Too much 'sunshine' could burn U

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Minnesota faces a big decision — who will lead its flagship university? Answering this question requires asking another: How should the University of Minnesota identify and hire its next president in a battle with other universities searching for the best talent?

Here are two options:

Option one: Open the door to multiple finalists to compete in the sunshine of public vetting, in which students, faculty, legislators and Minnesotans weigh in with their questions and preferences.

You may be nodding in agreement. The argument that we should all have the chance to check out the talents and fit of the candidates for our major public university is compelling. It feels right: Sunshine fits with Minnesota's culture of openness, the university's values of consultation to hear multiple, varied voices and populist suspicions of cloistered processes.

Option two is a necessary alternative because it recognizes the nitty-gritty reality of intense national competition for university presidents. This option defers to the representative search committee to identify candidates with the best records of running universities, interview them, and make recommendations to the democratically selected Board of Regents who will select one finalist to visit campus.

Searching for a terrific president of the University of Minnesota puts us in cutthroat competition with other top schools across the country. A very small group of the best candidates will have outstanding options, including the option of staying at their current institutions.

A process that publicly names multiple finalists will put Minnesota at a disadvantage. Our best candidates are almost certainly high-ranking administrators at other universities, who will likely withdraw if they are told that they are one of multiple public finalists. In fact, this is exactly what has happened in the past, and what brought us President Joan Gabel in 2019 when her three competitors refused to have their names made public and dropped out.

Why do the best candidates recoil from public naming as finalists? Entering a public search with other candidates exposes them to risk. Leaders, alumni and donors at the candidate's home institution will certainly feel slighted after learning that their colleague had considered leaving. Further, the potential for public disclosure that they failed to get the position may further tarnish their standing at their home institution and in the eyes of other universities who may have considered them in future searches.

Knowing all this, the very best candidates, who enjoy the strongest relationships at their current institutions and have the brightest prospects on the national market for university presidents, will simply decline to participate in our search.

Hold up, you may be thinking — what about transparency? The principle that public decisions should be deliberated in the bright sunshine of public scrutiny is an important part of our traditions, and our laws, including the federal Freedom of Information Act, which gives us the right to request access to government records, and the Minnesota's Data Practices Act that grants us access to government data.

Too much sunshine, as we know, can burn you.

Sunshine laws were created with great hope and promise that they would combat corruption and improve accountability. Unfortunately, their track record has been mixed. Requiring open meetings and publicly recorded votes in Congress revealed the workings of lawmakers to the public, yes, but also to lobbyists who use the clarity to punish the disloyal. The ironic result: Transparency laws fueled the proliferation of lobbyists who followed the actions of lawmakers in ways that were not possible when meetings were closed and votes were less frequent. Today, taking a vote based on judgment and conviction can be career ending.

And sunshine laws can be abused. A few years ago United Patriots for Accountability used Minnesota's Government Data Practices Act to "bury school districts" in Mankato by requesting 2 million pages of documents to deter schools from teaching about white supremacy, Black Lives Matter and systemic racism.

But the most important unintended casualty is how sunshine laws interfere with the search for the truth and compromise. Candid private conversations among policymakers have been replaced too often with speechifying and grandstanding to please political supporters and reap future backing. Challenging conversations and debates are squashed.

The point: Transparency is important, but it should not be an end in and of itself. A fully transparent process may doom the search for the best University of Minnesota president. It may instead generate posturing to advance political agendas and lobbying by special interests.

Minnesota needs a university president with exceptional skills who can usher in a new era of greatness. The best process for achieving that is to rely on the exceptional search committee to identify candidates and on the representative, diverse and democratically selected 12 members of the Board of Regents to hire the best.

Lawrence R. Jacobs is McKnight Presidential Chair in public affairs, the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for political studies, and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota.