Whether to make public the list of applicants for the top job at a university can be a tricky proposition, as the University of Wisconsin at Madison has just been reminded.

The university said last week that 55 people had applied to be the next chancellor of the Madison campus. University officials also released the names of nine candidates who they said had not requested confidentiality. But, unfortunately, one of the now-public candidates had indeed asked that his name be kept private.

Jorge V. José, vice president for research at the State University of New York at Buffalo, told The Badger Herald, the Madison student newspaper, that he was “stunned” to hear that his name had been released. Both the university and Academic Search Inc., the firm that is handling the search, apologized for the mistake, according to the Associated Press. —Paul Fain