Republicans in Wisconsin want answers and are vowing to retaliate after the Universities of Wisconsin system Board of Regents fired President Jay Rothman on Tuesday night with no public explanation.
Accusing the regents of blatant partisanship, Republicans in the State Legislature are planning to hold a hearing on the firing and to vote against 10 board appointees who have been nominated and are already serving on the board but haven’t been confirmed. The Senate’s GOP-controlled Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, which is holding the hearing, can’t stop the nominations on its own, but the mounting threats may set up a showdown over who serves on the board if the full Republican-majority Legislature takes up the fight.
Rothman, who has led the 25-campus system for almost four years, has said he doesn’t know why he was fired and defended his tenure. In a series of letters made public last week, he accused the board of trying to push him out without explanation.
The board hasn’t publicly specified why it decided to fire Rothman. In a statement read at Tuesday’s meeting, the board president referred to the annual performance review process—the results of which were shared with Rothman along with “clear feedback regarding leadership expectations.” That review hasn’t been made public, and Rothman said his most recent evaluation was “overwhelmingly positive.”
Others suggest Rothman was aware of board concerns and is peddling a false narrative.
Speaking anonymously, a source familiar with the conversations to remove the system president told Inside Higher Ed that Rothman had long-simmering tensions with the board and had threatened to quit multiple times. They argued that Rothman had lost the faith of the chancellors who served under him and whose perspectives the regents have to consider.
“I think that the notion that he is unaware of the problems and challenges and people’s concerns is bullshit. He absolutely is aware. He absolutely has been informed by the regents in many different conversations,” the source said. “And it’s not just the regents who are the ones who have concerns. They are responsible for managing over a dozen campuses, and many of the chancellors on those campuses also had concerns and complaints about his leadership, and he is very much aware of that.”
(Rothman did not respond to a request for comment sent by LinkedIn.)
Democratic state senator Chris Larson, a member of the Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, also said he knew of an instance in 2023 when Rothman threatened to quit.
At the time, GOP lawmakers were demanding the system cut spending on diversity, equity and inclusion practices in exchange for the release of $800 million in state funding. The Board of Regents rejected the deal in a 9-to-8 vote before reversing course and approving it in late 2023. Larson said Rothman fought for the DEI cuts behind the scenes.
“Rothman threatened to resign if he didn’t get his way,” Larson said.
Although Rothman was hired by a board with a majority appointed by former Republican governor Scott Walker, the membership shifted as terms expired and Walker’s replacement, Democrat Tony Evers, named new picks. Now, Evers’s appointees comprise nearly all of the 18-member board.
And Republicans believe those Democratic-affiliated picks have a partisan axe to grind.
State senator Rob Hutton, a Republican and chair of the Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, accused regents of straying “into backroom maneuvering that further diminishes the reputation of the UW brand and undermines its long-term mission of preparing our students for an ever-changing marketplace” in a social media post after Rothman was fired.
But Democratic reactions to Rothman’s termination have been somewhat muted.
Larson argued that Rothman was unwilling to defend higher education from right-wing attacks and had apparently been given guidance by the board for months and thus had ample opportunities to address their concerns. Ultimately, he cast the firing as a personnel issue. Despite the lack of public discussion, Larson said he was not concerned about the process.
State representative Jodi Emerson, a Democrat on the Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities, expressed disappointment with Republicans who have cast the firing as partisan.
“I am disappointed in some of my colleagues across the aisle who are blaming President Rothman’s termination on extreme partisanship before knowing all the details. We need to stop partisan finger-pointing and focus on what Wisconsinites really care about, which is supporting the future of the UW System,” Emerson wrote in a statement shared with Inside Higher Ed.
The governor’s office pointed to statements made earlier this week in which Evers noted that the board had the right to fire Rothman but struck a neutral tone on the decision. Evers has neither explicitly supported nor condemned firing Rothman in his public remarks this week.
Although some have speculated online that Evers wanted the system head job, his spokesperson Britt Cudaback dismissed that idea, adding that Evers laughed at the question and “is looking forward to hanging out with his nine grandkids when he gets done being governor.”
Faculty members across the system were also puzzled by the firing. Some publicly supported the move since Rothman had cut faculty jobs, closed campuses and yielded to Republican demands to slash DEI efforts across the system.
But like GOP lawmakers, faculty have voiced concerns about the board’s lack of transparency. (Regents did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Patricia Terry, an engineering professor at University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and a member of the UW System Shared Governance Council, said she was shocked by the move to fire Rothman and that faculty had not been given any indication that his termination was looming.
“We appreciate transparency, and this appears to have been done with zero transparency,” she said. “The Board of Regents said that there were a number of meetings over a period of time where it was indicated to Jay that there needed to be some improvement, but none of this was communicated externally. The lack of transparency is concerning to all of us.”
While some Democratic lawmakers and faculty members have blasted Rothman for his decision-making over the years, she believes he did “a reasonably good job” and that some of the concerns others have raised fail to account for broader political matters that he was unable to control, such as changes to general education and teaching workloads, which were driven by the Legislature.
As the system sets out to hire a new leader, Terry hopes it’s someone who strongly supports shared governance, operates with transparency and recognizes the role regional campuses play.
“Shared governance is still very important in the operation of a university. I hope we get a system president who does not solely focus on UW Madison and its status as the premier [Research-1] university in the state, but also pays attention to the regional comprehensive universities, because we are also very important economic drivers to the state,” she said. “I hope that we get the attention that we deserve and that this person leads with transparency.”
