Monday Politics

Benson Battle Bruises CU Image

By Richard Martin, 2-11-08

The candidacy of Republican fundraiser Bruce Benson to become the president of the University of Colorado received another blow over the weekend when CU regent Cindy Carlisle announced she would no longer support him. A candidate for state Senate from Boulder, Carlisle had previously been the sole Democrat on the board of regents to come out in favor of Benson.

Late last week the CU faculty assembly postponed a vote on whether to support the proposed appointment of Benson, who has been an oil and gas CEO and is the former chairman of the Colorado Republican party. He is the sole finalist for the job of CU president.

The strikes against Benson are easily compiled: he has no experience as a scholar or a college administrator; he holds no advanced degrees; he has been a partisan political figure (helping head up, for instance, the right-wing Trailhead Group); he doesn’t believe in global warming (at one campus gathering last week he cited National Geographic as proving that current climate change could be part of long-term cycles); and he has no apparent qualifications to head a major state-funded research university.

“How would it look for CU, the flagship institution of higher learning in Colorado, home to Nobel laureates and nationally ranked programs, to be represented by someone with just a bachelor’s degree?” asked former regent Jim Martin in a guest editorial in The Daily Camera.

Now there’s one more reason: Benson’s appointment, carried out with little public involvement or transparency, is simply too poisonous at this point to go forward. CU is emerging from a rough period that has included football recruiting scandals, big funding shortfalls thanks to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, the Ward Churchill mess, the tenure an interim president, Hank Brown, fraternity-hazing outrages that included the death of a freshman, and other black eyes. It doesn’t need a right-wing activist at its helm as it tries to repair its international image and attract top-flight faculty and students. The CU administration should stand down now, for the good of the institution, and withdraw Benson’s candidacy – or at least restart the process so there’s more than one finalist.

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