After Five Years, Ricciardone Bids Farewell

By: Hanya Captan and Nesrien Abdelkader
@HanyaCaptan
@NesrienAshraf

Since AUC President Francis Ricciardone took office in July 2016, he has faced several institutional challenges within the community—from the vote of no confidence and the tuition fees increase, to the issue of sexual harassment and the COVID-19 pandemic that has shifted the university’s dynamic and its overall mode of learning. 

Late last year, Ricciardone gave Board of Trustees Chairman Richard Bartlett notice of his retirement from the presidency in June 2021. 

Below is a timeline of some of these challenges and the highlights of Ricciardone’s five years at AUC.

March 24, 2016: Giulio Regeni, an Italian graduate student from Cambridge University who was doing research at AUC, was brutally murdered in Egypt. While this occured prior to Ricciardone stepping in as president, criticism over the university and former President Thomas E. Thomason’s delayed response prompted protests over Regeni’s murder. Professors and students alike called for the university to recognize the lack of freedom and the dangers faced by the AUC community. The criticism would continue for several years.

December 7, 2016: In the first real challenge since taking office, Ricciardone had to deal with a tuition fee crisis that caused concern for both students and parents. Ricciardone met with the Senate and, for the first time, the Parents Association (PA). 

During this meeting, he approved a $5 million grant for an emergency scholarship program claiming that no student would have to leave AUC due to lack of funds. Despite this, members at the meeting felt as though their demands were not met and called for more transparency on the university budget and shared governance. 

Students and parents feared that this program was not a long-term solution to their troubles with rising tuition fees, yet no satisfying conclusion was reached that year. 

April 4, 2017: Following the installment of surveillance cameras on campus in late 2016, AUC’s senate were disappointed that they had not been informed prior to the decision taken to install them. They believed the cameras infringed upon their privacy. Students also took to the Rate AUC Professors Facebook group to express their anger at being monitored without their approval. 

Former Executive Vice President Brian MacDougall defended the implementation of the security cameras. The Board of Trustees (BoT)  had approved the administration’s three-phase project to improve safety, which included setting up the cameras. He also provided footage of crimes being committed on campus to prove the necessity of this plan. 

However, there were limitations on the areas of surveillance. Bathrooms, offices, classrooms and hallways did not have cameras set up. 

AUCian’s continued to take issue with being monitored, however. They demanded proof that these cameras were actually limiting crime and worried about footage falling into the wrong hands, such as the authorities. 

February 20, 2018: The following year, Ricciardone had to deal with the issue of AUC’s accreditation status being put at risk following unresolved problems regarding the university’s governance. 

According to a previously published article, the University Senate held a session to discuss the Faculty Handbook with most of the faculty senators after the BoT had declared it “null and void.” The Faculty Handbook had not received their stamp of approval on the 2015- 2016 version. Both the president and the provost were absent from this meeting. 

The Faculty Handbook is tied to the faculty contracts. It contains both faculty benefits and rights and outlines the promotion and tenure process. 

The senate raised its concerns and desired revisions to the handbook, however, the issue of shared governance and equity was not properly addressed. Faculty were also not pleased that the BoT reserved the right to change the Faculty Handbook on their own. 

Ricciardone also recognized that as president, he would be accountable for any issues that may arise such as a lawsuit over a tenure case. 

February 10, 2019: AUC’s Senate expressed a no confidence vote regarding the president, with a majority of 80 percent believing that Ricciardone could not adequately lead the AUC community. 

The vote came as a result of lack of faculty involvement in the way the university was being managed. Senators mentioned the previous year’s issues involving the faculty handbook as well as a lack of shared governance and transparency. 

The AUC community was further angered by the visit of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who spoke on campus in January and delivered his administration’s Middle East Policy. They said no member of the AUC community – faculty, students, and staff – had been consulted or informed about the visit.

In a letter to the president, Chair of the History Department Pascale Ghazaleh questioned why the university would host a a former CIA director who was in favor of torture.  Despite criticism against Pompeo’s actions, Ricciardone reaffirmed that his visit would strengthen AUC’s international standing.  

Ricciardone responded to the lack of confidence in him, calling it “unfortunate” and “unnecessary.” He mentioned that the administration, BoT and faculty are all still committed to doing what is best for the university and students’ education. 

September 19, 2019: This year AUC celebrated the end of its first 100 years in Egypt. The year was marked by a series of centennial events that celebrated the university’s many achievements over the course of these 100 years.

March 8, 2020: This year was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in an ensuing lockdown. Early in the Spring semester of 2020, Ricciardone sent an email to reassure the community that the Emergency Management Team was closely monitoring the global threat COVID-19 posed.

