Our Commitment to the Essential Role of Shared Governance for Columbia
Dear members of the Columbia community:
Last year, we announced a review of our University Senate, with a focus on how we affirm its enduring value, and the vital role it has played in shaping our University for more than five decades, while also responding to calls for reform from our community and adapting to the changing needs of our time. At the same time, the Board of Trustees undertook a careful examination of its own practices, operations, and governance.
Today, we’re pleased to share the results of both of those reviews, which call for important reforms to the Senate and the Board, and which we believe will strengthen both our governance and our responsiveness to the Columbia community. Across higher education, and at Columbia, we’ve seen and experienced a time of significant challenge, a period in which trust has been weakened and frayed. Within Columbia, we are hopeful that these proposals will also provide an opportunity for us to strengthen essential relationships, and to work collaboratively across the institution, as we move our great University forward.
The Senate Review Committee was chaired by Professor Tom Merrill and consisted of five tenured faculty members, including two long-serving current senators, and two former members of our Board. We are enormously grateful for the Committee’s work, which reflects deep analysis and extensive engagement from faculty, students, staff, alumni, and others across the University. The final report, in full, can be found here.
As part of its work, the Committee sought input from the Senate, including meetings with its Executive Committee. We deeply appreciate Senate Executive Committee Chair Jeanine D’Armiento’s and Vice Chair Holger Klein’s input into the final report—it is all the better for their insights and historical knowledge. The report is grounded in the essential role in shared governance that the Senate does and can play; and we believe it provides an extremely valuable roadmap for further improving shared governance at Columbia. We embrace the Committee’s thoughtful, thorough recommendations, as further outlined below.
Similarly, the Board of Trustees has taken a collaborative and comprehensive approach to scrutinizing its own governance, informed by the community’s calls for reform. We have found several key areas that would benefit from change. We’ve also carefully benchmarked our model against those of peer institutions and current best practices in nonprofit and higher education governance. We’ve identified a set of recommendations for immediate implementation, also outlined below. To be clear, we see these changes as part of important next steps in a process of continued review, consultation, and reflection—all essential for a best-in-class institution.
We know many in our community have additional ideas about what the Board and the Senate might do, and that there will be suggestions and feedback in the months ahead. We welcome those ideas and we look forward to and are committed to increased engagement not only with the Senate, but also with other parts of our community such as department heads, faculty leadership groups, and student leadership across the institution, all of whom play critical roles in shared governance and in shaping Columbia now and into the future. Working together, we are confident we can create the framework for Columbia to truly thrive, today and well into the future.
Sincerely,
David J. Greenwald
Co-Chair, Columbia University Board of Trustees
Jeh Charles Johnson
Co-Chair, Columbia University Board of Trustees
The full Senate Review Committee report can be found here. The proposed reforms address a wide range of issues, including the need for better communication between Columbia’s Administration and the Senate, as well as Columbia’s Trustees and the Senate, the importance of balancing the value of institutional memory with the importance of democratic turnover, and the need to ensure adequate resources for the Senate and its staff. Many of the proposals in the report are, as makes sense, for the Senate itself to take up, and we endorse them and encourage their adoption. As far as the recommendations that fall to the Board, we plan to embrace them all, as follows:
Create an Administrative Liaison Between the University Senior Administration and the Senate
As described in the report, the creation of a new position to act as liaison between the University’s senior administration and the Senate is essential to improving communications between the Senate and the Administration. We have seen, firsthand, how helpful this might be and how many issues the Senate tackles that would be aided by better coordination, in ways large and small, with the Administration. Our hope is that the liaison can be named before the end of the academic year, so that the individual selected can use the summer to become familiar with the workings of the Senate, meet with all relevant constituencies, and be fully up to speed by the start of the fall term. This liaison, as the report suggests, would be a member of the Senate Executive Committee and an ex-officio member of other committees of the Senate, in order to be fully informed about issues being considered by the Senate and to facilitate efficient and adequate coordination with the appropriate administrators on those issues.
As the report notes, the administrative liaison can be implemented either by the Senate, through changes to its bylaws, or by the Trustees, through statute amendments. We plan to discuss with the Senate how to most quickly operationalize this necessary improvement.
Adopt 12-Year Term Limits
We support the report’s carefully considered recommendation to establish 12-year term limits for Senators, aligned with those for Trustees. As the Committee noted, this approach balances renewal with the need to retain experienced leadership. Term limits also promote broader community participation and introduction of new and diverse perspectives. Senate leadership has indicated to us that they too are supportive of term limits.
