Opinion ID: 668221
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Board Meetings

Text: 16 The Board of Trustees met in late October, with Jeffries' reappointment on the agenda. Harleston recommended that the Board limit Jeffries' term to one year. The Vice-Chancellor for Legal Affairs, an attorney, warned the Trustees that they could not sanction Jeffries based on the content of his speech. Despite the Vice-Chancellor's admonition, Trustees Edith Everett, Herman Badillo, Blanche Bernstein, and Harold Jacobs voted to reject Jeffries' nomination outright, candidly explaining that their decision rested on the content of his speech. Nine other Trustees voted for Harleston's recommendation, however, and approved a one-year term for Jeffries, to expire at the end of June, 1992. (Trustee Sylvia Bloom abstained from the vote because she had made statements earlier criticizing Jeffries' views.) 17 Harleston wrote Jeffries of the Board's vote. In his letter, Harleston said that the speech threatened recruitment, fundraising, and CUNY's relationship with the community. 18 The Provost and Social Sciences Dean made oral follow-up reports to Harleston on Jeffries' performance. They recounted angry exchanges that Jeffries initiated with faculty and administrators regarding his limited term, as well as a bizarre tantrum that Jeffries threw during an interview with a student reporter from Harvard. In December, Harleston decided to replace Jeffries as chairman. 19 On March 20, 1992, three days before the next Board of Trustees meeting, Harleston announced to the Black Studies department that he planned to recommend that the Board approve Professor Edmund Gordon, retired chairman of Yale University's African-American studies department, to succeed Jeffries in July. Although CUNY by-laws state that the President should confer with the department faculty when choosing a replacement chairman, Harleston had not done so. The faculty opposed Gordon as a candidate, and chastised Harleston for selecting a department chair without consultation. 20 At the Board meeting, the Trustees voted unanimously to replace Jeffries with Gordon. The defendants gave conflicting testimony about whether, at this meeting, the Trustees discussed Jeffries' performance.