University of Tennessee president John Petersen says his resignation yesterday was his choice, but it's clear he decided to leave before the trustees shoved him out the door. The AP's Duncan Mansfield chronicles Petersen's troubles here. To review, there was (1) a turf fight with the popular chancellor Loren Crabtree, which caused Crabtree to quit 14 months ago (2) a weird tirade by Petersen's wife at a fund-raiser that humiliated a major donor and (3) Petersen's aborted hiring of fired football coach Phillip Fulmer as a presidential aide at an exorbitant salary during a budget crisis. The board of trustees was dawdling in its most recently evaluation of Petersen's job performance, hoping he'd take the hint and quit. He did. UT Trustee Vice Chairman Jim Murphy tells Mansfield the trustees' opinion on whether Petersen should be retained wasn't "fully formed at this point." Petersen's contract has been in limbo since it expired in June. "John decided really to make a decision earlier (before a review was completed) that he wanted to leave," Murphy says. The irony is that much of Petersen's difficulties were caused by falling state revenues. As he prepared to make $100 million in cuts, eliminating programs and jobs, he attracted more criticism, and his PR blunders were magnified. As it turns out, the university won't have make those cuts after all, at least not for the next two years, thanks to the federal stimulus money.
