Ivanka Trump snub at Wichita State could threaten WSU president’s job, donor support

Wichita State donors are threatening to cut ties and pull support from the university if the Kansas Board of Regents doesn’t dump president Jay Golden for canceling Ivanka Trump’s commencement speech.

The flap over cancellation of President Trump’s daughter’s speech to students at the university’s separate trade-school campus threatens a multi-million-dollar relationship with Wichita’s largest private corporation, Koch Industries, according to a former state regent with deep ties to WSU.

The Kansas Board of Regents has called a special meeting Wednesday afternoon to reportedly decide Golden’s future at the university.

Wichita State announced late last week that Trump would be the speaker at the WSU Tech graduation. Following swift backlash from faculty, students and alumni about the Trump administration’s response to protests against racist policing and concerns that violent protests could erupt at the university, Golden canceled Trump’s keynote speech Thursday evening.

The decision spurred a reaction from Trump, who released the speech online and on Twitter cited cancel culture, calling it “antithetical to academia.” It also drew condemnation from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former Republican U.S. congressman from Wichita, who said the university missed a chance to showcase itself to the rest of the nation.

Golden took over the reins at Wichita State in January after a closed search to replace former President John Bardo, who died in early 2019 after months of health problems.

Since taking office, Golden’s goals of taking a hands-on approach to the daily operations of the university, focusing heavily on improving the student experience and building trust with faculty members hit a roadblock when the coronavirus pandemic forced the school to move all its classes online halfway through the spring semester. The Trump fiasco is the first major controversy during Golden’s tenure.

During a town hall meeting Monday, Golden said WSU is committed to diversity and that he canceled Trump’s speech for students, who are entering the job market during one of the greatest economic downturns in U.S. history.

“This last year has been nothing short of unprecedented for them,” he said. “It has been an emotional drain. COVID-19, school being turned around online, not being with friends, family members or themselves potentially have lost jobs now in the midst of social unrest.”

“Politics set aside, we will and I will not do things intentionally to distract from a celebration which should be a celebration experience for the students and their families,” he said.

“I live and I own this decision. But I also want to say to the faculty and staff and students that we are focused on diversity, and we are going to be focused on diversity of our workforce, our student body, but also in regard to diversity of thought. We’re not going to back down.”

Golden did not respond to interview requests.

‘We had Koch in the fold’

Multiple members of WSU’s presidential search committee, which recommended hiring Golden, are now calling for him to be removed from office after six months on the job.

Officials from Koch Industries, Pizza Hut founder Dan Carney and several longtime donors and supporters are “very upset and quite vocal in their decisions to disavow any further support,” said Steve Clark, a former regent and former chair of the Wichita State University Foundation, in a letter to the Kansas Board of Regents on Monday.

Clark, who chaired presidential search committees for Golden and his predecessor, John Bardo, said the decision to cancel Trump’s speech violates the First Amendment and has damaged the school’s reputation with high-profile donors that were drawn to Bardo’s leadership style.

“The Kochs never had any real confidence in the presidents we’ve had out there, and I’ve known all of them for 50 years. Then we finally got John Bardo in there,” Clark said in a phone interview. “He was a very decisive guy.”

Under Bardo, who was hired in 2012, the Koch influence at the university grew substantially as money poured in from the billionaire family from Wichita.

“We had Koch in the fold,” Clark said. “Now, we’re going to lose them, and they’ll never be back.”

According to university statements, Koch and its associated foundations have given or pledged more than $15 million for major projects at WSU in the past seven years, including:

▪ Charles Koch Arena: In addition to a $6 million donation to renovate the basketball arena and buy the naming rights in the early 2000s, Koch pledged $4.5 million in 2015 to help expand and renovate the arena and related facilities.

▪ Institute for the Study of Economic Growth: $3.6 million for a think tank to research and promote Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch’s long-held belief that open markets and minimal government intervention in economic matters create the optimum environment for innovation, entrepreneurship and growth.

▪ Go Create: $3.75 million to establish the Go Create “maker space” on the Innovation Campus, where university and community members can access sophisticated tools to make product prototypes.

▪ Honors College: $1.54 million pledged to create the Honors College Koch Scholars Program, a competitive award for high school seniors.

▪ Koch Innovation Challenge: $1 million to support a program in which WSU students compete for funding and scholarships to invent products and technologies.

▪ Koch Global Trading Center: $806,000, including $346,000 in 2013 to establish a training center where students receive professional-level market data and practice stock, energy and commodities trading. Koch has also pledged an additional $460,000 to help relocate the center to a planned new business school building on the Innovation Campus.

The Koch family also leased out a university building for a private elementary school on the main campus in 2018.

In his letter to the regents, Clark said he spoke with an unhappy Koch Industries chief financial officer Steve Feilmeier, who was on the Golden search committee and is chairing the fundraising campaign for a new business building planned for Innovation Campus.

“He advised me he’s resigning ... from any further association with the University,” Clark wrote. “He is also advising that Koch Industries rescind all their financial support for programs at the University they’ve previously funded.”

“These relationships can only be restored by Dr. Golden’s departure,” he wrote the regents. “I would strongly encourage you not to let this linger, and to immediately request his resignation.”

On Tuesday, the board of regents announced that it would hold a special meeting Wednesday afternoon. The meeting notice does not include the subject of the meeting, but Clark said the meeting will decide whether or not to remove Golden.

