.
I don鈥檛 know who it will be, but the five finalists are all well-qualified to succeed President Garnett Stokes, who has been the most effective president UNM has seen in the last half-century. She is also one of the longest serving. In the COVID era, when most universities faced chaos, Stokes maintained calm and kept her focus on long-term goals. As a consequence, the university grew and prospered. We should be so fortunate with our next president.
With the help of a nationally recognized search firm, the university announced the criteria on which the candidates would be evaluated last November. That necessarily centered on UNM鈥檚 strategic plan, called UNM 2040, which had been the subject of discussion on campus for the years leading up to the search. No surprise 鈥� one of the most important issues was the ability of the candidate to arrive in Albuquerque and actually run an incredibly complex university.
While there may still be some people who think that experience running a university is unnecessary 鈥� any good businessperson could take over the helm and guide our ship 鈥� the gap between running a for-profit business, for example, and running a flagship state university (with a very large health system serving all comers) is cavernous. Dealing with employees in the private sector is nothing like dealing with a workforce of largely tenured individuals whom the university depends upon, and who work at UNM despite the fact that they are paid less than they would be paid elsewhere. These tenured faculty don鈥檛 just work for the university, they and their students, and the research grants they generate, also fund the university. In a practical sense, they are the university. I cannot imagine anything more disheartening to the faculty than the appointment of a glitzy new president who has never put in the time necessary to earn a doctorate.
Being president of the UNM is a really hard job. Knowing how to run a generic university is not sufficient to run UNM; it is, however, necessary 鈥� it is the starting point for evaluating serious candidates. If you are going to have to learn about how to run a university on the fly during your first year in the job, it is the wrong job for you.
Five candidates rose to the top, and all five are the chief academic officers at their universities, or the CEOs of their healthcare programs. All five are award-winning teachers as well as scholars with exceptional academic pedigrees.
Dr. Watkins is provost (chief academic officer) at University of California, Riverside, a highly diverse branch of the University of California. Her Ph.D in the History of Science is from Harvard, and she is a brilliant historian as well as a respected teacher.
Dr. Monga is provost at University of Georgia (and he was interim president at west Georgia), and he has written well-received materials on consumer psychology. His Ph.D. is from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Dr. Barker is vice president at Purdue. He received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and writes on molecular action of drugs of abuse.
Dr. Goldstein, who is provost at UC Irvine, has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, and he has also taught at Yale and the University of Chicago. He writes in biochemistry, and has also won teaching awards.
Dr. Link is provost at the University of North Dakota. He received his Ph.D. in Literature from Purdue, and he has written several books, including some on 19th century science fiction. All five have spoken to the public at UNM; all five have taken questions from anyone who wanted to ask one. This is a truly transparent search.
The regents should be commended for establishing such a transparent selection process that has been so successful in identifying presidential candidates. So what could go wrong? Plenty, of course 鈥� much will depend upon the personality of the next president. Let鈥檚 hope he or she will listen as carefully as Stokes has to all of the interest groups on and off campus. And let鈥檚 hope the regents in 2026 select someone who will be able to serve as long as Stokes has, bringing us a refuge from the chaos that churns life at so many other institutions of higher education around the country.
Robert Schwartz is Weihofen professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He served on the UNM Board of Regents from 2019-2025.