“[The Emergency Management Team is] planning for its [COVID-19] potential impacts on our community and AUC’s operations. We have taken and are taking further precautions to mitigate the risks to the health of our students, faculty, staff, and visitors,” wrote Ricciardone.

March 13, 2020: In an email sent to the AUC community a few days later, Ricciardone announced the shift to online learning for a temporary period until further notice. In an email sent on March 25, this period was extended until the end of the spring semester.

June 18, 2020: In his year end message to the community, Ricciardone announced his decision to retire at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year.

July 7, 2020: At the beginning of July, social media posts had started circulating accusing Ahmed Bassem Zaki, a former student (though one who never graduated from AUC) of sexual harassment. In response to these allegations, Ricciardone sent an email to the community clarifying Zaki’s association with the university, and reiterated the university’s policies regarding sexual harassment.

“AUC tolerates no form of harassment on our campus and among members of our AUC community. This case reminds all of us that we must stand together as a community to reaffirm our commitment to a learning and work environment in which every member respects and protects the dignity of all others,” Ricciardone wrote.

July 16, 2020: In a Campus Conversation, Ricciardone announced the relocation of the Title IX Office to report directly to his office. The office was also renamed the Office of Institutional Equity. This decision is intended to further emphasize the office’s role in the AUC community and to minimize any confusion caused by the office’s name.

During this same Campus Conversation, Ricciardone also announced plans for a mandatory online anti-harassment training for the entire community.

“We are the first in Egypt to introduce mandatory online anti-harassment training to all faculty, staff and students. Our entire University leadership — including all deans, vice presidents and department chairs — will join me in the first groups to participate in the training,” Ricciardone stated.

December 1, 2020: Toward the end of the Fall 2020 semester, students gathered in AUC parking lots to protest demands including a Pass/Fail grading option, commencement dates and a tuition reduction. The protest achieved an appearance of Vice President of Student Life Deena Boraie and a discussion round with the Provost afterwards. The students main demand for a Pass/Fail option have not been granted, but commencement dates have soon after been send out.

May 2021: Hanya Captan, The Caravan’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief, sat down with Ricciardone to reflect on his time at AUC, where they discussed leadership during the pandemic, the university’s future, and so much more. Below are some excerpts from the interview.

Captan: Prior to joining the AUC community you had quite the career, serving in various ambassadorial positions then later as Vice President of the Atlantic Council and Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East — so, what I’m curious to know is where did the decision to join AUC come from?

Ricciardone: It came from AUC — I had no idea that the position was open. A search firm committee reached out to me, their emails had been going to my spam folder, so I wasn’t paying attention. Somebody figured that out and reached out. I hadn’t really thought about coming back, I was happy at the Atlantic Council, [it was a] perfectly simulating and rich and enjoyable life after having had an amazing, amazingly blessed life as an American diplomat.

So, when this came up, you know, I was excited at the thought of returning to Egypt. I just love Egypt. And I knew how great this institution was, my daughter had gone here. And son, now son in law, they met here. And in fact, I first encountered the institution in 1977, when my wife and I came as hippy backpacker tourists to Egypt, and we went to the old bookstore, down at the Tahrir campus. So it has been a lifelong association at a distance with AUC. So when AUC approached me, I thought, “Wow, I should give this some serious thought.”

So, we had sort of a family debate because we were having our first grandchild at that time. And I promised my wife we would never go roaming around the world again. But we thought we’d both be able to make it. And she’s fond of Egypt too, my whole family are…and that was it, it came out of the blue, an opening was here… I interviewed a couple of times, came out to visit. I asked a lot of questions of faculty, because I have a lot of friends on faculty, families that had students here, government officials that I knew, [asked them] “What’s going on at AUC? Should I come and do this?” and absolutely everybody I spoke with said, “AUC, very good. It’s at an interesting point in history. Please come.” And I did, and I haven’t regretted it for a day, it’s just been wonderful.

Captan: What were some of the early challenges you faced when you first joined the community?

Ricciardone: The very first was the crash of the Egyptian national currency. We lost, overnight, half of its value. That really frightened our students or tuition paying students, naturally, understandably so, because most of our families find that paying the tuition here is a serious sacrifice, something they have to plan for. So, when that happens [the crash], even as a nonprofit, we still have to raise enough funds to operate and make sure we take good care of our students without cutting quality. So that was a big challenge.

Really, people were very, very anxious. And the first thing was to reassure everybody, “don’t worry, I made a commitment that we would make sure that all academically qualified students would continue their careers at AUC and we’d get paid through one way or another” even if it meant, as it would mean, increasing scholarships.

