Dear Colleagues:

Greetings, and I hope that you and yours are healthy and safe – and can stay that way.

As part of being careful to stay safe, the “Friday Lunch,” a CWRU tradition since 1989, continues on Zoom. We work to present experts from campus and sometimes beyond to discuss important issues for the university, local community, nation or the international stage.

This Week’s Program

This week we have a very special opportunity to consider important issues especially for this university and other private research universities. Scott Cowen joins us to share reflections from his experiences as the long-time president of Tulane and interim president of CWRU.

We will do this as a moderated discussion which will begin with me posing some questions and maybe following them up a bit, and then open up to questions from other participants. Among the topics I might ask about are:

* What is the job of a university president? Particularly at a private research university?

* Standard organization theory literature distinguishes between a CEO’s tasks of boundary spanning, dealing with relationships between the organization and outside forces; and internal management of an organization’s activities and performance. How do these two kinds of roles work for a university president?

* Private research universities seem to face a set of basic challenges. These include, for example, recruiting or marketing to students, competing for research funds, and attracting philanthropic support. I might ask him to talk a bit about each.

* People are always saying universities are too “siloed” and need to be more “integrated.” But it’s not clear why some parts of the university logically have much to do with others. So in what sense is there something called a “university” with common interests and concerns? How is that affected by a president’s leadership?

I have lots of other questions but I’m sure others do, too! And I look forward to learning a lot.

Signing In

This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.

If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:

https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtcuCsrj4qGdFTNP69a0pLA3euYT_HjBRn

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.

Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,

Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies

About Our Guest

Scott Cowen is President Emeritus and Distinguished University Chair of Tulane University and former Interim President of Case Western Reserve University. He served as Tulane’s 14th president from July 1998 through June 2014 and as interim president of CWRU from October 2020 through June 2021.

Time Magazine named Cowen one of the nation’s Top 10 Best College Presidents and he was one of only four university leaders nationwide to receive the 2009 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award. In 2010 Cowen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious honorary societies. That same year he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which advised the President on ways to reconnect and empower young people who are neither employed nor in school.

Cowen received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut in 1968. After serving a three-year term in the U.S. Army as an infantry officer from 1968-1971, he went back to school and received masters and doctoral degrees in business administration from The George Washington University.

Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:

October 15: Germany’s New Government – and Europe’s New Leadership? With Mark K. Cassell, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, Kent State University.

October 22: The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies. With Aleksandar Cuic, J.D., Director of the Immigration Clinic, Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center, CWRU School of Law.

October 29: Continuity and Change in the Opioid Epidemic. With Lee Hoffer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Psychiatry.

November 5: Redeveloping Buckeye/Woodhill. With Taryn Gress, MSSA, Strategic Director, and Debbie Wilber, Assistant Director, National Initiative on Mixed-Income Communities.

November 12: Can India Survive as a Secular Democracy? With Ananya DasGupta, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History.

November 19: Hospital Boom and Busts. With J.B. Silvers, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Finance and Professor of Banking and Finance.

December 3: President Biden’s Trade Policy: Continuity and Change. With Juscelino Colares, J.D., Schott-van den Eynden Professor of Business Law.