A faculty member there writes: "We're going into an emergency faculty meeting today, and don't know what the result will be, but here's the latest,including the new 'dean's' insults towards our outgoing dean (who was beloved and admired by many)." The link suggests that the President had planned to fire the outgoing Dean. The new Interim Dean, a practitioner, self-describes himself as "nuttier than a fruitcake." A natural choice!
UPDATE: A reader writes:
You missed the new dean's key qualification: "Keefe, a 1978 graduate of the law school, and a personal injury attorney in Belleville, Ill. says it's 'not in his DNA' to say no to a Jesuit priest." Sounds like the President got his perfect candidate.
ANOTHER: This story gets worse, and in a way that suggests the University President is, indeed, the source of the problem. This article reports that the President has chosen not only a non-academic "yes man' to be Interim Dean, a man who self-describes as a "nut," but one who plans to keep practicing law--in other words, he will be a part-time Interim Dean. SLU, as faculty will know, has done a lot of good hiring the last few years, and I expect a lot of the younger faculty, as well as the well-known senior faculty, will be heading out the door. This actually seems worse than the DePaul situation of a couple of years ago. About the only thing that may save SLU at this point is the tight market for faculty hires due to the general economic situation. Even so....
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