Regents declined to comment on the subject of the meeting.

Feilmeier confirmed he was unhappy with the decision but said he could not speak on behalf of Koch Industries regarding donor relationships, adding that his conversation with Clark was in his capacity as a private citizen, and not on behalf of Koch Industries.

But Feilmeier did say he thought WSU handled the situation poorly and that he’s questioning his future with the university because of it. He has been asked to join the Wichita State Foundation Board but has not decided whether he will accept the position after the Trump snub.

“I will wait and see what happens this week and next as this matter is debated,” he said in an email.

“The right to speak freely is a basic right bestowed by our founding fathers and it is especially important that this basic right be protected in academic institutions,” he wrote. “As such, I believe WSU handled this situation incorrectly and the administration could have handled it very differently. This will weigh heavily on my ultimate decision. I am not seeking for anyone to be terminated.”

Jessica Koehn, a Koch Industries spokesperson, said that Koch will honor its commitments to the university.

“Koch is continuing its commitments to WSU, and we will continue evaluating new funding opportunities as they arise,” she said in an email. “We believe in academic freedom and respect the university’s independence in making employment decisions. We do not make our support conditional on employment decisions, which are the sole purview of university officials.

“At the same time, we object to speaker disinvitations. Universities offer students opportunities to encounter new ideas and think for themselves. Limiting access to unpopular speakers, viewpoints, and scholarship doesn’t protect students, it cuts off the chance to engage, debate, and criticize.”

A five-alarm fire

Golden’s decision to cancel White House adviser Ivanka Trump’s WSU Tech commencement speech has torn open a divide between a large and vocal group of students and faculty who applauded the decision and longtime donors who say the move embarrasses the school on a national stage.

Pressure was on Wichita State administrators after Jennifer Ray, associate professor of photo media, penned an open letter asking the university to cancel Trump that garnered 487 signatures within hours of the announcement that she was the keynote speaker.

Nationwide protests have followed the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, held him to the pavement with a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The university’s announcement that Trump would be the speaker came the same week that federal law enforcement used force to dispel protesters outside the White House to clear a path for President Trump before he walked across the street to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church to be photographed. Ivanka Trump accompanied her father to the church and reportedly carried the Bible he held up in photos.

“Ivanka Trump, obviously, represents her father’s administration as one of his closest advisors. To many Americans, that administration has come to signify the worst of our country, particularly in its recent actions toward those peacefully protesting against racist police brutality,” Ray wrote.

Ray said that she was “horrified and disgusted” that Trump had been invited to speak at the ceremony and that doing so sent the wrong message about the public university’s commitment to diversity.

WSU Tech president Sheree Utash, after Golden canceled Trump’s keynote address, apologized and called the timing of the announcement insensitive.

But the decision didn’t sit well with some WSU donors, who said they feel Golden is more focused on diversity of identity than diversity of thought. They also worry that rejecting the president’s daughter could also have repercussions for the school’s federal contracts.

“I think it’s reason enough to fire him that he went directly and blatantly against the President’s executive order, which basically said if there isn’t diversity of thought on campus that some funds from the federal government could be withheld,” said David Mitchell, a Wichita State alumnus, longtime booster and member of the presidential search committee.

Mitchell said the move has sent him and several other prominent boosters into a panic.

“It’s a fire. It’s a fire. It’s a five-alarm fire,” he said.

Free speech is at the core Wichita State’s identity, Mitchell said, and bringing controversial speakers is important to critical thinking. He said one past speaker at Wichita State changed his life: George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party.

“Tremendous speaker. Tremendous presentation at Wichita State. The most important event in my life at WSU,” he said. “It turned me into a critical thinker. He almost took me down the rabbit hole. It was that important. I can’t tell you how important that was to my education at WSU — the single most important event — to hear someone so crazy on one side of an issue. It made me think for myself.”

Students were robbed of that opportunity when Golden canceled Trump’s speech, he said.

Mitchell, who served on the nonprofit organization that manages public-private partnerships on the Innovation Campus, said he resigned from his seat on the Wichita State Innovation Alliance because of the decision and said he won’t be involved with the university in any way until “the situation is rectified,” meaning Golden leaves the university.

“There’s no question,” he said. “He needs to either resign or be fired.”

“We were nationally known, finally prominent in our area of innovation and the Innovation Campus and learning at WSU. Now, in this one fell swoop, he has rebranded us as just another leftist university.”

Al Higdon, co-founder of the advertising company Sullivan Higdon & Sink and a former public relations executive at Beech and Learjet, said the move is a public relations nightmare.

“It just seemed so unnecessary,” Higdon said. “I mean, she (Trump) wasn’t invited here to make a political speech. ... But just because of who she is, or she’s the daughter of who she is, apparently, it was greatly rejected by a number of the faculty members who seem to have pressured the president to take the action that he did.”

“Without question” canceling Ivanka Trump’s speech will have consequences, Higdon said.

“This could have a significant impact on donor relations, certainly,” he said. “And just the feel-good feeling about Wichita State has been greatly diminished. ... When we see these kinds of closed-minded views on allowing a variety of voices on campus, there’s just a number of us who believe that’s not what higher education should be about.

“I’m really pretty much devastated this is happening on our campus here in Wichita, which so many of us have loved and felt close to,” Higdon said. “It’s almost like it’s being hijacked by a vocal group who wants only a single agenda addressed on campus.”

This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 5:01 AM.