Manhattan School of Music is a venerable New York City institution, situated in the Morningside Heights/West Harlem neighborhood. Founded in 1918, MSM is one of the world’s premier conservatories of classical music and jazz. Recently, musical theatre has become an added focus. President James Gandre, formerly a dean and later provost at Roosevelt University in Chicago, earlier served as a student affairs administrator at MSM. Jim returned to MSM as president in May, 2013.

Terry: Jim, first, how in the world is MSM operating in the age of the pandemic? How are you teaching music in this new era?

Jim: Well, to say that we’ve changed our methods and way of operating would be an understatement. We are all dealing with moving to a virtual environment, but a virtual environment in the performing arts has additional hurdles. How does one perform when there are limits on numbers of people in a room and when you can’t be close to another? Of course, I’m biased, but I have to say our staff and faculty accomplished Herculean things on behalf of our students. First, we allowed our students to choose whether they wanted to learn on campus or be 100 percent remote. And, for those on campus, most of the classes they have in person are performance courses while the vast majority of their classes—about 80 percent—are online. For most of our classes, our faculty didn’t try to replicate what we did pre-pandemic, knowing that we couldn’t get close to that experience online. Instead, they decided to create new and different experiences. These included more focus on chamber music repertoire and in the case of opera and musical theatre, creating filmed versions of opera and musical theatre, recording indoors, and filming outside while physically distanced. These strategies have greatly expanded the learning of our students and it is likely that we will use much of what learned and continued to do some of this work once we are out of the pandemic. If anyone would like to view some of our students work, you can visit this site to see all of our livestreamed or prerecorded performances: https://www.msmnyc.edu/livestream/.

Terry: So, you have been able to maintain nearly all your desired enrollment. That’s quite an accomplishment! Tell us a bit more about your student body and where they go after graduation.

Jim: Our students come from more than 50 countries and nearly every US state. Indeed, 50 percent of our students are from outside the United States. So, as you might imagine, the pandemic had the potential to hit us particularly hard. We budgeted for a 10 percent decrease hoping that it wouldn’t be worse. The good news is that our enrollment was only eight percent down this fall and looks like we might get to only seven percent down for the spring. After graduation, our students, like students at all colleges and universities across the country, go on to a variety of careers. Of course, many of our students become professional musicians. We have Emmy, Tony, and dozens and dozens of Grammy Award winners. We have multiple members of every major symphony orchestra in America. Every major opera company has our graduates on their stages every year! Each year at the Metropolitan Opera alone, we have four to five dozen graduates performing either on stage, as music coaches, or as musicians in the orchestra. For me as president, it’s such a joy to go to Lincoln Center or Broadway or almost any jazz club here and see our graduates at work in nearly every performance. I take enormous pride in their accomplishments.

Terry: And who teaches at MSM?

Jim: Our faculty are amazing! The folks who teach privately—one-on-one weekly lessons—are national and international artists such as world-renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman, the great jazz bassist Ron Carter (also an alumnus!), or the Tony Award winner Randy Graff. Approximately 50 of our faculty are members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as members or former members of chamber ensembles such as the Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets. Collectively, our voice faculty have performed on all of the greatest opera stages of the world and have performed thousands of times at the Met Opera alone. This kind of conservatory training is very much patterned after an “old-world” artist/mentor-student model.

Terry: You’ve had some great success at building financial support for MSM. Tell us about that.

Jim: MSM has not had a great record of fundraising throughout its more than 100-year history. When I arrived back at MSM in 2013 (I was here before from 1985–2000), we were still doing great things training our students, but fundraising, which my former boss Chuck Middleton used to say provided the “margins of excellence,” was lackluster. We first stabilized our enrollment which had been seesawing for years. We began to show our board and our loyal, but small group of donors that we could be fiscally responsible and move towards greater heights. At that point, we took on what was for us a big project, a $16.5M renovation of our main performance space. We accomplished this on time and on budget, not an easy feat anywhere, especially in NYC where things normally cost more than almost anywhere else in the States. Once that was accomplished, we turned to the endowment. Just in the past half year, we have grown the endowment through cash and irrevocable pledges by more than $4M and we’re in a quiet campaign to raise $7M more during the next year. If we do this, our endowment will grow to $42M which is the size of our annual budget. This is not where we want to be, of course, but when I arrived the endowment was in the low $20Ms, so this will be a big achievement and milestone.