We intend to work collaboratively with the Senate over the next several months to develop a concrete implementation plan on term limits, which would take into account service to date, in time for our August board meeting, and in order to be effective for the 2027 election cycle. As the report explains, this change can be made to the by-laws or statutorily—we prefer the former, but should statutory change be the simpler path forward, the Board, after consultation with the Senate, is open to taking this approach.
Develop a Plan to Improve Communication and Understanding Between the Board and the Senate
Healthy shared governance requires trust; better communication and joint work will help strengthen the relationship between the Trustees and the Senate, and the Board values its time with the Senate and has benefitted from the myriad ways in which we engage. Trustees already meet regularly with the Senate Executive Committee and Student Affairs Committee members, and Senators regularly attend Trustee Board and Committee meetings. But there is more we can do.
We will implement the Committee’s suggestion that Trustee Committee Chairs meet with the chairs of the “parallel” Senate committees to share information and insights about pending issues of mutual concern. Further, the Board’s Trusteeship Committee will meet more regularly with the Senate Executive Committee to explore together the types of Board candidates who could add value to the Board. In addition, the Board will look for other informal ways to connect with Senators to strengthen our working relationships. We imagine there are multiple pathways to achieve this and would welcome input from the Senate.
Work to Ensure Adequate Senate Resources
The Board asks that the Administration ensure that the Senate has adequate resources, especially administrative support, for their necessary and important work.
Create Task Forces on Areas for Further Study
We strongly endorse the report’s recommendations for the creation of three task forces: one on Senate committee structure, a second on the apportionment of Senate seats, and the third, a Presidential Task Force to further review and clarify the duties and powers of the Senate. The report describes the need for each of these task forces in some detail, and we concur. For the third task force, the Senate Review Committee makes plain that critical work remains in this regard, noting a lack of clarity about the extent to which “the authority of the board has been delegated to the senate,” a situation which has created “confusion and at times conflict.” The committee members add that it would also “make sense to look also at the statutory authority of the President, as the “chief officer” of the University and the presiding officer of the Senate with a view toward allowing the President and the Senate to work together to minimize the need for issues to be referred to the Trustees,” especially in relation to the ordinary operation of the University.
We believe this work to be essential for our institution and have asked Acting President Shipman to create a Presidential task force as recommended in the report, the charge of which is to clarify, and propose potential modifications to the roles and responsibilities that the Board of Trustees delegates to the Administration and the Senate. We believe clarity and a shared understanding about jurisdictional issues is critical to effective shared governance, and to our collective ability to work together constructively on behalf of our university. We’ve asked President-designate Mnookin to carry this committee’s work forward, with the goal of issuing recommendations by the end of the fall 2026 term. We look forward to discussing the timing and formation of the other two task forces with the Senate.
Just as improved communication, regular renewal, and enhanced perspectives were deemed-essential for the Senate, the Trustees believe these are also critical reforms for the Board itself. In particular, the Board’s recently adopted reforms address updated trustee terms, committee leadership turnover, broader recruitment practices, and strengthened governance practices, among other critical areas discussed below.
Trustee Term Limits to Support Regular Renewal
Twelve-year term limits are already in place for trustees; now, the Board has taken the additional step of splitting that limit into three four-year terms, which will allow for even more regular review of performance, fit, interest, and general governance standards. Along with the new term structure, the board is proposing term limits of up to six years for all chair positions, and a standardized process for membership on the board’s executive committee. In addition, board chairs and committee chair positions will also require annual assessment to remain in the role.
Recruitment Reform
We intend to recruit wider perspectives on the Board more regularly and will prioritize the recruitment of Trustees with a broader range of experience—including in higher education, health care, and emerging fields such as artificial intelligence. We agree with the suggestion, which we have heard from many corners, that our Board would benefit greatly from more members with experience in academia and higher education leadership; this is a top priority on which we are already working.
Enhanced Oversight of the University’s Health Sciences Enterprise
This oversight will place a deeper focus on risk, financial performance, and patient safety that is essential given the size and scope of our medical enterprise. The trustees will also prioritize the recruitment of Trustees with healthcare operations, finance, and risk expertise.
The committee may also include non-Trustee advisory members to ensure appropriate levels of expertise.
Strengthened Governance Practices
We are enhancing our annual Board review and committee performance assessments. No institution of governance is above critical scrutiny and reform, and we believe consistent, regular review of the Board, bolstered by the increased communication with the community, is vital to ensure we are effective, responsive, and fulfilling our fiduciary responsibilities. The Board has also refreshed its onboarding and orientation process for new Trustees to include a comprehensive introduction to the academy, the professoriate, and the central role faculty play in the life and vibrancy of the University. The Board will work in partnership with our academic community and key faculty members to create this more robust orientation process.