Governor Glenn Youngkin has named Jim Donovan to the board at UVA. He’s a partner at the world’s second largest investment bank – Goldman Sachs – and was a consultant to Donald Trump during his first administration. His fiancé is Hope Hicks, who was Trump’s communications director.
John Harris was employed by the Carlisle Group where Youngkin was co-CEO before going into politics. Harris gave $13,500 to the governor’s campaign and has donated $80,000 to Youngkin’s political action committee.
Gene Lockhart was CEO of several major investment banks before starting his own venture capital firm. He lives in Palm Beach, has an MBA from Darden and created an endowment for men’s tennis at UVA – big enough to cover the program’s expenses in perpetuity.
Calvert Moore is president of her family’s investment firm and the daughter of a previous board member – Thomas Sanders the Third -- who was a partner at Morgan Stanley. Moore has served on several boards including the Museum of the City of New York and the American Civil War Museum.
Dick Chait is a national expert on university governance and a professor emeritus at Harvard. He says these choices align with national trends in higher ed.
“In the public sector, governance has become more political, but that’s true of nearly every institution in America.”
With so much business and financial expertise on the board, he says, public universities may be run more like corporations and their first priority may not be the school.
“There are many trustees who argue that they’re there to represent the taxpayer. I’m there to represent the governor. If the governor appoints you, the governor may control you, or to put it a different way, the governor may appoint people he or she can control.“
Speaking on the podcast Changing Higher Ed, he says, these appointments often mean political control of university leadership and curriculum in line with a particular ideology.
You can hear the podcast on university governance at
https://changinghighered.com/governance-challenges-in-higher-education/#:~:text=Drumm%20McNaughton%20and%20Dr.,have%20changed%20over%20the%20years.
