When University President Ellen Granberg entered office last year, she hoped to set a higher standard for community involvement in University decision-making to ensure that faculty, staff and students had a voice in handling “critical” issues at GW.
But on Wednesday in her second sit-down interview with The Hatchet since her inauguration, Granberg said she regrets not consulting a broader range of community members on the University’s daily and big-picture choices when she reflects on officials’ handling of the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus last spring.
Granberg said during the two weeks of protests that called for GW to disclose investments and divest from companies supplying arms to Israel, she believed she was adequately consulting and communicating with GW officials and other stakeholders, including presidents of other universities with encampments. But she said “it was clear” that those feelings weren’t shared by the community at-large upon receiving feedback after the Metropolitan Police Department cleared the encampment in May.
She said she couldn’t say for certain that fielding input from different groups would have changed the outcome of officials’ decisions but that adding an “additional frame” of reference changes the way people think about a situation. If protests continue this semester, officials will seek input from a wider array of community members beyond campus leaders, Granberg said.
“What would be different this fall is that there would be a much more programmatic outreach beyond those folks, rather than those folks representing their communities,” Granberg said.
Faculty senators pressed Granberg in May on officials’ “scant” communication and lack of consultation with faculty on handling the encampment. Students last week also called on Granberg to increase her visibility and engagement with the student body as she enters her second year.
Despite her community-wide regrets, Granberg said officials from the Division for Student Affairs, the Division of Safety and Facilities and faculty representatives engaged in thorough dialogue with students in the encampment.
“My understanding from the folks who were responsible for carrying that out, is it was pretty rich, and there was a lot of communication back and forth,” Granberg said. “The place where I became the most aware of communication being not enough was with our community.”
Granberg did not visit or communicate directly with any protesters during the two weeks of demonstrations. A representative from the pro-Palestinian student coalition that set up the encampment — who requested to remain anonymous because of a fear of doxxing and repression from GW — said they believed Granberg’s “primary mistake” was her lack of direct communication with the student protesters.
In response to protesters’ ongoing demands of divestment from companies that supply arms to Israel, Granberg reiterated the University’s position that GW is not considering divestment. She said it is “virtually impossible” to divest from a specific industry, which became clear to trustees and officials over the last five years after GW committed to divesting from the fossil fuel industry in 2020.
She said the way universities invest in companies has changed “so much” in recent years and deferred to Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes when asked for specifics on the shift, saying he could answer the questions “factually.”
“I’m actually going to have to punt based on ignorance, because I don’t want to act like I know,” Granberg said.
Fernandes declined to comment on how investments have changed in recent years.
Granberg said she is potentially interested in considering limitations on adding new investments to their portfolio but did not specify what investments she would consider limiting.
“What I’m interested in is, are there ways that we can think about this, not from what we remove but from what we add?” Granberg said.
The coalition representative said they were “glad to hear” that Granberg was considering this strategy, which the coalition had proposed to officials during talks with Office of the Provost staff but said they were previously unaware officials were considering it.
The representative said the Strategic Investment Group — which handles most of GW’s pooled endowment and has overseen GW’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry following the University pledge to do in 2020 after nearly a decade of student protests — has a framework for divestment that can be added to their analysis if it provides “institutional value.”
“Strategic can build diversified, mission-sensitive portfolios that minimize market exposure and offer the potential to produce uncorrelated alpha streams,” according to SIG’s Socially Responsible Investing with Hedge Funds packet.
Granberg and the University have faced pushback from community members following police’s clearing of the encampment, with some saying administrators knowingly endangered students by requesting police assistance in handling the protest.
Granberg said officials asked MPD to help the University relocate protesters from U-Yard to Anniversary Park on the first day of the encampment but said to her “knowledge” no officials asked the department to clear the encampment, contradicting the Washington Post’s reporting on April 26 that local police declined the University’s requests to clear the encampment.
“Any communication I had with the mayor or with MPD directly was all about the safety side of it,” Granberg said. “We did not ask again.”
GW hired a lobbying firm in May to navigate unspecified “higher education issues,” and a disclosure form showed in July that officials have paid the firm $90,000 since May, which surpassed the amount other universities paid their firms surrounding higher education issues following the encampment.
Granberg said GW hired the firm after the House Oversight Committee called D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and MPD Chief Pamela Smith to testify on why they denied requests to clear GW’s encampment. She said GW hired the firm to ensure officials didn’t create a “bigger issue” because the University doesn’t have connections to manage a “situation” between lawmakers and administration.
“We did discover that they allowed us to have a voice on Capitol Hill that we hadn’t had before, and so selectively, I mean, lobbying firms are expensive, so selectively we are still in touch with them,” Granberg said.
Granberg said the Medical Faculty Associates — a group of physicians and faculty from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and GW Hospital, who are $200 million in debt to the University — is continuing to make payments to GW on time and said officials over the past year have increasingly recognized the MFA as a “modern clinical management practice.”
She said the recognition pushed former MFA CEO and current Dean of SMHS Barbara Bass to step down from her CEO post to make room for full time leadership. Officials hired interim CEO Bill Elliott in May.
“Bringing in Bill in, for me, was one of the most important things that happened this year so that we could have someone overseeing this who understood and could identify where the improvements are needed,” Granberg said.
Granberg said in her first interview last fall that the MFA hired a new chief operating officer and chief financial officer who will renegotiate MFA contracts with more “favorable” terms for the University. Officials are currently searching for a new MFA CFO after Robin Nichols left the role fewer than nine months in.
Granberg said officials are planning to launch a website “pretty soon” with the three pillars of the strategic plan, which will include how to prepare students to thrive postgraduation in the “new economy,” the University’s role in interdisciplinary research and how officials can form groundwork to help GW succeed after “contractions” in staff in recent years.
The University has lacked a strategic plan since 2020, when officials paused former University President Thomas LeBlanc’s plan and then later delayed creating one until the University selected a permanent president.
Katrin Schultheiss, a faculty senator and professor of history, said there has been a “mixed bag” of faculty feelings surrounding official’s incorporation of faculty’s academic freedom requests into the strategic plan, as they requested administration’s political, religious or philosophical ideologies aren’t implemented into their teaching. Schultheiss previously voiced concerns to officials surrounding their lack of involvement with community members when creating and executing academic freedom policies in March.
Faculty Senate Executive Committee Chair Ilana Feldman also announced plans in January to create a portal for faculty to report academic freedom concerns in the classroom or other professional settings to ensure GW upholds its policy of protecting free inquiry, free expression and “vigorous” discussion and debate.
Schultheiss said there isn’t a consensus among faculty on the encampment and officials’ response, but some faculty senators felt faculty should have been consulted more. Schultheiss said Granberg is “very perceptive” to faculty’s concerns and that seeing each other as adversaries won’t work to anyone’s benefit.
“I do think there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I just hope that both the faculty and the administration remain committed to the improvement,” Schultheiss said.
Fiona Riley contributed reporting.
