“The weakest teams are when we are all the same.” — Ruth Watkins, October 4, 2018

Then the president of the University of Utah, the first woman to hold that post, Watkins made that remark as part of a celebratory panel discussion highlighting the fact that four of Utah’s eight public universities were then led by female chief executives. (A fifth school, the private Westminster University, shared that distinction.)

That was then.

Now, after a rapid turnover in the executive suites of our public universities, one cannot help but notice that the leadership of the state’s top schools are all male. All white male. And almost all white males who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There are women leading two of the state’s smaller colleges, Southern Utah University and the two-year Snow College. And Westminster is still female-led.

But eight years ago, female leadership was much more visible. Watkins at the U. Noelle Cockett at Utah State University. Deneece Huftalin at Salt Lake Community College. Astrid Tuminez at Utah Valley University.

All have since been replaced by men. (Cockett was replaced by a woman, who was replaced by a man last October.)

It is enough to raise eyebrows. Especially as the same affliction seems to have infected the process of picking justices of the Utah Supreme Court.

All of the nominees forwarded to Gov. Spencer Cox for a recent round of appointments to the top court were male. That, with the Legislature’s move to needlessly expand the size of the court from five justices to seven, shifted the state’s top court from a 3-2 female majority to a current 4-2 tilt toward men (with one seat, formerly held by a woman who was hounded from office, still to be filled).

The supposedly independent commission that makes those nominations used to be, by law, bipartisan. The law was changed in 2023 to allow the nominating panel to be all GOP, all the time. The first crop of high court nominees was noticeably male, and heavily weighed toward graduates of the LDS-owned Brigham Young University.

Meanwhile, the Legislature also changed the rules for picking state university presidents.

The process used to be relatively public, with the names of the top three candidates made public and the finalists expected to audition for the role by making campus visits.

Now that process is, by law, confidential. New university presidents are, so far as the university community and the general taxpaying public are concerned, not chosen so much as crowned by members of the Utah Board of Higher Education.

That was the case for the three newest college leaders, Jon Anderson at UVU earlier this month, Chris Mallett at Weber State University in May and Brad Mortensen, who moved from WSU to USU last October.

Lawmakers argued that making the names of top candidates public before the final selection discourages top talent from seeking the job. Those possibles, the thinking goes, don’t want their current bosses to know they are nosing around for another job, or don’t want the public shame of having been passed over.

Maybe. Such confidentiality is not uncommon in the private sector.

But it is not a process designed to instill confidence among students and the general public, who pay for it all, or the faculty and staff who will have to carry out the new leader’s programs.

This is not to argue that any of the new university presidents or Supreme Court justices are anything but highly qualified. And there’s no concrete reason to fear that any of these worthies are conspiring to force their religious beliefs on any person or institution.

But, read together, the process, and the results, of picking university presidents and Supreme Court justices in Utah now smell of nothing so much as an Old Boys Club.

Rather than represent the people, which is supposedly their job, members of the Legislature, abetted by a compliant governor, are amassing more power onto themselves. They seek unchallenged control over both the courts, which have dared to stop the legislative branch from making unconstitutional moves, and our institutions of higher learning, belittling the liberal arts and demanding an end to all diversity efforts on campus.

There is reason to suspect that, to our political class, women in high office are too likely to chart an independent course, while men with a common set of credentials — teams that are all the same — are more trusted to fall in line.

If that’s not what the people of Utah want, they need to speak up. And tell their leaders what they think. And vote.

Correction • 6:32 p.m., July 25, 2026: This story has been corrected to state that seven of Utah’s eight current public university presidents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. An earlier version had an incorrect number.

Editorials represent the opinions of The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board, which operates independently from the newsroom.