What is a vote of no confidence about?
It's not about whether Wagner is a bad guy, and it's not about whether he has made mistakes. Nor is it about whether he has ever done a positive thing for Emory. It's about whether one has confidence in his future leadership.
I urge both the faculty and the Laney Graduate Students to submit a vote of no confidence in Wagner, and I aim to demonstrate in this piece that any reasonable understanding of confidence rejects Wagner.
I believe Wagner's recent article in Emory Magazine featuring the Three-Fifths Compromise is sufficient to justify not just the faculty censure, which I applaud, but also a vote of no confidence.
As a University President in the South, Wagner makes innumerable decisions that effect race. An enormous part of his ethical leadership is how he deals with questions of race.
Yet he has demonstrated that his understanding of what it means to take race into account lags behind that of a middle school history student.
An apology is welcome but does not change the extreme void of expertise required to make the statement in the first place.
A passenger jet pilot that forgets to refuel and must attempt an aquatic landing should not keep his job because he is good at apologizing.
Would you have the confidence to get in a plane with such a pilot? Even if he is great with maps, funny on the intercom and always on time?
Above-average competence elsewhere does not legitimize voids of expertise in crucial aspects of the job.
In addition, Wagner's vision of University Governance is troublingly simplistic. In response to all process concerns, he has repeatedly claimed "Emory is a Republic, not a Democracy." The fact that he thinks that this even responds to faculty and student concerns is problematic.
Democracy does not require everyone to vote on everything, and a Republic still must honor norms of process.
Wagner has claimed to desire to reform institutional process but, ironically enough, does not seem to understand that compromise is a two-way street.
In his last meeting with the Student Re-visioning Committee, he emphasized that there was "more of this coming," referring to the department cuts. If he had decided his agenda in advance without deliberation with faculty and students, what possibility is there for either Republican or Democratic governance?
Wagner, based on his own statements, continues to position both faculty and students in a purely advisory capacity.
A leader that lacks both judgment and an understanding of just governance is not a leader at all.
Our University deserves better.
David Mullins is a College junior from Austin, Texas.
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