Terry: Schools in the arts have a long history as LGBTQ-friendly environments. What would you like to highlight about MSM’s support of students, faculty, and staff?

Jim: It’s true that arts schools have historically been more friendly to the LGBTQ community than others, but I wouldn’t say this was completely true or universal. Although I was out during my entire time at MSM—1985–2000 and when I returned in 2013—I had many colleagues here during my first tenure who were afraid to come out. I was a finalist for the presidency of a sister institution a decade-and-a-half ago and later found out from two different members of the search committee that the board chair said to them he wouldn’t allow a gay president and stopped the search. The good news is that today much of that has changed and nearly disappeared at these institutions (heterosexism, like racism, sexism, and other -isms, still exists on some level even in the best environment). I remember that when I was offered the presidency here, the board chair and I were talking and at one point he stopped and said, “How does Boris feel about this?” I answered that he would be thrilled, and the chair said, “Good,” and moved on with the rest of the conversation. You know, each year my husband Boris (Thomas, JD, PhD) and I host all of our identity student groups in our campus home and we always ask the questions “When did you first know I (Jim) was gay and how did that make you feel?” The two most common responses are “proud” and “safe.” For them, to see oneself in the leadership of the college is so critical. This is especially true for students from non-Western countries for whom my presence as an out gay man is nearly unbelievable as it simply would not happen in their countries.

Terry: I should mention that president Gandre’s husband, Boris Thomas, has attended several of the meetings and institutes of our organization.

Jim: Being the “first spouse” of any institution is a tough job. You’re nearly as visible as the president, you most often have some obligations to be “on” at various events (and for MSM at lots of performances), but you most often don’t get paid and most often the spouse has his/her/their own profession that has nothing to do with the institution with which he/she/they is intrinsically linked. Boris is amazing as the first spouse. He really enjoys the people here and the campus loves him and is always asking about him when he’s not at events (I sometimes think they like him far more than me!) My presidency would not be as successful without him, that’s for sure.

Terry: Congratulations to you both! I look forward to listening to more of your streaming content (https://www.msmnyc.edu/livestream/).

Jim: Thank you!

As we welcome Terry Allison in his new role, it’s time to thank our previous Executive Director and one of the co-founders of our organization, Charles R. “Chuck” Middleton.

After a six-decade career in both public and private institutions of higher education, Chuck retired as Roosevelt University’s 5th president in 2015. Subsequently he served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the City Colleges of Chicago. Chuck is a Senior Consultant at the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) and serves as a mentor to the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program. A British historian, in recognition of his academic achievements, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1989. In addition to his passion for and work in higher education, Chuck has always been active in civic and community engagement. His service encompassed advocacy for inclusiveness and social justice for all people, with a personal focus on the LGBTQ Community. Over the years he has served on numerous Boards of not for profit organizations including those of ACE, SAGEUSA, and PFLAG National. The first publicly acknowledged out gay male president at the time of his Roosevelt appointment in 2002, Chuck was a founding member of the LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education in 2010. After his retirement he served as its Executive Director, pro bono, until 2019.

Chuck and his husband, John Geary are now settled happily in California. They have been generous with their time and also generous donors to LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education. Thank you so much for your contributions to our organization.

PRESS RELEASE

LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education is pleased to announce the appointment of an Executive Director, Dr. Terry L. Allison of Indiana University South Bend. As chancellor of IU South Bend from 2013-18, Allison joined the young organization after his appointment at IU and has been an active member since 2013.  Dr. Erika Endrijonas, Superintendent-President of Pasadena City College and the organization’s current Co-Chair, notes “I am excited to welcome Dr. Allison as the Executive Director because he both knows how the organization evolved and he has some great ideas for how to expand our reach in support of LGBTQ leaders across all sectors of higher education.”  He served as co-chair of the program planning committee for the organization’s first two national institutes, was a member of the Finance Committee, and served on the Executive Board as Secretary/Treasurer of the organization from 2016-2018. He also has led several discussions at the American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and other venues on LGBTQ leadership in higher education. Allison will begin his part-time Executive Director position with LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education on August 1, 2020. The position was previously held by Dr. Charles R. Middleton, retired president of Roosevelt University of Chicago, Illinois.

