BLOOMINGTON, Ind.
A group of Black professors and staff members at Indiana University want the school’s faculty to reject a resolution seeking a special review on the leadership of President Adam Herbert.
The group denounced the actions of those who pushed for last week’s rare mass meeting of Bloomington campus faculty members to consider the resolution, saying that criticism of the university’s first Black president has been unfair and unbalanced.
Kevin Brown, a law professor and co-president of the Black Faculty and Staff Council, said during a news conference earlier this week that the school’s Board of Trustees should refuse to perform the special review even if a majority of faculty members support it.
He said such a review would “besmirch the reputation of Indiana University and set a very troubling precedent. … African-Americans are likely to feel that this is a hostile environment.”
Hundreds of professors attended the mass meeting after weeks of complaints about Herbert’s lack of accessibility since he became president in 2003 and his handling of the search for a new Bloomington campus chancellor.
Copies of the proposed resolutions have been sent to all Bloomington faculty members, who have until Nov. 25 to vote on them.
