Over 1,600 alums, students protest $600K compensation for retired university president
Over 1,600 Brandeis University alumni, students, and others have signed an online petition protesting former Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz’s pay.
Reinharz resigned from his position at the end of 2010. However, it came to light last month that despite not carrying any teaching or advising workload, Reinharz received over $600,000 in salary and benefits in 2011, a level of compensation that topped all but that of the current Brandeis president, Fred Lawrence. That’s in addition to the $800,000 that he received as president of the Mandel Foundation.
The petition, posted at Action Network, faults the University for providing high compensation to the former president while tuition and the ranks of adjuncts and unpaid faculty continue to grow.
“The gulf of inequality at Brandeis University is growing,” the petition charges, warning that Reinharz’s “excessive compensation is part and parcel of a national trend of universities shifting resources away from the classroom and toward administration.”
To rectify the issue, the petition demands two policies: first, that the Board of Trustees institute of policy transparency with regards to executive compensation, publishing such information for any current, former, and future executives in a public forum. Second, the petition demands that executives be compensated “no more than 15 times the complete annual compensation of the lowest paid full-time employee of the University.”
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