LSA Dean Edie Goldenberg was one of five finalists for the University presidency - until she withdrew her name just hours before the top candidates were announced.
The identity of the fifth finalist was unknown until sources confirmed yesterday that Goldenberg was also seriously considered for the presidency.
Goldenberg - the first woman to lead the University's largest academic unit - would have been the only internal finalist recommended by the Presidential Search Advisory Committee.
But in the wake of a court decision that barred private meetings between individual regents and the candidates, Goldenberg dropped out the afternoon before PSAC released the names of the four finalists - instead of the intended five.
"I had a sense it was Edie," Regent Andrea Fischer Newman (R-Ann Arbor) told The Michigan Daily yesterday. "I didn't find out for certain until Monday." Newman said she asked Goldenberg for confirmation after she heard rumors Monday about the dean's candidacy.
Goldenberg told the Daily yesterday that she did want to comment about her candidacy.
"I don't intend to comment on any aspect of the process while it is underway," she said.
Goldenberg, a political science and public policy professor, has served as LSA dean since 1989. She was awarded the annual Sarah Goddard Power Award earlier this year for her service to women on campus.
"She has done some truly impressive things on this campus in support of women," said Jean Loup, a University librarian and former chair of the faculty's governing body.
Goldenberg, who joined the University faculty in 1974, specializes in many policy areas including the relationship between the media and politics, political campaigns and civil service reforms.
When PSAC Chair Jeffrey Lehman announced the committee's recommendations on Oct. 17, he told the board that the "fifth candidate" withdrew after the "final phase had been restructured."
According to the board's planned final phase of the search, candidates would have met privately with individual regents in addition to the public interview and town-hall sessions. The lawsuit - brought by The Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press and The Ann Arbor News -contended that any private meetings with the candidates would violate the state's Open Meetings Act.
Circuit Court Judge Melinda Morris agreed and issued a preliminary injunction against the board that prohibited those meetings.
At the Oct. 17 meeting, Lehman read a statement for the fifth candidate:
"I cannot go forward with such a process because it no longer provides any opportunity for candid conversations about sensitive issues," he read.
Newman said she "respects (Goldenberg's) judgment."
"She felt it was important to have one-on-one meetings," Newman said. "She felt she couldn't make a decision unless it was a well-informed decision."
Vice President for University Relations Walter Harrison said the candidate's decision indicates the strong negative limitations that the lawsuit has put on the search process.
"We lost a quality candidate," Harrison said. "It says a lot about the real restrictions on the search that have been imposed. It is just common sense to me that candidates would like to be able to talk privately with regents."
Harrison also said the court decision made it especially difficult for an internal candidate to stay in the search.
"An internal candidate in any job will have more of a sense of things he/she might want to iron out with board members," Harrison said. "That person might be more acutely conscious of the need to have a sense of who the board was."
Loup agreed that internal candidates face additional pressure.
"It is really hard to be an internal candidate for a lot of positions," Loup said. "Everything that you've ever done that someone's criticized comes out. Why would you want to go through that in a public setting?"
Loup said that under Goldenberg's leadership, LSA has renewed its emphasis on undergraduate education and has been strengthened financially.
"I know she is viewed nationally very highly," Loup said. "She is one of really not that many women that are viewed that way in a national sense."
However, Loup also acknowledged that while Goldenberg is "highly valued as a colleague" among the University's deans, some faculty members do not share that view.
"She takes strong positions and then some faculty get caught in that," Loup said.
"Those who seem angriest are those who are still struggling with how life has changed since they entered the professoriate," Loup added, referring to the progress that women have made in higher education.
Physiology Prof. Louis D'Alecy said she has been a "fairly controversial" dean among faculty members.
"There were situations where controversial things caused faculty to be upset," D'Alecy said. "Some of those things have been ironed out now."
In a 1994 survey in which the LSA faculty evaluated Goldenberg, she was most criticized for not weighing the opinions of all sections of the department's faculty. Some criticized the survey's results, however, because only about 25 percent of the department's faculty members responded.
Since the day Lehman announced his "regrets" that the fifth candidate dropped out, members of the University community, including the regents, have been left wondering about the candidate's identity.
"Until Edie tells me she was the fifth candidate, I don't want to comment on rumor or speculation," Regent Daniel Horning (R-Grand Haven) said yesterday.
Regent Deane Baker (R-Ann Arbor) said yesterday that he was not aware that Goldenberg was a finalist for the position.
Goldenberg's name had been rumored as a potential successor to former President James Duderstadt since the search process began about a year ago and Newman said that prospect was never discounted.
"I started hearing rumblings during the summer of people who had pulled out," Newman said. "Edie's name never came up."
Chemistry Prof. Thomas Dunn, chair of the faculty's governing body, said he had originally thought Goldenberg could have been the fifth candidate, but did not think Lehman's explanation would fit her reasoning.
"I couldn't think why she would need to talk to each of the regents individually," Dunn said. "She already knows the regents and has already been here."
Newman said that "a few days ago," Goldenberg told members of the LSA "visiting committee" that she had been the fifth candidate. The committee, made up of members from outside the University community, serves as an advisory group on various LSA issues. Most University schools and colleges have similar committees.
Goldenberg earned an undergraduate political science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967 and later a master's degree and Ph.D. from Stanford University. As LSA dean, she oversees an operating budget of about $100 million, a faculty of more than 800 and a student body of about 18,000.
The East St. Louis, Ill., native also has worked outside higher education - as a consultant and administrator in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in Washington, D.C. and as an intern reporter at The Boston Globe.
"She certainly has the qualifications to be president in my mind at an institution of higher learning," Newman said. "I expect that if Edie wants to be a president somewhere, someday, she will be a president."
The board plans to meet on Tuesday to begin public deliberations about the four finalists. They are Carol Christ, provost and vice chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley; University of Pennsylvania Provost Stanley Chodorow; Dartmouth Provost and former University Law School Dean Lee Bollinger; and Provost and Vice Chancellor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Larry Faulkner.
"I believe we have four excellent people willing to go forward," Harrison said. "Absent this restriction, we would have had five."
- Daily Staff Reporter Jeff Eldridge contributed to this report.