Eyebrows were raised in academe when Oberlin hired Mr. Krislov as its new president in May.
The curiosity about Mr. Krislov’s selection wasn’t due to a lack of visibility on his part. At Michigan he led the university’s defense of its policies in landmark cases on the constitutionality of affirmative action in admissions. It is extremely rare, however, for a general counsel to make the leap directly to college president.
Mr. Krislov, 46, says he has had an insider’s view during nine years in Michigan’s presidential cabinet. And he says he has benefited from working with some of the “great” university chiefs, like Nancy E. Cantor, the former Michigan provost and now chancellor of Syracuse University, and Lee C. Bollinger, who was Michigan’s president until he left for Columbia University’s top job in 2002.
“I’m sure there are things that I’m going to have to learn,” Mr. Krislov says. “But I feel that I’m well prepared.”
He acknowledges that he is leaving a dream role at Michigan. “It’s hard for me to imagine a better university general-counsel job,” says Mr. Krislov. In addition to the defense of admissions policies, his stint included work on major cases involving alleged NCAA infractions and copyright policy. Despite the rewards of being a big-time university lawyer, however, he began considering a presidency because of the influence a president can wield.
“Being president at Oberlin offers the opportunity to make a difference,” Mr. Krislov says, as well as “the opportunity to grow and help strengthen an institution that holds a distinguished place among American colleges and universities.”
The new job description might not be the biggest change for Mr. Krislov, who with his wife and three children will leave the Ann Arbor campus of 40,000 students for Oberlin, with an enrollment of 2,800.
But Mr. Krislov says the two institutions have much in common. He notes that public universities do a lot of private fund raising, and that private institutions feel pressure to demonstrate a public benefit, like economic development. Oberlin and Michigan also share an emphasis on town-gown ties, social justice, and environmentalism, he says.
While preparing for the switch, Mr. Krislov has often traveled from Ann Arbor to Oberlin’s campus, which is close to Cleveland. He has discovered many connections between the two institutions, like faculty and graduate-student exchanges and families with ties to both campuses.
Mr. Krislov, a Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Oxford and Yale, also has local roots, with several extended-family members in Cleveland.
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 53, Issue 49, Page A18
