In a March meeting with Rothman, Regents President Amy Bogost and Vice President Kyle Weatherly disclosed that an “unidentified majority of the Board of Regents had lost confidence in my leadership,” Rothman wrote in a March 26 letter to Bogost.
Rothman said the request surprised him because of “all that my team and I along with our universities have accomplished to move the Universities of Wisconsin forward.”
Article: 5 things to know about UW system President
Bogost and Weatherly gave him three options: announce his retirement for the end of 2026, resign with 120 days’ notice, or be fired, Rothman wrote.
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Under Rothman’s leadership, the UW system tightened teaching requirements for professors and redesigned general education courses to make it easier to transfer between schools.
The policies are a result of the state’s biennial budget negotiations, settled in July, which yielded a $256 million increase for the UW system but also mandated reforms.
During the fall semester, faculty across the UW system protested the teaching requirements, saying they threaten campus autonomy.
Faculty Senate bodies at more than half of the campuses voted against the measure, and a petition with hundreds of signatures circulated, saying the UW system’s policy, based on the law, overstepped its bounds.
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The Evers Board of Regents: if you successfully negotiate huge increases in funding and campus buildings for UW in exchange for viewpoint diversity, DEI reforms, and requirements that professors actually teach, we will fire you.
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In fact, the need for reform was underscored later when it was revealed, thanks to an audit demanded by Vos, that the Madison campus’ DEI programs had been wildly mismanaged.