3 December 2021: Clock Ticking on James Malatras' Tenure as SUNY Chancellor

Calls Mount for SUNY Chancellor’s Removal

This report picks up on the calls by students and the editorial board of the Albany Times-Union for State University of New York (SUNY) chancellor James Malatras to resign for the vicious texts he sent to other Cuomo administration staffers regarding Lindsey Boylan while she worked for the administration. It does add new analysis however, which we're featuring in the following excerpt:

The SUNY Board of Trustees, which will ultimately decide whether Malatras stays or goes, cannot ignore the issue, said Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, a former president of George Washington University and author of Presidencies Derailed: Why University Leaders Fail and How to Prevent It.

“It’s not about [Malatras], it’s about the job,” Trachtenberg said. “If your students are against you and your faculty are against you and your board of trustees are skeptical—whether that’s fair or just—the individual does not come first. The institution comes first.”

Even if the board decides Malatras shouldn’t lose his job over the text messages, it will be difficult for the chancellor to lead if he’s lost the trust of employees and students, Trachtenberg said.

“The question is—has it diminished his capacity to serve in a leadership position at a university?” Trachtenberg said. “It’s not a question of punishing him—it’s a question of serving the institution.”

While we're surprised that a book has actually been written on the topic of failing university presidents, Trachtenberg's advice is sound - the interests of the institution do need to come first. Given the unusual means by which Malatras was gifted with the plum chancellor job, it seems that he has little support to continue in the position outside the shrinking circle of his fellow dead-ender Cuomo loyalists. That means his effectiveness as a leader will become increasing limited over time, which will happen much more rapidly than we suspect he imagines.

And that means he needs to go. The sooner, the better for the interests of the institution.