Drinking the Kool-Aid

In letter released today System-wide Senate Chair Croughan and Vice-Chair Powell (together with high-ranking UCOP staff representatives) express disappointment for the way supporters of the "no-confidence" vote have

chosen to blame President Yudof for the University’s economic troubles, rather than recognizing all that he has done to help us overcome them.

Beside the obvious bad taste of having the Senate Chair and Vice Chair vouch for the UC President, this is probably a sign that the no-confidence campaign is effective, perhaps more than expected. A couple of things should be noted nonetheless:

1. Nobody is assigning Yudof exclusive responsibility for the University's troubles. There's plenty of blame to go around, at UCOP and in Sacramento.
2. But Yudof — along with senior management at UCOP —is responsible for the way the financial crisis has been handled: for the lack of transparency, for the egregious breach of shared governance conveyed by the Pitts memo, for almost doubling the number of senior administrators earning over $200K/year between 2006 and 2008 and the unjustified pay raises, as everybody else's salary is cut.
   

So this is not personal. But beside a fundamental disagreement over the what kind of public university we want in California, Yudof does share part of the blame for the current situation. A vote of no-confidence would send a strong signal that UC faculty and staff need to have a voice in the way the current situation is handled.

As to the signatories of the letter, they're either buying into UCOP's propaganda hook, line, and sinker, or they were under pressure to sign. Not sure which one is better.