We all remember the discussion surrounding the potential Impeachment of President Bill Clinton that ultimately did not result in his removal from office. Unfortunately, some other de facto impeachments have occurred over the last several years in academic communities in the University of Missouri system. These occurrences were not part of a formal legislative effort, but rather grassroots demands by student or faculty groups within the University. Most recently, resignations were demanded by football players at the University’s Columbia campus. The players were supported by a liberal student group and they used the leverage of withholding services if their demands were not met. The services in question were the playing of a football game the following week. If the President of the University did not resign immediately, a group of the players (all of whom are on athletic scholarships) stated that they would boycott the upcoming game, which would have caused the University to forfeit the game at an estimated expense of over $1 million. The demands of the students were granted and the President resigned. In addition, some members of the UMC faculty insisted on the ouster of the Chancellor of the UMC campus, a demand to which the university also acceded. In other words, the President and Chancellor of the University’s largest campus were effectively impeached by the football team, a fairly small group of protesting students and a group of professors. 
Photo credit: HAP
While this seems preposterous to some, it was not without historical precedent. In 2005, the University of Missouri Kansas City Chancellor Martha Gilliland was induced to resign by a vocal group of that campus’s professors who disagreed with the way she was running the school. This result was not popular with the Kansas City business community, which embraced Chancellor Gilliland as someone who was building bridges between the school and various business endeavors in the city. Nonetheless, she was encouraged to resign. In neither case did the University Board of Regents back its top administrators against the complainers. Do the professors run the University? Are the inmates running the asylum? Will this become a trend throughout academia?
