Board of Trustees Chairman Richard B. DeWolfe’s resignation should have no effect on the search for a new Boston University president or the direction of the university, Chancellor John Silber said in a phone interview Saturday morning.
Silber, who is currently fulfilling BU’s presidential duties after the July resignation of former President Jon Westling, said DeWolfe is not currently the trustee most involved in the presidential search process, and thus his resignation would not slow any of the board’s progress on the search.
Board Chairman Emeritus Earle C. Cooley is heading the board’s preliminary advisory committee, the group responsible for making the first list of presidential candidates, according to Silber. Though DeWolfe would have been chairman of the board’s presidential selection committee, he was not directing the initial selection process, Silber said.
DeWolfe, who has served as chairman of the board since April 2001, announced in a letter to the trustees dated Nov. 14 that he plans to resign at the board’s January 2003 meeting. In the letter, he cited a desire to start a new business after selling his real estate firm over the summer for $149 million in cash, according to sources who received the letter. The next board chairman will chair the presidential selection committee, according to Silber.
Silber said the Board of Trustees is well-structured to sustain changes at the top and said DeWolfe’s resignation will have little effect on the direction of the university because it is the president’s job, not the Board of Trustees chairman’s, to provide vision for the university’s future. Trustees Christopher Barreca and David D’Alessandro, the board’s current vice-chairmen, are DeWolfe’s most likely successors, Silber confirmed.
‘The Board of Trustees has already indicated that if they lack a chairman, they always want to know who is going to back him up,’ Silber said. ‘For that reason, we have a chairman and two vice chairmen … All the trustees have to do, come January, is decide which of the two vice chairmen they wish to elect as chairman.’
Barreca is currently a lawyer in Connecticut and D’Alessandro is chairman and CEO of Boston-based John Hancock Financial Services, which recently pledged $20 million to name the Student Village project after the company.
Silber said he has and will continue to play the role of facilitator in helping the board find candidates for president of the university, though he is not directing the search or deciding who the board interviews, he reiterated.
Silber said DeWolfe’s resignation was not sudden and said the message members of the university community should take from DeWolfe’s announcement is that ‘everything is in order.’ Rather than having a ‘problem of surprise resignations,’ he said, ‘we have a problem of surprising continuity,’ referring to BU’s history of long-term presidents and chairmen of the Board of Trustees.
‘I think the message that [the BU community] should get from this is that everything is in order,’ he said. ‘We have a chairman who has announced two months in advance his intention to resign in January. We have a board that has two vice-chairmen. We don’t have a vacancy with regard to presidential responsibility because those have been assigned to a chancellor who is fairly well experienced in this regard.
‘The university has moved without any hiccup since Jon Westling left,’ he continued. ‘He left it in damn good shape, and it is still in good shape.’
Silber said DeWolfe did speak to him about possibly resigning before DeWolfe mailed the letter to the Board of Trustees. Silber also pointed out he did not ask DeWolfe to write the letter.
DeWolfe’s reasons for resigning the chairmanship do make sense, Silber said, because he is too young to retire from the business world and just completed the sale of his real estate company. DeWolfe’s priorities changed because of his company’s sale and, ‘considering the magnitude of the responsibilities he would have in connection with Boston University,’ he thought it was time to resign, according to Silber. The company’s merger will be complete Jan. 1, Silber said.
‘He has sold a company for one hell of a lot of money,’ Silber said. ‘He didn’t have that sale worked out last summer. It is easy to understand why what he would say last summer is different from what he says now.’
Silber, who first served as BU’s president from 1971 to 1996, said he would like to see the presidential search process completed ‘as quickly as possible.’ While Silber said ‘being allowed to run a university is like being given a great toy as a grown man,’ he added the job is no longer a learning experience for him.
‘I have done this for 25-and-a-half years you know I am not learning much in the process of doing this again,’ he said.
Silber also said he will offer his resignation as chancellor to whomever the board selects to run the university and serve in whatever capacity the new president wants, he said.
‘When the new president is appointed, I will undoubtedly meet with him and I will tell him that I am offering my resignation right then and there,’ Silber said.