Terry L. Allison is now Professor of English, teaching online in the English, Liberal Studies, and Theatre programs at Indiana University South Bend. He will continue to serve in this position while fulfilling the Executive Director role. Allison’s PhD is in Literature from the University of California, San Diego.  Prior to Indiana University South Bend, he served as Provost at Governors State University, and prior to that was Dean of Arts and Letters at California State University Los Angeles. He also worked in a number of faculty and administrative capacities at California State University, San Marcos, coming to that campus in its second year of existence. Allison has published literary, theatre, performance, and film criticism and is the author of CSU haiku. 

LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education advances effective leadership in the realm of post-secondary education, supports professional development of LGBTQ leaders in that sector, and provides education and advocacy regarding LGBTQ issues within the global academy and for the public at large. The organization counts over 100 members who currently or formerly served as presidents or chancellors from all sectors of higher education in the United States and Canada. LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education has held three international conferences since 2015. Members also meet regularly at annual meetings of the organization and have organized programs at ACE, the Association of Governing Boards (AGB), AASCU, and at state and regional conferences of community college leaders.

For further information about this appointment or LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education, please contact Dr. Erika Endrijonas at eendrijonas@pasadena.edu.

Susan E. Henking ponders how, in today’s challenging environment, college presidents should fight to sustain the best of what higher education has been and can be.

In November 2014, I marched the streets of Chicago with my partner and many others in response to a grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. I did not do so easily. And yet, I walked.

I was a college president.

I knew that Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, had lain down with students performing a die-in at her home and said, “Black lives matter.” And I knew that controversy swirled around her choice.

I knew that predecessor presidents, in the 19th and 20th centuries, had used their prestige, moral stature and bully pulpits to take stands around much more than the higher education reauthorization bill or the role of financial aid. Some of their positions appall me — and some seem to me to have been right. Most crucially, their willingness to speak to public issues of import that were both directly and less directly relevant to their immediate mission and job descriptions inspire me. They make me think about what has changed in the role of the college or university president in more recent years.

As I look back to November 2014, I know that my uncertainty about marching came in part from forces that shape today’s college presidency: the need to raise money, the complexities of admissions and enrollment marketing, financial storms, board leadership, social media eruptions that end presidencies, and much more. Of course, I was also concerned about the relevance of performative or expressive politics rather than policy change. But, I admit: it was mostly worry about my then institution and role that hampered me.

Then, as now, I asked myself what it might mean to be an inside leader with outside values — a college president who remains responsible both to the institution and its many constituencies and to the broader concept of citizenship and higher education’s claim to shape the public good. Had I, perhaps voluntarily, given up my freedom of speech or academic freedom by taking on the role of president?

What was the relation between my institutional role and my own views as scholar or citizen? Seeing higher education as contributing more than the simple sum of our impact on individuals, I wondered why we as presidents seem so silent. Yes, we have lobbying organizations in Washington — a whole alphabet soup of them — and many of us write op-eds and speak in various venues to the value of what we do. And yet …

I also asked myself about outsider — or, to use Malcom Gladwell’s oft-repeated terminology — outlier colleges and universities like the one I led in 2014, Shimer College. That institution was outside the mainstream of higher education in terms of various markers, including our very progressive values. Was our — or my — capacity to disagree with the powers that be in some arenas possible because we were so fragile in other ways? So, dare I say it, tiny and potentially irrelevant, allowing me to slip beneath radar screens as, for example, my peers elsewhere could not?

Today, my uncertainties remain.

I know what I have done when it comes to public speech as a college president. I am proud that I walked with those who knew the Ferguson decision was a negative judgment on our country’s capacity to address matters of race and policing. And I am proud of the letters I’ve signed, statements I’ve made and campus policies I’ve sought to bring forward. Like other presidents, I have signed on to statements about DACA and guns on campus, for example. I have supported other presidents who took on issues like divestment and boycotting with their boards, rescinded honorary degrees from sexual predators, and filed amicus briefs or engaged in lawsuits about matters of educational and public concern. I have written op-eds rejecting Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws and arguing against gun violence. I have worked to identify how to divest higher education advertising dollars from venues supporting white supremacy and advocated for refusing National Rifle Association dollars.

Such matters seem more and more urgent today, as the economic situation of higher education declines; as matters of central concern to civil society such as free speech, diversity, freedom of the press and education itself are under attack — and as racism, misogyny and other bigotries are on the rise; our roles in shaping lives and civil society are undervalued and misunderstood; and, perhaps, our impact is weakening. The situation facing us today is more serious than it was even in November 2014. I know many of my former peers have been important voices in opposing the Muslim travel ban, refusing support from corporations benefiting from child internments, supporting racial justice and making evident our commitment to the rights of the LGBTQ community while fighting on other fronts to sustain the best of what American higher education has been and can be.

