Retire mandatory retirement

The reappointment of Ken Gros Louis as IU-Bloomington Chancellor is wonderful news. He is an urbane, articulate and creative leader whose unwavering loyalty and dedication to IU have earned him widespread admiration and affection. Gros Louis' return thus raises the obvious question: presuming he is the eminently gifted administrator we know him to be, for what imaginable reason was he forced to step down as chancellor in the first place?\nThe answer is that IU, unique among major universities in America, has a mandatory retirement policy which specifies that senior administrators must give up their administrative positions upon reaching the age of 65 -- a policy whose utter pointlessness in practice is matched by the hypocrisy in its adoption and application.\nIU formerly had a broad retirement policy, dating from before World War II, by which all persons with administrative responsibilities had to relinquish those positions upon becoming 65. It applied to part-time as well as full-time positions, and it extended from president down to assistant deans, coaches of minor sports and chairs of little departments. Two years ago, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that IU's policy constituted illegal discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. IU was ordered to rescind its policy. This should have ended the matter. However, instead of simply canceling the policy, and thereby ridding itself of an embarrassing vestige of ageism, IU chose to exploit a loophole in the law and adopted a narrow mandatory retirement policy, this time limited to bona fide executives such as the president, chancellors, and senior deans. \nAt the trustees meeting where this new policy was adopted, no one explained what it was supposed to accomplish; no one offered evidence to show what benefits, if any, mandatory retirement had provided in the past; and no one discussed the huge cost of such a policy, in institutional, human and financial terms. Curiously, it was a total mystery who wanted this policy (perhaps former President Myles Brand?), since no one openly championed it. In my personal discussions over the years with University officials, I failed to find a single person who viewed the policy as defensible socially or in any way needed on practical grounds.\nWe know that many people over the age of 65 continue to put their experience and accumulated knowledge to use in major leadership positions, whether in business, the courts, sports management, or, quite often, in university presidencies. IU recently installed Adam Herbert as its new president. Early impressions indicate that Herbert has the talents and abilities to provide IU with dynamic leadership and, given adequate time, to create a significant legacy. IU is extraordinarily fortunate to have found such a person. And yet, because of its mandatory retirement policy for senior administrators, Herbert, a very young 60-year-old, is going to be sent out to pasture barely five years from now, no matter how outstanding his accomplishments or how difficult it will be to find a comparably qualified replacement.\nLast June, Trustee Peter Obremskey was quoted in the Indianapolis Star as saying IU's mandatory retirement policy struck him as "something from the dark ages." Obremskey seemed to have forgotten that just a year earlier, he, like all the other trustees, had voted for it. But that's okay. We should allow the trustees to forget about their heedless adoption of the policy as long as they take immediate steps to rectify the situation. IU's mandatory retirement policy for administrators is harmful to the institution and serves absolutely no useful purpose. It took the trustees only ten minutes to adopt the policy; they can easily repeal it in half that time. One should insist that they do so without delay.