DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706200218

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Interview

                                            LENGTH:  142 lines

Q&A: GORDON DAVIES & PEG MILLER DAVIES BALKED AT ``LOYALTY OATH'' TOTAL FEALTY TO EDUCATION BOARD TOO MUCH TO ASK

Two of the leading - and most outspoken - officials of the State Council of Higher Education are leaving in a blaze of controversy.

Gordon K. Davies, the agency's longtime director, was dismissed by the board members in April. He will vacate the job he has held for 20 years at the end of the month. Margaret A. ``Peg'' Miller served as the council's associate director for academic affairs for 10 years. She resigned in April to become president of the American Association for Higher Education in Washington, starting in July.

Miller expressed her own frustrations in a three-page letter to the council's chairwoman in February. With the ``breakdown in communication'' and lack of trust between board members and staff, she wrote, ``we spiral downwards together.''

In an interview printed in last week's Commentary section, the council's vice chairman, Norfolk lawyer John D. Padgett, said Davies' dismissal was basically a personality issue. Davies, he said, was unwilling to share his authority with a ``more active board.'' During a crucial meeting earlier this year, Padgett said, Davies refused to address several concerns of the members.

Davies, in a recent interview, offered another take. At the meeting, Davies recalled, council members demanded of him a loyalty oath that he was unwilling to abide. ``They said . . . loyalty means obedience; obedience means doing what you are told, whether you think it is right or wrong. I said I have never been that kind of person, I will never be that kind of person and I am not that kind of person today.''

One of the reasons Davies was deemed insubordinate was Miller's letter, she said. From Miller's standpoint, she was just trying to start a dialogue. ``I've had some wonderful, productive debates with people who are very different in their ideological position,'' Miller said. ``What I cannot deal with is a stonewall.''

Davies and Miller were interviewed in Davies' Richmond office by Virginian-Pilot education writer Philip Walzer. These are excerpts of their conversation.

Q. Gordon, as John Padgett tells it, you were the one who decided that you would be dismissed. He said it was the result of a meeting where the council members raised several concerns with you and instead of trying to address them, you said, ``I think we should end this relationship.'' Is that true or false?

Davies: In the first place, what I said was, it probably was best if they severed the relationship. But I made it very clear that the action would have to be theirs. In the second place, they said to me, we want loyalty; you are insubordinate. Loyalty means obedience; obedience means doing what you are told, whether you think it is right or wrong. I said I have never been that kind of person, I will never be that kind of person and I am not that kind of person today.

Q. And that was it?

Davies: That was it. The other thing I said was that anybody who had lived as long as we had lived - all the people in that room - who thought that that was the proper responsibility of a person in authority had failed to take account of the consequences of people who did what they were told whether they thought it was right or wrong, in the horrendous history of the 20th century. Eichmann did what he was told, whether it was right or wrong. It's simply an abominable conception of human responsibility.

Q. Regarding your dismissal, is there anything more you could have done to meet the members of the council halfway, especially since the differences supposedly weren't over ideology?

Davies: There wasn't anything else to do. I disagree completely. Of course it was ideology.

Miller: One of the things that was a problem was that there were significant differences of opinion about what ought to happen in higher education. The main one really does have to do with access and cost. It seems to me that this council has a commitment to keeping total cost of education down, and if that means reducing access, so be it. That is not an agenda that Gordon or I would willingly embrace. But as far as I'm concerned, the reason we couldn't work together was because they have a very different notion than we do about the relationship between a lay board and the professional staff. I think they think that you have a board that gives staff orders and staff says, ``Yes, sir,'' and that's it. And if staff doesn't say that, it's considered to be insubordinate.

Q. Peg, were you criticized for being insubordinate for your letter to the chairwoman, Elizabeth McClanahan, discussing your concerns about these problems?

Miller: It was my understanding - and correct me if I'm wrong - that Gordon was considered insubordinate for allowing me to write it. And it's inconceivable to me that, having been asked for my opinion, I would not be expected to give it.

Davies: I think the most significant thing about the letter Peg wrote, which was a superbly reasoned letter in the great 19th-century tradition of John Stuart Mill, is that nobody ever answered it.

Miller: I was opening up a debate. I genuinely believe in debate. I've come to divide the world into two kinds of people: not liberal and conservative, but those who are open to debate and those who are not. And I've had some wonderful, productive debates with people who are very different in their ideological position. What I cannot deal with is a stonewall.

Q. One thing everyone involved agrees on is that the staff you have collected is very strong. If they stay on, what are the chances that the council and colleges will go back to business as usual with no harm done to the commonwealth?

Miller: Yes, the staff is a collection of really, really competent people. But I think they need a Gordon - pushing institutions, insisting on truth-telling and garnering for that an enormous amount of informal authority for the council. I don't know how this particular council, given its particular governance right now, can persuade somebody of Gordon's stature to work with them. Certainly not if they're going to say loyalty and obedience.

Q. What do you think you've both learned in the past year, since the difficulties arose?

Miller: One of the things I was very struck by is the powerful value in American higher education of the lay board. It brings in the common-sense check. I've learned how that functions well in my previous years at the council, and I've also learned how it can break down. When it's working, it's one of the best assets of higher education in America. When it doesn't work, it's a sad loss.

Davies: What I learned is that there are times when, if you're going to make change, you've got to be willing to be fired. And there aren't enough people like that.

Q. How do you make change if you're fired?

Davies: Watch me.

Q. Are you thinking you may continue to play a strong behind-the-scenes role in Virginia higher education?

Davies: I don't know what role I'll play in Virginia higher education, but I will work again and I will work in higher education policy - if not in Virginia, then on a national level. But in some way, I know that I will have a platform from which to speak and write.

Q. Gordon, since your dismissal, two images of you have emerged. There's Gordon Davies the irrepressible, creative, dynamic advocate of higher education. And there's Gordon Davies, a headstrong administrator disdainful of alternative ideas or questions from those he considers lesser than himself, unwilling to bend or compromise. Which is correct?

Davies: I'll let Peg answer that.

Miller: Both are correct. I would say he doesn't suffer fools gladly. And he can be pretty prickly, no question about it, and creative and of huge value to higher education.

Q. How did you stay in this job for 20 years if you didn't suffer fools gladly?

Davies: I didn't work for many fools or with them. . . .I compromise all the time, despite those characteristics. In 20 years, this has always been a matter of getting done what was possible to get done. But there does come a point where you can do more good by not compromising. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

JAY PAUL/Associated Press

Miller and Davies will step down from the State Council of Higher

Education this month.

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