Late last night while you were probably sleeping or drunk texting, the University of Oklahoma Board of Regents announced that law school dean – and former David Boren staffer – Joseph Harroz, Jr. drew the short stick and will be the school’s new interim president.
In his new role, Harroz will more than likely…
A) Help the university rebuild and regroup after Jim Gallogly’s 10-month reign of terror.
B) Work to rebuild trust with students, faculty and alumni.
C) Try to figure out a way to halt, cover up or brush under the rug the university’s investigation into David Boren’s sexual misconduct allegations.
Here are more details via Tulsa World:
The University of Oklahoma named Joseph Harroz, Jr., its interim president early Friday. Harroz is the dean of the OU College of Law and a former congressional staffer of retired President David Boren.
In a statement issued at 2:30 a.m. — more than six hours after a special meeting began in Oklahoma City — regents chair Leslie J. Rainbolt-Forbes made the announcement.
“The regents were well aware of Harroz’s capabilities from the thorough vetting done by the presidential search committee last year,” Rainbolt-Forbes said in the statement. “It was through that process we were reminded how contagious his passion and enthusiasm are and how seriously he takes accountability and responsibility.”
Wow. That’s some strong praise! In fact, it’s almost as strong as what the OU regents said about Gallogly, back when he was hired!
“Jim Gallogly is a world-class, in-demand transformative leader, and we’re honored to have him as our new president,” said Clayton I. Bennett, chairman of OU’s Board of Regents. “Throughout his career, he’s been incredibly successful. He is a builder known for having strategic vision, for managing large and complex organizations, and for mentoring and inspiring great teams to achieve results – leadership qualities we value for the future. Jim’s skill-set is a perfect match for this unique time in our history.”…
Thank goodness we have such a wise, affluent group of people like the OU Board of Regents to make such important hires for the state. Considering how right they were on Gallogly, you have to feel pretty confident that Harroz is the correct hire!
Here’s more about Harroz from the OU website:
Joseph Harroz, Jr. became the 12th Dean of the University of Oklahoma College of Law and 7th Director of the OU Law Center on July 1, 2010. He teaches in the area of employment law and healthcare law.
He is a native Oklahoman and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Zoology. He received his Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center and was an associate editor of the Journal of Law and Policy in International Business. While in Washington D.C., Harroz served as Legislative Director and Legal Counsel to then-U.S. Senator David L. Boren.
Although he’s a self-serving, conservative, political opportunist who has long been accused of sexually harassing male aides like Harroz, you have to give David Boren credit for making it through the Gallogly-era relatively unscathed. Sure, he’s bumped and bruised, but his network of spiders helped insure that Gallogly would never succeed, and now he gets one of his loyal cronies to serve as president. That’s impressive!
Anyway, Harroz is definitely accomplished and deserving of the position. Look at what the OU law school has done under his leadership:
OU College of Law accomplishments of the last seven years include: achieving the highest U.S. News & World Report ranking ever earned by an Oklahoma law school; being named a Best Value Law School each year; consistently leading the state in Bar Exam passage rates; being a Top 20 moot court program school for its fifth consecutive years, and in 2017 rising to No. 2 in the nation; setting new pro bono service hour records each year, with more than 23,000 in 2017; doubling the size of its scholarship endowment; increasing its annual giving by more than five times; increasing the annual amount of scholarship money given to students to more than $1.5 million; creating joint degree and certificate programs to enhance the J.D.; and launching the nation’s first-ever law school Digital Initiative preparing students for success in the legal profession in the 21st century.
Yeah, he may want to delete the U.S. News and World Report bit. That accomplishment hasn’t aged well.
Gallogly had to clean up a huge fiscal mess, so give him credit for making difficult decisions there.
I feel sympathy for anyone trying to appease the snowflakes that permeate college campuses and the ultra liberal administrations and professors that are cluttering young minds with garbage…
Boren was a good fundraiser, but left a mess in regard to OU’s financial condition, may have been lining his own pockets from OU projects and the sexual harassment issues are an outright tragedy.
Gallogly probably should have worn a velvet glove on his iron fist, but is more victim here than culprit
Good luck to the interim Prez and let’s move on…
Der-de-der der-der.
It must be hard living in a world where people’s facts get in the way of your opinions.
Yes, it’s a fact that OSU Ag dept. is filled with ultra liberal left wing tree huggers filling our future agri business leaders as well as farmers with their corrupted ideas of never harvesting crops after they have been planted so as to not imperil those precious wheat or milo plants.
And like India, cattle are for petting only.
I understand they are even teaching kids how to grow dope! Damn hippies anyway.
Not sure if KC is making fun of ultra-liberal left wing tree huggers, or making fun of people who believe that the OSU Ag Dept is filled with ultra-liberal left wing tree huggers.
It works either way.
Joe is a good intelligent man that is loyal to the university and comes from a good family. Good luck to him.