I had to go back to the Board of Trustees, we allocated more money for scholarships, we reopened the scholarship application window. And families that had never wanted to apply or felt that they could get by without getting assistance, were able to apply and we were able to keep every student in school, we didn’t lose a single student for inability to pay. So I was very proud of that…We [had a] severe budget deficit for a couple of years, but we brought our budget back into balance, so we’re sustainable. 

So, that was the first crisis. A second one…was the faculty handbook crisis. Something was there before I came, where there was a very serious misunderstanding, legal misunderstanding between the faculty senate and the Board of Trustees…there’s a question about the legal standing, the authorities, the responsibilities of the Faculty Senate, which is an advisory body in every American University, where there is such a thing, it is well understood as an advisory body. It is not a Senate in the sense of a legislature that makes laws that are implemented, but it’s a really important advisory body that is indispensable. We depend on it for our coordination. So, that took a lot of discussion. And that discussion took place in the context of a second, I think, big achievement for AUC, not for me, for AUC, of winning American Middle States Commission on Higher Education, accreditation, re-accreditation for another 10 year period. That happened in 2018. Against the backdrop of huge fierce debate in the Faculty Senate, about the rights of the Senate, the rights of the faculty…and that sort of stuff. So we got that done. Took a lot of discussion, some of it very heated, but it worked out, it was fine. 

The third big crisis is COVID!

That hit all of higher ed. And it’s just so cosmically unfair, I guess, to every human being who’s alive, for the past year. But particularly to older people who are sick, and many who have lost their lives, but to young people who need to be together. At university, the most precious years, you only get four or five, best years of your life. And to see the stress, you know, of being kept apart, kept looking at little screens, unable to engage with, you know, the greatest teachers in the world here and each other. That was just so hard on everybody. [It was] also hard on faculty and staff, not only because it’s hard to work, but we miss the reason for being here, which is having the students, which just fills us with joy. So that’s been a hard year, but again, with a huge team effort, just on every level of technical capabilities, training of people to use the online systems, upgrading our infrastructure some of which were in serious need of upgrading anyway, this was just pushing systems over the edge, changing the way we work, taking care of our employees and was our students as well. All those are huge challenges taking a lot of brainpower and technical support. 

I think we’ve come through it adequately. We had two goals at the outset. Number one, keep everybody safe and healthy. Number two, keep the students marching on their educational journeys one way or another, even if we can’t give them what they wanted, need and deserve and we wish to give them because the world won’t let us, at least let them not lose their march from freshman to sophomore. I feel especially bad for the freshmen this year, because they didn’t get the AUC experience from the beginning, which is so exciting. And then the seniors who should have had the fun of graduations, we still hope to do those [graduations], they’re postponed and they’ll be a nostalgia fest rather than a different kind of happy celebration, assuming we get to do it, in October, or sometime in the Fall.

Captan: How would you evaluate AUC response to the pandemic?

Ricciardone: I think it was exemplary, if I may say so. Again, not because of me, but the community. We have an educated community at the end of the day. So, that made it easier. Harder, in some ways, because people are all online, there’s a lot of nonsense online…We’ve made all kinds of adjustments that were very hard to do at first, but we’ve rolled with it. 

When I first came five years ago, I came from a more flexible work environment. In the world of think tanks, even in government, we were much more flexible in terms of “flexitime”… [and] remote working you know, remote working is, in my management experience, the first time I used it as a leader of a unit was in the 1990s, early 1990s. 

So, at AUC, we weren’t using it. We wanted everybody to be here clocking in and you’re paying people by the hour, they sat at their desks, rather than by their output. And I’ve struggled to try to get these reforms, it’s that people have more flexibility in their lives. Some people have young children, why shouldn’t they be able to come in a little later, earlier? Or some days each week, work remotely if they can do it?

So, we just didn’t do it for my first three or four years, then COVID came, we had to do it, we did it. So now remote working is going to be something that will be a permanent element of the way we work. Doesn’t mean everybody’s going to work from home all the time. But it means most people, many people will be able to work from home or other places, much of the time, some of the time. It will depend on the nature of the work. 

We responded in a textbook fashion. I really think we’ll have held the best practices. Take a look at our online dashboard. As part of our communications effort, instead of having rumors of how bad it was, we just decided, “What’s to hide?” We looked around to see what the best American universities are doing. So we started publishing new cases, hospitalizations, fatalities, seven day rolling average, we started collecting a lot of data, analyzing it and putting it out for people. And on the basis of that we thought we could open up a little bit in the fall, and then it got hard again. So the numbers went up. So we came back, then January to February, okay, we can open up again, pick up a few more students, we did that, numbers shot up. We’ve had to shut down again, but it’s data based. So I think we have much to be proud of. As stressful as it’s been, I think we’ve done the best, with the best in the world. 