Today I ask, however, not what can we do but what must we do?

I remain unsure where the line in the sand is for myself and for college presidents more generally. Yet I know we must not ignore the question. Leadership, perhaps, is the willingness to struggle in public — and to do so strategically so that our uncertainty does not mean we do too little, or act too late, in the face of well-organized hostility. This is our time and our responsibility.

From today’s vantage point, I would say: we must do more. All of us.

I stayed quiet about my HIV+ status for 30 years, but no longer. It’s time to fight again, like we did in the ’80s

By Raymond E. Crossman, Ph.D., President of Adler University, Co-Chair of LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education.

Since November’s presidential election, I have had an uneasy feeling of déjà vu. It took me a while to put my finger on exactly what I was remembering. Until I realized, it’s 1985. Now, just as then, we are living in a time when the president’s actions are leading to harm for marginalized people around the world.

My vantage point on 1985 is that I grew up in the 1980s in New York City in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. It was likely the latter part of the decade that I acquired HIV.

I have lived with HIV for about 30 years, and yet this disclosure is a new one for me to offer in my professional life. I am a university president who has been out as a gay man across my career, but up until now, disclosure about my HIV status has been on a need-to-know basis.

Why am I making it public now? Because of the parallels between then and now. In 1985, the president not speaking one particular word caused us injury and death. In 2017, the president speaking many incendiary words is causing injury and death.

It is difficult to explain what 1985 was like for me, when today’s prevailing narrative about the Reagan years and the 1980s is fond nostalgia. Fondly is not how I remember the 1980s. Sickness and death were everywhere around me.

I did not get tested when the HIV test became available in 1985, because no treatment was available and because I was scared. But I was sure I had acquired the virus that was revealing itself across my friendship and partner circles.

The government knew an epidemic was raging through marginalized communities, and public health strategies were available, but government policy reflected indifference and inaction. President Reagan did not say the word AIDS until 1985, after over 5,000 known AIDS deaths in the United States, and well after the scope of the coming pandemic was understood.

I was certain – as were many gay men – that few cared if we all died, because we heard those words often and from many. I believe the vitriol and volume of the hate speech of the 1980s has receded from most people’s memory. It has not receded from mine. I believed that dying from AIDS was simply part of being gay.

Today, I wonder whether many immigrants – and many people who might look like immigrants –feel now how I felt in the 1980s. I cannot know the contemporary experience of many marginalized groups, but I can imagine that many people – Muslims, women, people living with disabilities, people of color standing up against institutionalized racism, people at the intersection of these and many more identities – feel as abandoned by the state as I felt then.

The parallels between then and now are why I am disclosing my HIV status publicly. My status and my story are what I have to offer. We saved our community from extinction in the face of government- sanctioned indifference, hatred, and oppression. I not only survived the plague, but have achieved some level of success, as a university president, perhaps in part because of what I learned in surviving.

To be clear: We did not beat or cure AIDS in the 1980s. Many of us died across a protracted fight with society and the government. Our success was more for gay white men than it was for women, people of color, and people living in poverty and prisons. And millions around the world continue to acquire, live with, and die of AIDS in the shadow of indifference, hatred, and oppression. But we secured a specific and significant success, and I am here to tell about it.

Others have documented how Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) and ACT UP forced the government to respond to the public health crisis of HIV. My story is that I participated in that solution as a young person.

In 1985, I was 20. I expected to die within a few years. I felt powerless amidst sickness and death, anticipated symptoms and illness on any given morning, and yearned for an outlet for my sadness and anger. Fortunately there were wise elders to tell me what to do. I did not fully understand what I was doing when I volunteered or went to a protest. I was simply doing what those elders who led GMHC and ACT UP told us to do – without appreciating the leadership, strategy, and focus of our advocacy and political action.

The orchestrated posing of hundreds pretending to be dead in front of federal buildings, the relentless closing down of traffic and commerce, the messaging that straight people could not ignore – I participated in these actions, gradually understanding them as a solution, and sometimes choosing them over less productive behaviors that a kid pursues if he believes he’s living under a death sentence.