+1
The Herroz family were and are good people. My best of luck to him as well.
Harroz…damned Iphones.
“deserving and competent”…that’s the ticket!
I grew up with Joe. He’s a really good guy and will make a great interim president. Good luck to him.
Being “interim” anything is like being married to Stormy Daniels. Sure you get to have sex with her at night but ten other have sex with her during the day. And one of those was Donald Trump. Everybody says he’s a great guy so whose dick did he step on to be humiliated in public?
Again there was not a fiscal mess as of July 1, 2018 when President Gallogly took over although he announced as much prior to that during the June regents meeting. Later in 2018 he said it took him months to figure out the spread sheets so I don’t know how he knew so much back in June.
The answer is he didn’t but came to the presidency with pre-conceived notions about the university which he admitted in late 2018 when he said “I didn’t know this job would be so hard and require so many hours”.
Now, after 10.5 months of delivering havoc to mostly lower paid hourly workers he is going to “retire” to Austin, or maybe the house in Colorado, perhaps the other in Florida. May I recommend that he, during leisure time in the future, look at the last eight years of appropriations to higher education in Oklahoma and he will find the following: Lawmakers cut said appropriations deeper than in ANY OTHER STATE, were proud of it, while also screwing public schools similarly – an overall cut of 24.6%.
The regents made a mistake in selecting Gallogly by doing the deciding in the dark without any serious input from students, faculty, taxpayers, business leaders, alumni or anyone else. Yes I know the head hunting firm conducted open meetings…and I attended several but they were for show. The only good news about that outfit is they now must conduct another search for free because JG didn’t last a year.
Let’s just save everybody a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears and confirm Joe Harroz Jr now, if he will take the job. That is what is going to happen anyway whether he is David Boren’s lackey or not. The regents have already proven recently they can do worse than Dean Harroz and that other fellow is now most likely driving south on I-35 to a more leisurely and peaceful future which will be made even more attractive with whatever ‘retirement’ he receives from his time in Norman. Hopefully it won’t be nearly as much as the $550,000 plus already blown on a bunch of out of state ‘investigators’ looking into the sexual proclivities of probably half of the population of Oklahoma. Gotta keep those $500 dollar per hour billable invoices coming.
I may be a little late to the party on this thread but here it is anyway. Cal I usually agree with your views but I haven’t heard any credible rebuttal to Gallogly’s contention that the Norman campus was running deep in the red. It may be proper to blame it on cuts by your former playmates the loonies on Lincoln but Boren must have failed to adapt to those cuts. He was a great fundraiser but all that stuff is endowed for specific purposes and doesn’t benefit the entire school.
All that said, I agree the Bennett cabal hired the wrong guy. JG belies the claim about all Canadians being nice people. He was a bully and an egomaniac who thought he was running a for profit enterprise, not a public institution. But what’s really telling is his statement that he didn’t know the job would be that hard. Say what? Did he think they were paying him half a million per year to show up a few hours a week and spend the rest of the time working on his golf game?
All that said, I’m just glad it’s him heading south on I-35, not Lincoln Riley. Or Patti Gasso.
I always enjoy your perspectives with insights as a long-time political leader in OK.
Has there been anything associated with the State govt that hasn’t been a dumpster fire since the republicans took over?
Must not have been much of a financial crisis if Gallogly turned it all around in only ten months.
Makes me doubt seriously that there ever was such a crisis. Makes me think that Gallogly’s real agenda was to sweep Borenism clean out of OU. Was that actually Clay Gaylord-Bennett’s agenda and Gallogly’s marching order? I think so.
Now the Regents have picked a Boren acolyte as OU’s interim president. Abrupt course change. Too bad for former regent Bennett and his hatchet man.
Hope Joe’s isn’t one of sweet Davy’s boys. He’s had to be incredibly stupid to not know what was going on with our Davy and the whole perverted bunch of girly boys. I prefer to belive Joe is stupid rather than to believe he was part of the whole corrupt and perverted cabal.
Sooner magic: you need therapy.
The Boren forces have fought back and are control , those cameo pink uniforms are stunning. If those had been available earlier some of us Army infantry men/people might have reupped. Go Big Red/Pink.
“Although he’s (Boren) a self-serving, conservative, political opportunist who has long been accused of sexually harassing male aides like Harroz” I am not a big fan of Boren nor a defender really and maybe his behavior will turn out to be of Bill Cosby proportions. But since “rumors” of Boren’s sexual orientation and harassment have been going on for “years” where are the credible accusers? Maybe I have missed something so please catch me up if I have. And in this #meto age it is no longer that much of a stigma for them to come forward. And please let’s leave Jess Eddy out of this as he seems an outlier at best or maybe just a total flake who can’t keep his story straight (so to speak). Patrick’s vitriol seems a little over-the-top and in this posting more than a little.