Protesting criticism of former President Gene Nichol by fellow board members, Paul Blair has announced his resignation from the William & Mary Board of Visitors. In a letter to the William & Mary community posted on a Student Assembly web page, he praised Nichol’s track record of promoting diversity at the university. Nichol resigned last week after the Board refused to new his employment contract.
Blair’s letter lends some insight into the reaction of Board members to the firestorm set off by Nichol’s abrupt resignation.
In praising Mr. Nichol I in no way seek to diminish the critical work and achievements of our former President Tim Sullivan. They are many. Some would try
to drive a wedge between Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Nichol, because Mr. Nichol takes credit (and is blamed) for progressive policies now in place, some of which I think built upon Mr. Sullivan’s work. …There has been an incipient effort by some members of the Board of Visitors to pick apart President Nichol’s accomplishments. To what end? They gained their stated objective. I have also seen mean-spirited communications that are not worthy of the professional deliberations of any managing board, but most especially not the Board of Visitors of William and Mary. Such communications call into question the real motivation for the initial decision not to renew the President’s contract.
I know the reasoned reactions, as well as the emotional ones, of Board members are in response to the President’s message of February 12th to the William and Mary Community. Would I have refrained from some of what Mr. Nichol said? Certainly, but then I knew more than he.
Based on this letter, I have to modify a key statement that I included in a previous post (“The Nichol Resignation Narrative Looks Weaker and Weaker“): that the Board of Visitors decision not to renew Nichol’s contract was unanimous. As Blair makes clear, Blair was one among “several” board members who fought for the renewal of the contract. (However, Board member John W. Gerdelman confirmed to the Daily Press that board members were unanimous in their final decision, although no formal vote was taken.)
The letter also highlights what some board members are not saying publicly: They were angered by the way in which Nichol, in his resignation letter, had hogged the credit for achieving greater diversity at William & Mary — presumably at the expense of his much-beloved predecessor Timothy Sullivan. Not all BoV members, it appears, were as willing as Blair to overlook Nichol’s one-fingered salute to them on his way out.
