Outrage over racial inequity at the University of Missouri came to a head on Monday, as the two most powerful men at the institution resigned under pressure from students, professors, deans, and football players threatening to boycott games.
Timothy M. Wolfe’s surrender from the system presidency marked a turning point in a long-simmering student-led protest movement, which has linked the shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 with broader racial tensions at the university. Hours after Mr. Wolfe resigned, R. Bowen Loftin announced that he, too, would step down at year’s end as chancellor of the flagship campus, in Columbia.
The exodus in Missouri’s administration constituted a rare capitulation to student activism, often respected in higher education but seldom the catalyst for turnover at the top. But the two men, who are both white, were pulled into a broader national narrative, accused of complacency in the face of mounting concerns about numerous racially charged incidents at the flagship.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Thrust-Into-a-National-Debate/234131