BY HANK REICHMAN

On March 17, President Elizabeth Hillman of Mills College announced that the trustees of the 169-year-old women’s college in Oakland, California, had decided to close admissions after this year and stop conferring degrees no later than Fall 2023, thereby effectively closing the school.  According to Hillman, an undefined “Mills Institute” will continue on the school’s campus.

The decision blind-sided faculty members, staff, alumnae, and current students, who had not been informed that such a drastic move was even under consideration.  In 2017, the Mills administration laid off five full-time tenured faculty members as part of a vaguely formulated “Financial Stabilization Plan” previously rejected overwhelmingly by the faculty (see https://academeblog.org/2017/07/04/mills-college-lays-off-five-tenured-profesors/).  Since that time, faculty members contend, the administration has shared almost no meaningful financial data with them.

On Friday, the Mills Faculty Executive and Academic Promotion and Tenure Committees issued the following open letter to the trustees on behalf of the Mills faculty:

We, the faculty of Mills College, stand in solidarity with the students, alumnae/i, and friends of Mills College who have shared their anger, shock, and support since President Hillman’s announcement of March 17, 2021.  We are outraged that the Board of Trustees has moved to close the academic programs of Mills College by 2023.  This action comes without any due consultation with the faculty, abrogating the norms of shared governance that are essential to successful institutions of higher education.

This leaves us deeply concerned about what will happen to our students, to the vision of an accessible, inclusive liberal arts education and the historical legacy of our College if Mills stops conferring degrees in 2023.

Mills has been a powerful force in women’s education since 1852, and it is rare in its commitment to making high quality liberal arts education widely available.  It is a national model that has led the way to progressively solving issues that many educational institutions and organizations are just beginning to struggle with.  They look to Mills for its inclusivity, diversity and relevance.

Mills is also a Hispanic Serving Institution, and it was the first women’s college to develop a transgender-inclusive admissions policy.  Our undergraduate student body is 65% students of color, 58% LGBTQ students, 44% first generation students, and 17% returning students.  Our graduate programs have trained generations who have pursued highly successful artistic, professional, and scholarly careers.
It is an institution we cannot afford to lose.

We are also troubled that the Board has made this announcement without providing any information about the possibility of future employment opportunities or severance packages for Mills faculty and staff, or any details about the pathways to graduation that will be offered to students.  The failure to thoroughly consider the impacts of this decision on those most affected is a profound disrespect to our community.  Finally, we believe that a Mills Institute created without any meaningful faculty input—and that leaves out students, who are the very reason for the existence of the College–will not reflect the historical legacy and values of Mills.

We call on the Board to engage faculty, staff, students, alumnae/i, and the surrounding East Oakland community in any further discussion of the future of Mills, and to make transparent and public any plan to partner with other higher education institutions.

The Faculty Executive Committee: David Bernstein, chair; Tomás Galguera; Jay Gupta; Mark Henderson; Priya Kandaswamy; Kim Magowan; Dean Morier; Ann Murphy; Carol Theokary

Academic Tenure and Promotion Committee: Diane Cady; Kristina Faul; Nalini Ghuman, chair; Martha Johnson; Brinda Mehta

Contact: Mills Board Chair, Katie Sanborn, ksanborn@mills.edu;  Beth Hillman, President: 510-430-2094; president@mills.edu

On March 26, angry students and alums protested outside the school, demanding a reversal of the decision. “I stand with you to demand that the trustees go back to the table!” Oakland City Council Member Sheng Thao, who took classes at Mills in 2010, told the crowd.  “If we were at the table, we would find an answer.”  East Bay Congresswoman Barbara Lee, also a Mills alum, also called on the board to reconsider.

“Mills College has been essential in the recruiting and retention of Black and Latin students, and must be able to continue in that important role,” said Lee, a Democrat representing a district that includes the Mills campus.  “In light of these concerns, I am asking the Board of Trustees to reconsider the decision to close the college, and to explore all available funding options to meet its financial challenges.”  Lee attended Mills College between 1969 and 1973 as a young single mother raising two sons. She was receiving public assistance at the time and often brought her boys to class when there was no one to care for them.

“It is critical that the (college) board does everything possible to maintain Mills’ historic commitment to diversity and equity, and not allow any path that would diminish opportunities for African American and Latin students.  Such opportunities are already too rare in California,” Lee said.

For months rumors had swirled about negotiations with U.C. Berkeley, nine miles away.  Berkeley already houses some students in underutilized Mills College dorms, and recently announced a new year-long residential program for freshmen at Mills.  Many Mills students and alumnae, who three decades ago successfully reversed a move to make the school coeducational, voiced concern that the Berkeley cohort would include men.  For the Berkeley administration, which is dealing with a campus housing crisis, the biggest attraction Mills can offer is its land and potential as an auxiliary site.

Responding to those efforts, Berkeley professors Michael Burawoy and Celeste Langan issued a statement today on behalf of the Berkeley Faculty Association, which said in part:

Of course, our first response is one of sympathy and concern for our faculty colleagues at Mills who have lost their jobs.  Perhaps a second, equally automatic response might be to ask if our campus can do anything to ameliorate their plight.  No doubt public universities are in no position—financially or otherwise—to enter the business of saving private colleges, but any possible acquisition of Mills College should be more than a simple land grab.

To help the Mills administration deal with the dismay and outrage of its faculty, the Berkeley administration has offered token support and vague promises with unknown funding.  Mills faculty have been asked to prepare dossiers if they want to be considered for positions on our campus.  Berkeley departments will then be asked whether they have any interest in any of the candidates.  As far as we know, the terms of any such appointment and how they might affect a department’s future faculty positions have not yet been worked out.

We can all learn from the Mills experience.  We have to be especially vigilant in times of crisis—especially, when high-finance is at stake.  It is not enough for the Academic Senate to be running surveys on this, that and the other—including surveys about shared governance itself.  We need to be exercising shared governance, not waiting to be “consulted” after pivotal decisions are made.  That is the only way to avoid being blindsided.

Can Mills be saved?  Frankly, the situation is grim.  But hopefully the faculty, students, and alums can work with the community and political leaders like Rep. Lee to salvage the situation.  Certainly any efforts in that direction merit broad support and readers of this blog are encouraged to make their views known to President Hillman and board chair Sanborn.

But there is a much broader lesson here.  As the forthcoming report of the AAUP omnibus investigation of shared governance violations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will detail, these sorts of dramatic moves more often than not are the culmination of years of mismanagement produced by top-down corporate-style governance.  Certainly that is what occurred at Mills.  When, four years ago, the college administration laid off tenured faculty and ballyhooed its now obviously failed “Financial Stabilization Plan,” it rejected a thoughtful response from the faculty, which included real concessions.  Instead, the trustees and administration thumbed their noses at the faculty (and the students) and continued merrily down the road to disaster, principles of shared governance be damned.  Might the closure have been averted if instead the trustees and administration had worked with rather than against the faculty?  We’ll never know, and surely more than a few small private colleges are facing genuine and serious financial challenges, exacerbated by the pandemic, even when they are well-governed.  (Although many, including Mills, have also received funds from the several rescue plans provided by the federal government.)  But one thing is clear: the more the trustees and administrations of colleges and universities fail to involve faculty in a meaningful way in the future of their institutions, the more likely it is that the tragedy unfolding at Mills will not be the end of this.