Marc Short Is Leaving UVa. What Did the University Gain From This Controversial Hire?

Before he had even started as a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, Marc Short, a former Trump aide, had left his mark on the institution.

Two professors resigned in protest of Short’s appointment. A director left in part because of the hire. And a petition meant to stop his hiring drew more than 4,000 signatures from “members of the UVa community.”

Despite the public outcry, the university backed the Miller Center’s decision to hire Short, and he began his one-year appointment last August 1. But on Tuesday his fellowship came to a premature end with the announcement that Short would rejoin the White House as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff.

The fallout from Short’s arrival at the Miller Center was apparent and public. The value that Short provided was less so. Once installed at the center, which focuses on the study of the American presidency, what exactly did Short do?

The White House’s former legislative-affairs director had been hired because he brought “a missing critical voice — one that represents members of Congress and the Republican Party who continue to support the president in large numbers,” William J. Antholis, the Miller Center’s director, said in a written statement last summer. Over objections from other scholars at the Miller Center, who said he had been hired without faculty input or discussion, Antholis brought in Short to contribute to discussions about the future of democracy and how to understand the Trump presidency.

In an interview on Tuesday, Antholis said he could think of two times that Short had given a public talk at a UVa event since his fellowship began. Two more talks were scheduled, he said, but whether they would take place had yet to be determined. The first event was in September, when Short was part of a discussion on Trump and the presidency presented by the university’s Center for Politics. The second was a panel in November on congressional elections that was hosted at the Hoover Institution’s branch in Washington, D.C.

Short also met in “various classroom settings” with faculty members and students in the School of Arts and Sciences, the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and the Darden School of Business, Antholis said.

The Miller Center’s oral-history team, a group of scholars who interview members of past presidential administrations, also met with Short to discuss what a potential Trump oral history would entail and who might be interviewed, though the center has not yet formally begun that project. Short’s contract said he would be paid $48,000 for his year at the Miller Center.

A spokesman for the Miller Center said that the volume and frequency of Short’s events at the Miller Center were typical of a senior fellow. He added that Short had spoken on a podcast about partisan gridlock at a conference that was closed to the public.

“Marc was hugely helpful in helping us understand the Trump administration,” Antholis said. He added that by bringing Short into conversations with students and scholars, “we as a center have stuck to our core mission of studying the presidency and addressing contemporary challenges.”

A Political Think Tank?

That’s not how others see the core mission of the center. Scholars who objected to Short’s appointment saw it as a betrayal of the center’s commitment to turning a nonpartisan, objective eye to the political organizations it studies. While Short may have been worthy to invite to speak at the center, they argued, he should not have been hired as a senior fellow.

“At most distinguished academic centers and institutes, the people who join those centers are people who have had specific policy expertise in a particular area, whether it be national security, civil rights, labor legislation,” said Melvyn P. Leffler, a history professor at UVa who resigned from the Miller Center in protest of Short’s appointment. Leffler said the former Trump official “had nothing but his political identity to distinguish him.”

William I. Hitchcock, another history professor who resigned from the Miller Center, said Short’s hiring had “shattered the idea that the Miller Center was nonpartisan.” To Hitchcock, Short’s return to the White House made the center look more like a political think tank — where political operatives come and go between stints in government — than an academic institution.

“Marc Short is playing by the rules that you play in Washington,” Hitchcock said. “But they’re really quite different, or should be, in a university setting.”

During his time at the Miller Center, Short also worked as a contributor to CNN. He defended Trump’s rhetoric and argued that the president was treated unfairly by the news media. The faculty members who objected to his hiring also noted that it occurred almost one year after white supremacists held a rally on UVa’s campus and Trump blamed “both sides” for the violence that ensued.

To Antholis, who served in President Bill Clinton’s White House, bringing a defender of the Trump administration to the Miller Center would add value to the discussions there. He cited the decision by Harvard University’s Kennedy School to name as fellows Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary, and Corey Lewandowski, the president’s former campaign manager, as evidence that it’s not unusual for the country’s top universities to hire political operatives.

In response to a request to interview Short, his assistant sent The Chronicle a link to the Miller Center’s news release about his departure. “Short participated in public panels and events,” the statement says, “engaged with students and faculty across the University of Virginia, and offered candid insights about the Trump administration and our current political system that helped inform Miller Center research.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.