and online media, everyone seemed to know exactly what was going on and what needed to be done. On every campus there were seminars, workshops, and conferences which almost without exception hailed the student voice and extolled the protest movement. Any university event convened outside the authority of the protestors was interrupted and condemned. The problem was clear and the remedies straightforward. The first academic books on the crisis emerged within record time even as the protests were still gathering steam. The line between victim and villain was drawn clearly and quickly.
Working inside the turbulence, I was not at all certain that we had a deep enough understanding about what at root was driving the increasingly violent protests of students and, later, workers on our public university campuses. The quest to understand more deeply the origins, character, and consequences of the student protest movement of 2015–2016 is my first reason for writing this book.
Writing about student activism is inevitably a political activity. This book charts, even applauds, the direction of a movement or institution or nation, but also warns of consequences. My approach to the student protests is therefore both empathetic and critical. It is empathetic in that I recognise the two main fault lines in the attack on public universities after apartheid: cultural alienation and financial exclusion. I appreciate the power and the authenticity of student voices, especially in the 2015 period, and the need for leaders to listen and attend to what is being expressed by courageous student leaders.
At the same time my approach is critical in that I question and interrogate some of the main lines of attack on the public university, especially in 2016 – from simple untruths that billions of rands are being hoarded away by the state and universities, to the more dangerous position that violence against individual persons and public property can be justified by some theory of revolution, or by the logic of justified retaliation, or by no theory at all.
The account of leadership in this book does not accept the outright dismissal of student protests nor does it condone the unconditional celebration of student behaviour. If anything, the leadership stories that emerge from the interviews I held with vice-chancellors draw attention to the complexity in trying to explain these sustained and destructive protests. What the voices of leaders in this book reveal is that the solutions to the complex crisis appear to be quite simple in a rational world. But the operational world for higher education leaders, as will be demonstrated, is hardly rational. Thus, an engagement with the political dimensions of the student protests takes centre stage in this account.
What we do not know
My second reason for writing this book is to address a gap in the literature on university leadership by providing the perspectives of sitting vice-chancellors in the context of nationwide crises in higher education. There are, of course, retrospective accounts of the general experiences of retired university leaders in South Africa, and ample biographical accounts of the lives and ambitions of vice-chancellors on the job.1 But none of these publications captures the ambition and anxiety of leadership practice during a period of sustained crisis. That is what this book offers.
The paucity of relevant research is also evident in the international scholarship on leaders and crisis. Over the past two decades there has been an explosion of literature on education leadership, but that work is focused largely on the work of school principals and superintendents. Studies of university presidents (as the leaders are called in the US) or vice-chancellors (the title used in the UK and its former colonies) are less common. And even in these rare studies, research on the heads of universities in times of crisis is often reported by those at a distance from institutional calamities. There is, of course, a burgeoning literature on business leaders in times of crisis, but this tradition focuses almost entirely on the role of chief executives.2 Moreover, it is a literature that is largely descriptive, often autobiographical, and almost always prescriptive in nature.
What constitutes a ‘crisis’ in much of the literature outside of Africa is also in question. Scholars write about ‘tragedies as crisis’, such as a mass shooting on a campus (Virginia Tech, for example),3 the crashing of a plane carrying campus citizens (Oklahoma State University),4 the uncovering of a serial child molester among the football coaching staff (Pennsylvania State University),5 allegations of sexual assault by members of a campus sports team (Duke University),6 or the torture and killing of a gay student (University of Wyoming).7 This first category of crisis is typically a single, tragic event requiring an emergency reaction or a disaster management response and for which the immediate responsibility lies with a small group or even a single individual.
The second category of crisis, the kind that this book focuses on, includes those cases in which the institution turns on itself; that is, when students mobilise to disrupt university operations through both peaceful and violent means over lengthy periods of time. In this category of crisis, there is no single individual to call to account, but rather an often amorphous mass of protestors priding themselves on the fact that there is no one leader.
In the first category, the critical incident is short-lived, intensive, and contained, even though institutional and personal effects may last well into the future. In the second case, the incidents are many, complex, and open-ended,8 so that the institutional leadership finds itself perpetually stressed and drained as the crisis continues over days, weeks, months, and even years. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that two very different kinds of leadership persona are required, and that different leadership effects emerge from each of the two crisis scenarios.
In any case, the higher education literature desperately needs a base of knowledge on crisis leadership. In particular, we need to know how university leaders are affected by and respond to crises in a sphere of work that, in the post-independence context, has become known for its chronic instability. The stakes are high. A serious crisis can be cataclysmic for both individuals and the university as a whole. ‘One event,’ holds an authoritative source on the matter, ‘can change the course of a campus, alter the reputation of a leader, and forever change the external perception of an institution.’9
The negative impact on university leaders can be devastating for institutions as leaders resign or find themselves effectively fired for mismanaging a crisis. Trust relationships between students and staff or staff and management can break down irrevocably in a stand-off protest. The academic credibility of an institution can go downhill rapidly when, for example, there is evidence of graduate certificate fraud. Donors might reconsider funding, with lasting reputational damage to a university. Prospective students might look elsewhere when extreme initiation practices result in injury or death. Both the public and university leaders therefore have a vested interest in understanding what a crisis means, how to manage it, and, ideally, how to prevent it from happening in the first place. On the positive side, effective leaders can teach us much about how to turn crisis into opportunity. Either way, we need to know about the relationship between leaders and crises, and especially the effects of crisis on this most valuable and often well-paid resource, the university principal.
Insider research
The period covered by this study of university leaders and campus crisis is roughly March 2015 through September 2016. Between June and August 2016, I met with eleven vice-chancellors from South Africa’s most troubled universities and interviewed them in depth. The objective was to ascertain their understanding of the university crisis, their managerial and personal responses on their own campuses, and their view of the future of the country’s higher learning institutions. As the rector of the University of the Free State since 2009, I am therefore the twelfth vice-chancellor in this study of the origins, meanings, and longer-term effects of the crisis on universities. In writing this book, I have interspersed my own leadership experiences among those of my eleven colleagues. Based on my direct experiences with students, I bring in the relational aspects of the university leader and students in the years leading up to the crisis and in the period of turmoil up until I resigned as vice-chancellor at the end of September 2016.
Of course I am emotionally and intellectually invested in this study. I do not stand outside the turmoil of 2015–2016. I approach the inquiry with empathetic commitment to my fellow vice-chancellors but also to my students. I am not unaffected by what I hear both from poor students as well as from struggling university leaders. Like all vice-chancellors, I recognise that the students have a point to their struggle,