I find myself back in the 1980s as I listen to President Trump. But I’m not a kid. I am instead the product of schooling by wise elders and by 30 years of HIV.

I do ask myself why I didn’t disclose more publically until now. My list of answers is long and psychologically revealing: fear of repercussions (many real, some imagined), a desire not to be pitied or summed up by my status, a need to focus on others and to be useful, my own internalized heterosexism and homophobia, a need to remain private in a very public job.

Or, perhaps it’s that I was waiting to use this asset of mine when it’s most needed.

Students at my university – a university which is explicitly focused on social justice – ask me what to do right now. Black and brown students ask how to stand up to hate and violence. Queer students ask what it means that the Department of Education is led by someone who has supported discrimination and conversion therapy. Students ask how to translate their passions into actions that will matter. I realize they think I’m an elder who has answers, and I see they’re more ready than I was in the 1980s. I realize too I have some answers that I’ve learned from the successes and failures of the 1980s – lessons about leadership, strategy, and focus of advocacy and political action. I know how to fight for my life and an oppressed community and how to win.

Recently, Larry Kramer, one of the founders of GMHC and ACT UP, offered observations similar to mine. He said, “It’s the early days of AIDS all over again. I didn’t think this would ever happen. It makes you want to cry.”

I’ve cried too, Mr. Kramer. And I’ve paid attention. My tears are dry, and I’m ready. We have precedent and credentials to secure social justice.

Raymond E. Crossman, Ph.D. is president of Adler University. He is a social justice advocate and a psychologist.

By Charles R. Middleton, president emeritus of Roosevelt University, chair of the City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees and executive director of the LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education. 

June is Pride Month. All across the country, advocates for diversity and inclusion on our campuses are recognizing that the principles which underlie those fundamental goals of higher education are not only right, but they are also essential to help assure long-term success for all institutions.

And increasingly, though there remains much to be done, it is clear that we cannot achieve our maximum potential without taking full advantage of the considerable talent and commitment to our institutions that LGBTQ employees, students, alumni and community leaders bring.

At the dawn of the new millennium, to the best of our knowledge, there were only two openly LGBTQ presidents. Today, there are over 70—hardly a monumental shift but progress nonetheless. This is a reflection in part of the extraordinary transformation in the last decade and a half of the role that LGBTQ people play in society writ large and of the growing, but uneven acceptance of our presence in communities across the country. It also represents a generational shift where the young are far more likely to be inclusive than older folks. In short, our students are more progressive than others both on and off campus.

We LGBTQ presidents are to be found in a wide array of institutional types: in public and private, in community colleges and research universities, in for-profit and specialized institutions and in rural towns and the largest cities. We are distributed from Florida to Washington, from Maine to California, and across the vast Canadian countryside from Quebec Province to British Columbia.

Small wonder that several presidents joined me in developing our own organization, the LGBTQ Presidents in Higher Education, which is open automatically to any out president or chancellor who wishes to join. Through the organization, we communicate and provide advice and counsel on matters of leadership, professional enhancement and solving thorny problems of running our institutions. This year, we have become an affiliate member of ACE and will sponsor our second annual National LBGTQ Leadership Institute in New York City on June 24-25 (the first was held in Chicago last June and planning is underway for the third in Seattle next June).

Our goal as educators is to lead our campuses successfully through the uncharted waters of these challenging times and to focus on the success of our students as they prepare for engaged and fulfilling lives and careers to come. At our group’s meetings, these issues focus our deliberations on many topics, not least important among them our responsibility as presidents and chancellors to develop cadres of emerging leaders on our faculty and in the various administrative units on campus.

We take this responsibility very seriously. We each know from decades of personal experience that to be successful in tapping into the vast array of talent on our campuses, we need to be committed to the principle of total inclusively. Given the demographics of the country generally and of higher education itself, it increasingly will be a challenge to find sufficient numbers of talented and prepared people to take up the mantel of leadership at every level.

This is why it makes good institutional sense to spend time and effort to identify everyone—and I do mean everyone—who might help assure success in attaining the long-term educational goals of every institution.

It is also why we created this organization as a way to assure that our reach is national and international and includes all levels of campus work, not just the presidency. Perhaps most importantly, this organization will provide a mechanism for all people who share our goals, whatever their personal status, to participate in this work.

Please join us in this important effort to assure that all of our institutions take full advantage of leadership talent wherever it may be found and through that inclusiveness, help to promote our ongoing academic success well into the future.