When The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote this week’s
cover story on the relationship between university systems and state
legislatures in the so-called “red” states, George Leef was one of the
people the reporter turned to for perspective. Leef told the paper that
university public relations efforts are carefully crafted to position
the institutions as “generally very beneficial to the state.” He noted
that occasionally a state’s lawmakers will make substantial changes
(Colorado for example) but they usually “let the state-university
administrators continue to run things the way they have.”