University of Michigan provost Nancy Cantor was named chancellor of the University of Illinois’ flagship campus in Urbana-Champaign on Tuesday, but the high expectations she and others have for her leadership may by shadowed by the stubborn conflict over athletic team symbol Chief Illiniwek.
U. of I. President James Stukel announced that he had recommended Cantor, who is a respected scholar in the field of social psychology, to succeed Michael Aiken as the top administrator at the school. Aiken will retire in August after holding the post since 1993.
The board of trustees must approve the appointment to the $300,000-a-year job at its May meeting, but Stukel said board members were “enthusiastic” about Cantor after an interview with her last week.
Cantor, 49, who has been provost and executive vice president at Michigan since 1997, said her biggest challenge would be to “work with the campus to announce to the world the level of excellence and accomplishment” at the university.
The controversy over the school’s athletic symbol poses another challenge. On Tuesday, more than 40 Native American leaders and supporters demonstrated outside Gov. George Ryan’s office in Chicago, calling on the governor to rescind his support for the mascot.
Carrying signs reading, “The Chief Breeds Racism” and “Honor Real People, Not Stereotypes,” the protesters called for a meeting with the governor to address issues in the Native American community in Illinois such as high school dropout rates and teen suicide.
Cantor said that before taking a position on the 75-year-old university tradition she “needed to understand better what’s happening, to have a context to put all that in.”
Larry Eppley, a new member of the board of trustees, said board members “subtly” brought the issue up to the candidates. “We were concerned that they not believe that their view of it, positive or negative, played a part in our decision.”
He noted that the issue “overshadows everything else going on [at the university] and we hope that now some of the great things that happen there will show up . . . nationally and internationally.”
Cantor has a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a doctorate in psychology from Stanford University. She has taught and served as an administrator at Princeton University as well as at Michigan. She has written or collaborated on many books and articles and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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She said the aspect of her academic work that has affected her administrative approach is her study of how human minds can “think alternatively, come up with different perspectives, imagine possibilities.”
In a university context, she said, “creativity comes from bringing different perspectives to bear, bringing about a social community of scholars, getting people to talk.”
Cantor, who will be the first woman chancellor at Urbana-Champaign, added that bringing more women onto the faculty in male-dominated fields such as science and engineering is an “issue I care deeply about.”
“It’s very important that a great research university . . . take the lead in diversifying the faculty as a model for students,” she said.