More on the drama this past week involving UT Austin President Bill Powers

From CHE.  They actually miss a big part of the story:  Bill's political muscle and support goes back much farther than 2008, and dates especially from his time as Dean of the Law School at UT Austin (2000-2006), and the working relationship he established with many legislators.  (The legislature deregulated law school tuition [during a time when they were slashing state funding] before the university as a whole got the same outcome--this is when it became clear that Bill would end up as President.)  It also has to do with his status as one of the most high-profile lawyers in Texas--like many of my former colleagues at UT, Powers was involved in legal practice, as well as academics during the two decades before he became Dean.  (The joke used to be that the most prestigious firm in Texas was the University of Texas School of Law.)  I suspect it is true that Bill never treated some of the Regents very well, but it wasn't because he was "arrogant," it was because some of them were low-life yahoos (pals of Rick Perry), who didn't deserve the time of day.  There is no harder job in higher education than running a serious research university in a state with both a legislature and a Board of Regents that like to micromanage and which includes a lot of people with very little judgment or competence.  Bill Powers handled them all beautifully, all the while defending academic excellence.