Nancy Cantor will exit her role as chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark at the end of her second term in June 2024, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway announced in an Aug. 16 message to the school community.

And while the correspondence was delivered “[w]ith enduring admiration and gratitude” for the woman who has led RU-N for what will be more than a decade, it was met with opposition from the community the institution helps to anchor, led by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

“As a child, I remember growing up and hearing the slogan ‘Newark is a College Town,'” Baraka wrote in a response to Holloway, also sent Aug. 16. “I honestly can say that I never really felt the real meaning of that until Nancy Cantor showed up and became an integral part of the fabric and growth of this city. … In my estimation, she became a de factor member of this team, not because of where she was born, or her allegiance to me politically, but rather because of her allegiance to the progress of the city.”

Cantor’s commitment to the City of Newark was a sentiment also acknowledged by Holloway.

“There may be no other chancellor in the country as committed to the impact that a university can have on its host community as an anchor institution,” Holloway wrote. “In carrying out this commitment, Dr. Cantor has offered a sterling example of how to make higher education more inclusive and more publicly engaged.”

Cantor joined Rutgers in January 2014. At the time, she was reported to be among the highest-paid employees of the university with a base salary of $385,000 annually, according to NJ.com, for the first of her consecutive five-year appointments.

Previously, she was chancellor and president of Syracuse University, during which time she earned the Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award. Her other previous roles include serving as chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan; and chair of the department of psychology at Princeton University.

Among the school’s successes while Cantor has led RU-N are the Fiserv-Rutgers Program for Inclusive Innovation; the Honors Living-Learning Community, which was supported by a $10 million gift from fellow anchor institution, Prudential Financial Inc.; and the launch of Express Newark, an arts collaborative with direct connections to the community.

Her efforts have also supported the city’s goal for businesses to find employees and buy locally, increasing city-based suppliers to RU-N and hiring 440 residents as part of the Newark 2020 initiative, according to Baraka’s letter.

Amid a changing physical landscape in the state’s largest city, speaking to NJBIZ in 2020, Cantor highlighted the importance of striking the right balance when it comes to redevelopment.

“I think it’s a complicated picture,” she said. “What does equitable growth really mean? It means you want the investment, you want the capital investment. You want the prospering of businesses in Newark. You want new real estate. You want new organizations, new cultural institutions to thrive – small, medium and large. We want all that, but we want that to be embedded within the cultural histories and new generations of Newarkers.”

Cantor’s work to build those bridges includes co-founding and co-chairing the Newark Anchor Collaborative, a public-private partnership among the Brick City’s other stakeholders and executive leadership that includes Audible, Mars Wrigley, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Public Service Enterprise Group and RWJBarnabas Health, among others.

“As a leader among leaders in Newark, as co-chair and one of the co-founders of the Newark Anchor Collaborative, she has helped Rutgers to truly become integrated into the city’s fabric,” Baraka wrote in his letter to Holloway. “No longer does the University feel like an untouchable fortress located in the city; it is now a vital part of the community because of her leadership.”

Where do we go from here?

Following the conclusion of Cantor’s second, and extended term, she will have a one-year sabbatical at her current salary and then the option to return to the Rutgers faculty as a university professor, Rutgers spokesperson Dory Devlin told NJBIZ. Those positions have lifetime tenure, and are among the most-revered faculty members, she said, adding that, “Chancellor Cantor set a standard for community-university partnerships and maintaining those relationships will certainly be among the important qualifications in choosing her successor.”

According to Holloway’s message, a national search will launch “soon” to find RU-N’s next leader.

In his letter to the university president, Baraka said that “To discard Chancellor Cantor is taking two steps backwards.”

“It disrupts a long and hard-fought progress that Newark is journeying on,” the letter continued. “It flies in the face of the collective work that we have been doing many times with Chancellor Cantor’s insistence, her commitment and sheer will.”

The backlash to Holloway’s announcement caps a somewhat cruel summer for the university leader, who recently received a vote of no confidence, as well as a call for a pause in the process, from the Rutgers University Senate regarding the merger of the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In July, the school also announced tuition and fees would increase 6% for learners at the start of the 2023-2024 academic year. And warm weather created a festive atmosphere at the historic, first strike in Rutgers history, that concluded in May.

In closing, Baraka implored “the University to reconsider its decision to replace Chancellor Cantor.”

Adding: “It would be a grave error.”

The correspondence to Holloway was co-signed by: Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, Assemblywoman Shanique Speight and Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin, all Democrats from the 29th District; John Schreiber, president and CEO, NJPAC; Roger Leon, superintendent, Newark Public Schools; Linda Harrison, director and CEO, The Newark Museum of Art; Robert Clarke, founder and CEO, Newark Opportunity Youth Network; Richard Roper, public policy consultant; Craig Drinkard, executive officer, Victoria Foundation; Barbara Bell Coleman, founder, BBC Associates LLC.com; Richard Cammarieri, chairperson, Newark Community Development Network; Mary Sue Price, director emeritus, The Newark Museum of Art; and Elise Boddie, James V. Campbell professor of law, University of Michigan.