A Fox News broadcast recently had a teaser like this: “She‘s in trouble over private emails, and she’s not Hillary Clinton.”

The target of the comment was Phyllis Wise, former chancellor of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, who resigned last week.

The story (which I discussed in an earlier post) is getting messier. Wise may sue the board for violation of contract by not paying $400,000 in compensation and benefits.

Fox’s comparison, while “newsy,” is superficial. Clinton’s emails may have threatened national security; the charge against Wise is that she tried to handle controversial personnel issues without public scrutiny. (Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education have both covered the story in some detail.)

The board was about to accept Wise’s resignation and pay her a “retention incentive” of $400,000, but changed its position after the deputy governor of Illinois, Trey Childress, wrote a letter advising the board to turn it down, calling the payment a “major step in the wrong direction.”

A few points here.

  • Before the board changed its opinion, Wise had discussed giving her $400,000 severance pay to the university.
  • The state of Illinois is the worst in the nation for underfunded pension liabilities—to the tune of $4 billion. One wonders what the cost-conscius deputy governor is doing about that.
  • Wise, a biologist who specializes in obstetric research, is tough, undermining the stereotype of Asian Americans that they are passive or lack leadership skills (see discussion at another post).
  • Wise viewed Steven Salaita’s tweets (the cause of one personnel issue) as a matter of suitability as a faculty member, not freedom of speech. She herself received ugly sexist and racist tweets after she failed to cancel classes on a cold day in 2014. But she recognized that they were protected speech and let them go.