President of Native American College Still In Limbo

Linda Sue Warner, the controversial president of Haskell Indian Nation University in Lawrence, Kansas, is still holding onto her job. Sort of.

Warner, HINU’s president since 2007, has had a rocky tenure:

• Not long after she arrived at HINU she put forward a widely-condemned proposal to more than quadruple student fees.
• In August 2008 the university’s board of regents, citing irregularities in hiring and budgeting, called for Warner to be reassigned.
• In February of this year she was widely condemned for a bizarre incident in which she suspended university rules to force a student critic of her administration to graduate early.

Haskell is is operated by the federal government, and in September of this year Warner’s bosses at the Bureau of Indian Education called a time out. Warner would, they announced, be taking a leave of absence from the university, traveling to New Mexico to assist the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute with their accreditation process.

Now that posting is winding down, and Warner had been slated to take up her duties at HINU again next month. But yesterday the Bureau of Indian Education told the Associated Press that that’s not going to happen. Instead, she’ll be assigned to the bureau’s Oklahoma City regional office for an unspecified period of time.

HINU’s website still lists Haskell as its president, and the BIU has characterized Warner’s Oklahoma City posting as a temporary one, but the chances that Warner will ever resume her position seem to be getting more and more remote.

By the way, that involuntary early graduation story from February really is a must-read.