This one’s just starting to filter through the Classics list (tip o’ the pileus to Patrick Rourke and Susan Lusnia) … The Washington Post has a lengthy piece on the University of Virginia’s ousting of their President Teresa Sullivan … the reasons,  inter alia:

Leaders of the University of Virginia’s governing board ousted President Teresa Sullivan last week largely because of her unwillingness to consider dramatic program cuts in the face of dwindling resources and for her perceived reluctance to approach the school with the bottom-line mentality of a corporate chief executive.

[…]

The campaign to remove Sullivan began around October, the sources said. The Dragas group coalesced around a consensus that Sullivan was moving too slowly. Besides broad philosophical differences, they had at least one specific quibble: They felt Sullivan lacked the mettle to trim or shut down programs that couldn’t sustain themselves financially, such as obscure academic departments in classics and German.

• via: U-Va. board leader wanted Teresa Sullivan to make cuts (Washington Post)

Obscure???? They’ve got more than ten faculty there, many of whom seem to  be in endowed positions (to say nothing of one member being Director of Undergraduate studies and another being Director of Graduate Studies) … whatever the case,  it seems like a messy situation and probably should be a heads up for the Classics department at U-Va and, of course, all of us folks who will be rising to defend it …