Rutgers President Jonathon Holloway addresses the crowd at the 2024 Rutgers University Commencement at SHI Stadium. (Nick Romanenko | Rutgers University)
When Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway steps down next summer at the end of his five-year contract, he’ll join a national wave of college presidents who have surrendered their posts amid controversy over campus protests.
Campus unrest and activism, particularly over the war in Gaza, have driven several college presidents to resign in recent years, including Columbia University’s Minouche Shafik, University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and Harvard’s Claudine Gay. Other college presidents have faced but resisted pressure to resign or have been censured.
Even before the pandemic or the recent wave of campus activism, being a college president was a complex job, said Hironao Okahana, assistant vice president and executive director at the American Council on Education’s Education Futures Lab.
“You’re not only the leader for teaching and learning, but in a place like Rutgers, you’re overseeing a massive research enterprise and a large-scale athletic organization. You’re also one of the larger employers in your area. You run, in some cases, major medical centers. That comes with a range of stakeholders to engage with on behalf of the institution, from students, faculty, staff, and other administrators, to alums, board members, community members and local, state, and federal legislators and other policymakers.”
Holloway, a historian and the 67,000-student school’s first Black president, told NJ.com that he was “at wit’s end” after nearly two years of campus protests that prompted him to take a police escort on public outings. Faculty, staff, and students held daily protests, including outside Holloway’s home, during a five-day faculty strike in April 2023 that threatened to derail final exams. Last spring, protests over Gaza culminated in a four-day pro-Palestinian solidarity camp on the College Avenue campus that also threatened finals and graduation.
“I don’t want to be in an environment where I need, where my family needs, protection. That’s the part I didn’t bargain for,” he told the newspaper. “It was put to me like, ‘This is what it’s going to be.’ Now if I’m ever in public, I have security with me.”
Students targeting administrators during protests are nothing new, said Robert Shibley, special counsel for campus advocacy at the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“At Columbia in 1968, they held the dean hostage for a day in his own office, and he continued to be the dean for many years after that,” Shibley said, adding that dean remained at Columbia even after a disgruntled student shot him four years later.
But Holloway’s public admission that toxic politics had driven his decision is unusual, Shibley added.
“Maybe there’s some hope there, in that other leaders who have influence would start to realize that they actually need to address the underlying problems here — and the fundamental, underlying problem on so many campuses is that people just don’t understand how to get along with and civilly disagree with people who are different from themselves,” Shibley said. “College really should be the ideal place for people to learn how to do that.”
Shibley’s foundation released a report earlier this month about free speech on college campuses, and Rutgers didn’t do well. Of more than 250 colleges ranked, Rutgers came in at 198th.
Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to some of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Holloway faced criticism for his handling of the Gaza protests. After first threatening to shut down the encampment and sending the police, Holloway agreed to some of the student protestors’ demands, including creating an Arab cultural center on campus and welcoming displaced Palestinian students to finish their education at Rutgers. Students peacefully dismantled their tents afterward.
But some New Jersey officials, including Gov. Phil Murphy, said Holloway ignored Jewish students’ concerns while rewarding protestors who “broke every rule in the book.” Later, members of Congress grilled him in Washington, D.C.
Holloway’s decision to step down comes as colleges nationally are struggling with falling enrollment and dwindling state support.
Yet since Holloway took over in July 2020, Rutgers has seen some significant successes.
It climbed in national rankings and saw applications jump more than 60%, with a surge in applications from out-of-state and international students, the school said. Fundraising and research revenue also rose, with more than $250 million in donations last year and a record $970 million in research grants and sponsored programs, the school said.
“Jonathan Holloway has led Rutgers with integrity, strong values and a commitment to service and civility, while helping to steer the university through challenges facing higher education — including a global pandemic, shifting labor demands and a Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in admissions,” said Rutgers Board of Governors Chair Amy Towers.
Not everyone is sad to see him go.
Todd Wolfson is national president of the Association of American University Professors and also heads the Rutgers chapter of the AAUP-AFT, which represents 6,000 full-time Rutgers faculty, graduate workers, and others.
“When President Holloway came to Rutgers four years ago, we welcomed him and his promise to bring a new direction to many initiatives we value at our university — particularly his promise to build a better, more collaborative relationship with our unions,” Wolfson said. “We were sorely disappointed that he didn’t take the opportunity to lead his administration in this way, including in bargaining our new contracts in spring 2023, which were only concluded after Rutgers’ first-ever educators’ strike.”
Holloway, Rutgers’ 21st president, will stay in his post until his contract ends on June 30. He will rejoin the faculty after taking a yearlong sabbatical during the 2025-26 academic year to return to longstanding research projects, the school announced Tuesday.
“Serving as the university president has been an enormous privilege and responsibility,” he said in a letter to the Rutgers community. “This decision is my own and reflects my own rumination about how best to be of service.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX