LSU President William Tate to take same job at Rutgers University
William F. Tate IV (Photo: Nick Romanenko/Rutgers University)
LSU President William Tate has been named the next leader of Rutgers University in New Jersey, becoming the most notable in a string of abrupt, high-profile departures from Louisiana's flagship public university.
The Rutgers Board of Trustees unanimously confirmed Tate's appointment Monday. He will begin his new job at the university July 1. His last day at LSU will be June 30.
LSU spokesman Todd Woodward said an interim president will be announced Monday.
Tate is the fourth administrator to leave LSU's main campus this year. He follows the abrupt departures of General Counsel Winston DeCuir and Chief Administrative Officer Kimberly Lewis, who were two of the highest-ranking Black administrators at LSU. Provost Roy Haggerty also made his exit recently.
In addition, LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor David Guzick resigned under pressure and has taken a new role in the LSU System.
Tate's departure had been rumored for weeks amid discussions of splitting the roles of LSU System president and Baton Rouge campus chancellor, which were combined in 2012.
LSU saw major growth in enrollment and research spending during Tate's time at LSU. As Tate sought to boost research expenditures for his long-shot bid to join the prestigious American Association of Universities, spending on research grew from less than $300 million in the 2020-21 academic year to more than $500 million in 2023-24, the most recent year with data available.
Though Tate's hiring as LSU's first Black president — the first at any Southeastern Conference University — was met with much fanfare, his tenure has been highly criticized for his stances on race and gender.
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In his first year on the job, Tate disbanded a committee looking into the possibility of renaming 13 buildings on campus named after racially problematic figures, They included the John M. Parker Coliseum, named after the former governor who participated in the largest mass lynching in American history.
Tate promised reform after taking the helm of a university reeling from a Title IX scandal that ensued after a USA Today investigative report that revealed how the university mishandled sexual misconduct complaints against student-athletes.
He subsequently combined LSU's Title IX, Civil Rights and diversity, equity and inclusion offices, dismissing a number of highly respected administrators and installing Todd Manuel, a former utility executive with no higher education experience, as the vice president of the office.
Tate oversaw the dismantling of the DEI function of Manuel's office in January 2023 ahead of conservative Gov. Jeff Landry taking office. Manuel has faced accusations that he and his deputies engaged in the very acts the office is designed to prevent.
Off the clock, Tate also made problematic comments. Most notably, he shared a video from an anti-transgender group on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that amplified misinformation about an Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, who is not transgender.
'This is illegal in Louisiana,' Tate wrote. 'We have established guidelines in our laws. Why don't the Olympics go to two divisions — Open and Women? It allows everyone to compete. Will it take a death to stop this at the Olympic level?'
Though Tate later apologized for the error, his original comment is still on his X page.
Tate's struggles on race and gender puzzled many who lauded LSU for hiring a Black man with significant scholarship on critical race theory to lead a university with a long and, at times, ugly racial history, starting long before the current campus was built atop a cemetery for enslaved people.
At the time of his hiring, Tate enjoyed the support of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. Tate came out of the gate hot with talk of reform and used his early capital to hire other Black administrators, including Lewis, who had been serving as Edwards' revenue department secretary, for a newly created position.
But with a governor in office who had put LSU in his crosshairs, Tate seemed stuck between a rock and a hard place. Major donors to Landry now make up a majority of the LSU Board of Supervisors to whom the LSU president reports.
Landry has more control over the state's four higher education systems than his predecessors after he signed legislation giving him the power to select board chairs, which he used to place Scott Ballard in charge of the LSU board.
Landry's LSU board has been more vocal and more political than Edwards', with members at times even calling for popular officials to be dismissed in open meetings.
When Landry put tenured LSU Law Professor Ken Levy on blast on social media for profane and critical comments Levy made about the governor to students, Tate pulled Levy from the classroom and put him on paid administrative leave. The matter sparked a lawsuit against the university that is ongoing in court.
Before coming to LSU, Tate served as provost of the University of South Carolina for less than a year and as department chair and graduate school dean Washington University in St. Louis from 2002-20.
This is a developing story
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