Join us as we discuss university governing boards with Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Professor Emeritus at Whitman College and author of the book The Autocratic Academy: Reenvisioning Rule within America’s Universities and Constance Penley, Professor Emerita at UC Santa Barbara and former President of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA).

Whether public or private, U.S. universities are autocratically ruled by external lay governing boards whose members are neither selected by nor accountable to their subjects, including faculty, staff, and students. However, this legally organized monopoly of power is increasingly checked by the academy’s incorporation into a financialized political economy. The accumulation of institutional debt, for example, renders American universities dependent on, if not subordinate to, powers beyond their control (for example, credit rating agencies, debt covenants, firms that manage so-called “alternative” investments, etc.). In short, the governing boards perched atop the organization charts of our universities are far more insecure than they appear, and it behooves us to expose and exploit that vulnerability.

• Timothy Kaufman-Osborn is professor emeritus at Whitman College and the author, most recently, of The Autocratic Academy: Reenvisioning Rule Within America’s Universities. He is a member of the steering committee of the Coalition for Action in Higher Education and, for the past two decades, has served on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
• Constance Penley is Professor Emerita of Film and Media Studies and Professor of the Graduate Division at UC Santa Barbara. She served as President of the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA), which is partnered with AAUP-AFT, from 2018 to 2025. CUCFA and the UCLA Faculty Association successfully sued the UC Regents to compel disclosure of the proposed DOJ settlement agreement, among many other efforts to hold campus leaders accountable.

This session is a part of the larger Jubilee School: College for All series.