Simon Newman, the university president who said This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies…put a Glock to their heads,
has resigned.
This is what happens when you hire somebody to run a university who has no competency to do so.
Mr. Newman has almost 30 years of experience working as an executive with a strong background in private equity, strategy consulting, and operations. He is the former managing director of the private equity fund JP Capital Partners, as well as president and CEO of Cornerstone Management Group, founded in 1997.
During his career he has started or co-founded four different businesses, completed more than $33 billion in transactions, and raised more than $3 billion in equity funding for ventures and bids he originated. He has led several business turnarounds and delivered more than $200 million in profit improvements.
There’s nothing in that list of accomplishments to suggest that he was at all appropriately prepared to run an educational institution. But some people see dollar signs and figure that’s what a university is all about, so they bring in the money man.
Next up for eviction: Bruce Harreld.
During the Dec. 9 meeting of the UI Staff Council, Harreld said that any instructor who goes into a class without having completed a lesson plan “should be shot.”
The business world must be a really tough place if they routinely deal with difficulties with summary executions.