The planned parenthood thing seems like a sideshow to me. Maybe a way for Wolfe to give himself political cover with Jay Nixon for this move since Wolfe doesn't supposedly have a very good relationship with Nixon, but I don't think it would really be why Loftin is getting the axe.

The drama over the hiring then firing of the Medical School dean within the past 11 months seems to be the real fire starter here to me. I heard as far back as the UConn game some talk of a "vote of no confidence" being taken in the Chancellor over his perceived "meddling" with the medical school and other institutions like the business school.

Loftin's goal and directive was to try to secure Mizzou's AAU status which has been tenuous for years, and you do that at the med school level by pressing for more research, less clinical. He got rid of some vice chancellor position who was the liaison between the med school and the UM Hospital and he asked the new med school dean to also assume the responsibilities of that vacated position. The med school dean didn't want to, and then suddenly he was forced out. It ticked a lot of the academicians off.

Wolfe is also supposed to be really close with the head of the Mizzou hospital. I don't know what the hospital thought of Loftin's maneuvering but my guess is they didn't like it either.

Bottom line I think if this happens it was probably an academic version of how things went down with Steve Patterson getting forced out as the AD at Texas. Outsider comes in with lots of proposed changes to increase efficiencies, but he rubs the established local yokels the wrong way in doing so and pretty soon there are vultures circling all around him because he didn't kiss the right asses.

This post was edited on 10/21/15 at 5:10 pm