Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway will step down from his position after his contract expires at the end of the 2024-25 school year.
Holloway, 57, said Tuesday he has been exhausted by a toxic political environment and ever-present demands of a major university president.
“I don’t want to be in an environment where I need, where my family needs, protection. That’s the part I didn’t bargain for,” Holloway told NJ.com. “I didn’t sign up to have a police detail with me everywhere I go.”
Holloway started in the position before the 2020-21 school year and signed a five-year contract. He said after leaving the presidency, he would take a year-long sabbatical and then plan to return as a history professor.
“This decision is my own and reflects my ruminations about how best to be of service,” Holloway wrote in a letter to the Rutgers community.
According to Rutgers, the school welcomed its “largest, most diverse and most accomplished” freshman class this year. Under Holloway’s leadership, the school also received $970 million in research funding last year, just short of the so-called “billion-dollar club.”
Earlier this year, Holloway was a candidate to become president at Yale, where he attended graduate school and earned his Ph.D. in history in 1995.
Rutgers also touted Holloway’s return-to-school plan from 2020, claiming it led the nation in vaccination requirements.
Holloway was also president for tense moments including a 2023 faculty strike and the on-campus pro-Palestine protests earlier this year.
During the strike, protesters backing the faculty demonstrated outside Holloway’s house, a moment that apparently stuck with him. He said he also spoke with other collegiate leaders throughout the country.
“We’re sort of at wit’s end,” he told NJ.com. “When you’re facing absolutely no-win situations constantly, in this era of hyperbole about failing to do X, Y, and Z…none of us signed up for that.”
Rutgers did not immediately announce its plans for replacing Holloway as president.
“I am confident that many of my colleagues in the University Senate are looking forward to ensuring that the Senate has a meaningful role in the search for a new president,” psychology professor Paul Boxer told the Bergen Record.