Captan: Earlier on in our conversation, you had mentioned that there are more and more universities opening up in Egypt, and that sort of increasing the competition that exists. So how can AUC remain ahead of the pack?

Ricciardone: By doing what we’re doing, without resting or getting smug. Continue doing what we’re doing, but always being alert to best practices in the world. Never being content with the way things are, always knowing we must be in the continuous improvement game. If not, we will eventually fail. Universities don’t usually collapse, they usually bleed to death when they die. So I focus on those three things I mentioned at the outset: re-internationalizing as part of our brand distinguisher, strengthening that is really, really important. There are other universities that bring foreign students here and have quite for a long time. But we have a special niche, and we’ve got to strengthen our hold on that. There are universities that prepare Egyptian students to go abroad. We are one of the best launching pads, our students get into the best American and foreign universities who have masters and PhD programs, and scholarships and fellowships to do. 

We have to, we can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say, “Oh, we are AUC” and strut around. with a certain arrogance, we have to earn it every day. We have to have sustainable management, that means we have to recognize where at a price point where probably twice as expensive as the next most expensive Egyptian private university. That leaves a lot of space for others to come in, do things a little more cheaply, spend less per student and give some approximation of the AUC experience. So if they can give, you know 80% or 70% of the AUC experience at 50% of the cost, for some families, they’ll say “Well, I would have wished to go to AUC, but I’ll go to Galala, and right these days, I will even be present next week with the minister.”

Arizona State University (ASU) is signing a dual degree agreement with Galala University, which is a new model of university in Egypt, and that’s a good thing for Egypt. As president of AUC I’m proud that a fine American university system, Arizona State University that’s famous in the United States, that they’re signing a dual degree program with Galala is good for Egypt. Good for Glalala, good for Egyptian students, it can handle many more students than we can help and at much less cost. 

However, for AUC, that means we need to make it clear, our market needs to understand that a degree from AUC is something very special. That it’s worth coming to AUC, it’s worth the extra expense. So that’s a real world example of the competition. It’s not just slogans, the government of Egypt,  it’s not just giving speeches, they’re building new universities. And those universities are reaching out to the best UK and American universities to partner. We’re doing that too, because we have an expression, “a rising tide floats all boats.” We want to see higher education in Egypt improved across the board. So we don’t regard competition as something bad for AUC, it’s a reality of the world. If it weren’t, if we didn’t have competition in Egypt, we would have competition outside anyways. So that’s the nature of any global industry but especially higher education. The human knowledge industry never stops. It only accelerates, teaching and research just two sides of this same coin. You need great students to be with great researchers, for the research to be great. It is a beautiful, virtuous cycle, not a vicious cycle but a virtuous cycle. 

Captan: What will always make AUC unique?

Ricciardone: Even with ASU and others doing branch campuses and dual degree programs and partnerships, we are still, I think, “always is a long time, forever is a long time,” but for 100 years, we’ve been the only American university in the world that is in Egypt. That is really here. This is our home. This is where we were founded. We were not founded as somebody’s branch. We’re not like a partner with an existing Egyptian university, we were our own unique university. Fully authentic, validated, certified, international American standards. It’s only the Middle States. We also have Egyptian national standard accreditation we got last year, very important for us. And then we get accreditation, each of our departments and schools that have accrediting agencies in the world. That’s how we validate that we are excellent. So I think that’s going to keep us unique. It takes a big investment to start up. I don’t know how we would do it out of the blue if we had to do it today. If wise people hadn’t done it 100 years ago, and continue to build it year by year, we wouldn’t have this. 

Captan: So having reflected on your term with us, what did you learn from your time at AUC?

Ricciardone: Maybe reinforced what I already knew, or at least what I felt, that higher education is one of the most important and just noble, high human pursuits. It really is the closest thing to immortal — as long as the human race is to survive and prosper on this little planet, we must keep growing those who follow us. We must keep investing in our young people, it’s not enough to feed and clothe and protect our young people in order to keep the human race on the planet. We must also stimulate your mind and give the coming generation the benefit of what we’ve learned from mistakes, and from successes, so they don’t make the mistakes and they will have more successes. 

Before, I was a diplomat, I was a school teacher. I really  just loved teaching, I really felt that was important. Meaningful, seeing younger students blossom. It’s like gardening, it just feels so good. It’s the most meaningful work I can imagine. So I felt that and then to come into a career of being outside education, I was a student, a parent of students, but to get back into it as a provider, it reinforced what I already believed. It’s just very gratifying work. I can see why people do it, despite the relatively low pay that the faculty members get.