Is There A Doctor In The House?

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in..."

© Photo by Dani Bregman

When Liz Magill stepped down as president of Penn after months of turmoil, whom did Penn’s Board of Trustees choose to replace her? Larry Jamison, MD, Phd - a doctor. 

Next came Claudine Gay, who resigned as president of Harvard shortly after that fateful congressional hearing on antisemitism. And whom did Harvard’s Board of Trustees choose to replace her? Alan Garber, MD, Phd - also a doctor.

And just last week, Minouche Shafik, the embattled president of Columbia, also resigned. And whom did the Columbia Board of Trustees choose to replace her? Katrina Armstrong, MD - yet another doctor.

What’s going on here? And don’t tell me it’s that doctors tend to make good administrators. I know a lot of doctors. They may be great at doctoring. But business? Management? Administration? Not so much. 

I have three theories. 

The first is that the trustees are being at once too metaphorical and too literal. They look at the state of academia in general, and at their respective institutions in particular, and see a sick patient in need of healing - which, to be honest, is not a bad metaphor. But to then turn around and hire an actual doctor to fix the problem? That’s overly literal.

My second theory is that no one else wants the job. To know a lot of doctors is to hear a lot of complaints about life in medicine. Like, a lot. If I had a dollar for every doctor I know who is looking for new gig, I could retire (wait a minute, maybe that could be my new gig!). 

Meanwhile, after everything that has transpired over the past year, would you want to be president of an Ivy League University? It’s as if the trustees shrewdly reasoned that the best place to find recruits for a job that nobody wants - president -  is from a pool of candidates who are looking to transition to almost anything else - doctors.

My third (and leading) theory is that the trustees are trying to leverage the last positive remnant of the medical system - some might say of society at large - that has survived the upheavals of late-stage American capitalism: the doctor-patient relationship. 

Throughout the unrelenting corporatization and economic consolidations of Big Medicine, the clinical encounter, the interaction between doctor and patient in the exam room, has somehow managed to maintain a certain stubborn purity.

I don’t know why, or how long it will last, but there’s something about the mix of paternalism and autonomy, of human empathy and technical expertise, of trust and respect, that still connects doctoring today with how I imagine it was like as far back as Hippocrates. 

Is it so far-fetched to think that University trustees are anointing doctors as a way of trying to bring back civility - dare I say nobility - to their troubled institutions? Is it so crazy to imagine the trustees sitting in their boardrooms, gazing at the current state of campus affairs - with the students, professors, administrators, staff, donors, and alumni all at each other’s throats - and throwing up their hands in despair, exclaiming: Is there a doctor in the house?

It’s a nice theory, with one little flaw - which, on second thought, and to the contrary, might actually be the proof: Cornell.

Cornell is an Ivy League school which also found itself engulfed in campus turmoil. Cornell’s president, Martha Pollack, also testified before congress and resigned in a wave of controversy. And Cornell also has a medical school with no shortage of doctors to take her place.

And yet, whom did Cornell appoint as their new president? Whom did the trustees believe would be the best person to heal Cornell’s wounds? Whom did they determine had the right professional background to treat and manage their fractious academic community?

Michael I. Kotlikoff, VMD, Phd - yes, that’s right: a veterinarian.