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Not to pile on (OK, to pile on), University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel showed us the stuff she is made of: greed. According to the Star Tribune April 5 editorial "A less-than-fond farewell at the U," Gabel herself mentioned the U's comparative salary lag for presidential compensation and that the University of Pittsburgh will allow for outside compensation opportunities. Million-dollar total compensation just doesn't cut it to lead our world-class university. Her failure to work the Legislature for U needs suggests another performance review failure: not giving a rip. I wonder who paid for her trip to Pittsburgh to interview for the new position. Gabel obviously had other interests than leading the U. Although her leaving comes at a particularly inopportune time, I say good riddance, before she does more damage.
Bob Meyerson, Atwater, Minn.
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As we spend the upcoming months and years pondering Gabel's legacy at the U, we must examine the way that her presidency has become a Rorschach test on higher education at large. Her former boosters represent a class of people who endorsed a superficial and corporate approach to the management of a public institution, one focused on efficiencies, cherry-picked metrics, growth and revenue. Of these supporters, none have lost more face than the nine regents who flew in the face of overwhelming public disgust to increase her pay in December 2021. The sacrifices they imposed on the university have never rung more hollow.
Her detractors, far more numerous, will define her presidency instead. Increasingly vocal student advocates and activists frustrated by cost and inaccessibility, Republicans infuriated by administrative bloat and equity, diversity and inclusion, and, most significant, an increasingly potent labor movement on campus — these are the people who will remember her with the least kindness, and they will not do so quietly.
But while many of Gabel's recent actions have been unusually brazen in their venality, the fact is that, frankly, there is nothing particularly unusual about them. This does not mean we should not be frustrated or outraged by them. Quite the contrary: It means that higher education nationwide has been the subject of deep institutional rot, and, unsurprisingly, the work needed to excise that rot will continue to fall onto the backs of those with too much to carry already.
