As individuals interviewed by The Daily Orange, we were, frankly, left disappointed when reading the ‘Fait Accompli’ articles. On the one hand, we did not recognize the presented world of Syracuse University at all. Collectively, we have long experience at various institutions of higher education, we do work that takes us to campuses and conferences in many locations, and we have friends and colleagues who teach and lead at those institutions.  
When we are in those places, near and far from Central New York, we are approached  – with a regularity that sometimes keeps us from the work we are there to do – to talk about what those colleagues find exciting and intriguing about what the chancellor and we are doing at SU. They want to visit, they want to engage and many of them also want to come work at SU.
On the other hand, we do not recognize the person the article profiles. The chancellor portrayed in the articles is a strange distortion of the real chancellor, who is a complex human being -driven, compassionate, committed and inspired. The examples given of the allegedly punitive environment were not relevant or connected to her. Leaders make changes in their teams. The article implied making personnel changes during transitions or for substantive reasons is somehow both nefarious and linked to some vindictive agenda of the chancellor. However, it is not in her actions that vindictiveness and disrespect can be parsed on a daily basis but in the conduct of some on this campus who have truly broken the covenant of respectful community.
We are left with a conviction that if Chancellor Cantor were a male university president, this article would not have spent so much time in analysis of personality but would have looked more carefully for the impacts of her accomplishments in increasing access, increasing the sources of funds and increasing the significance of SU in the world.
Kal Alston, professor of cultural foundations of education/women and gender studies
Senior Vice President
Diane Lyden Murphy, dean, Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics