NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
03/18/15
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
A Yeshiva College faculty vote of “no confidence” in the university’s president, Richard Joel, has made public in dramatic fashion a long-simmering debate within the institution — and the greater Orthodox community — over who is to blame for the financial crisis and what should be done about it.
The vote of the fulltime faculty of Yeshiva College, the undergraduate school for men, which was taken last Friday, was organized by its executive committee. Eighty percent voted “no confidence,” 3 percent “confidence,” and 17 percent abstained, with nearly two-thirds of the faculty casting votes. Sixty-six faculty members took part in the vote.
In response, the university’s board of trustees issued a letter backing Joel, noting that he and his administration — and an outside firm brought in to help resolve the school’s money problems — “have performed admirably in a difficult environment.”
Somewhere in the middle, perhaps, members of the Orthodox community, including prominent alumni in a wide range of fields, express sadness over YU’s predicament and deep concern about its future, recognizing the unique role it plays beyond the classroom as the flagship and center of Modern/centrist Orthodox life.
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