Lafayette College President Nicole Hurd will face a vote of no confidence from the faculty on Tuesday, two days into the spring semester.

A successful vote of no confidence would be a symbolic declaration of the faculty’s loss of faith in Hurd’s leadership. It is believed that Hurd will be the first president in Lafayette’s history to face such a vote from the faculty.

The 10 faculty signatories of the 12-page no-confidence motion contended that Hurd has “harmed the institution of Lafayette College” by deprioritizing its academic mission and excluding the faculty from decision-making.

“We believe that Lafayette College as a whole–its faculty, students and staff–is badly in need of better leadership,” Angelika von Wahl, the chair of the international affairs department and one of the motion’s signatories, wrote in an email.

Hurd declined to comment. College spokesman Scott Morse deferred comment until after the vote.

The motion called upon the Board of Trustees, the college’s ruling body, to “address this leadership crisis.”

Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Sell said it would be “inappropriate to comment in advance of next Tuesday’s discussion and deliberation.”

The passing of the motion would follow a recent nationwide trend of similar actions. Separate analyses from The Journal of Research on the College President and the Chronicle of Higher Education both found that the resignation or expulsion of the college president quickly followed the majority of faculty-led successful no-confidence votes.

The motion, an escalation of yearslong tension between members of the faculty and Hurd, cites a laundry list of grievances.

The faculty members allege that Hurd’s administration drove a “mass exodus” of administrative staff, which she then failed to address by not filling “critical leadership positions” in a timely manner. The Hurd administration contends that the college’s turnover rate and usage of yearslong interim leadership are normal.

“It’s been very thoughtful planning in terms of when jobs have been open versus when I don’t want to have four, five, six senior administrators open at the same time,” Hurd said in an interview with The Lafayette last January. “I wanted to make sure that we didn’t have too many vacancies at one time.”

The faculty members also accuse Hurd of steering time and resources toward athletics over academics.

They separately alleged that she “deceived” the faculty about why the master planning process was put ahead of the strategic planning process — an unusual move, according to the faculty members — to secure donations for a new lacrosse building.

A large portion of the motion’s rationale is dedicated to claims that Hurd neglected her presidential obligation to involve the faculty in governance decisions on several occasions.

In one instance, according to the motion, Hurd undermined a faculty committee established to address professors’ “grave concerns” about the administration’s management of academic resources. The signatories claim that Hurd, in an email to the Board of Trustees, said the committee was primarily formed because the faculty was unhappy with salaries. The president, the authors note, is “the official medium of communication between the Faculty and the Board.”

Six of the motion’s signatories authored the proposal for the faculty committee.

The faculty members claim that Hurd did not adequately integrate the faculty into the strategic plan approval process by replacing a “normative” faculty vote with an online survey available to several different Lafayette constituencies. The faculty forced a vote and narrowly rejected the strategic plan, a fact not explicitly mentioned in Hurd’s community-wide email touting the plan’s large approval margins by Student Government, college staff and alumni.

Hurd wrote in the email that “this thoughtful, inclusive, and iterative process embodied the best of shared governance.”

William Bissell, an anthropology professor and one of the motion’s signatories, said that Hurd’s “disenfranchisement” of the faculty during the strategic plan process sparked the drafting of the motion. 

“We don’t do it with anything other than regret and sorrow, because faculty love this institution,” Bissell said of the motion. “We believe in it.”

The last time a Lafayette president was reported to face a no-confidence vote was in 1914 when the Board of Trustees prepared to remove President Ethelbert Dudley Warfield from office before he resigned.

Selma O’Malley ‘26 and Isabella Gaglione ‘25 contributed reporting.