University of Virginia President Is Reinstated The University of Virginia's board of trustees voted unanimously on Tuesday to reinstate president Teresa A. Sullivan, whom they had forced to resign 16 days earlier. The board had originally charged that Ms. Sullivan was not handling the escalating financial and technological pressures facing colleges rapidly enough. In the article "Ousted Head of University Is Reinstated in Virginia" our colleague Richard Pérez-Peña writes: As it weighed how to address those challenges, one of the nation's pre-eminent universities suddenly and unexpectedly forced out a popular leader after two years and with little explanation, spurring students, faculty members, administrators and alumni to unite in her defense, demanding that the board reverse itself. Even the interim president selected by the Board of Visitors said he disagreed with Ms. Sullivan's removal, and then, as protests grew louder, said he would not fill his new role as long as there was a chance she might be reinstated. After insisting for days that the affair did not involve him, Gov. Bob McDonnell was also drawn into the fray, first criticizing the board's secrecy - though not its decision - and then, last Friday, demanding that it resolve the matter quickly, or he would ask all of its members to resign. The board took less than 20 minutes at Tuesday's special meeting to reinstate her by a vote of 15 to 0. Ms. Sullivan emerged on the steps of the university's white-columned rotunda afterward to address a whooping crowd gathered on the central lawn, and quoted something that Thomas Jefferson, designer of the building and founder of the university, wrote upon being elected president: "It is pleasant for those who have just escaped threatened shipwreck to hail one another when landed in unexpected safety." The dispute exposed fears about the murky future of higher education at a time of deep cuts in state support and an intensifying debate about whether colleges should be run more like businesses. At the same time, expectations are high for a rapid transformation - through costly technology - to online instruction. Do you think Ms. Sullivan should have been reinstated? Is it fair for a board of trustees to expect a relatively new president to handle new challenges so rapidly?