When Robert L. Siegfried Jr. and his wife, Kathleen, pledged $71.5 million on March 17 to the University of Delaware’s business college, university president Dennis Assanis called the moment “transformative.”
Assanis and his top lieutenants have since departed, and Siegfried’s business-oriented, limited government, self-professed conservative program at the university is advancing at a time when higher education is facing ideological pressure following the second election of President Donald Trump and a supportive Congress.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for Trump-era policy, calls for cutting “massive, inefficient and open-ended subsidies” to the “woke” universities it said create a “socialist elite,” ignoring the needs of middle America.
At UD, Siegfried wants to create a Siegfried Institute for Leadership and Free Enterprise.
Like other state-backed schools, UD, which has 24,000 mostly full-time students and a $1.3 billion yearly budget, faces declines in federal research funding and foreign students, sharp increases in staff healthcare costs and student aid, and a tax hike on university investments.
In January, Assanis announced plans for Biden Hall, a $20 million, taxpayer-funded home for UD’s Joseph R. Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and its Biden Institute focused on government theory and practice at the longtime Democratic senator and former president’s alma mater.
Very soon after Siegfried’s announcement, before work could start on the Biden or Siegfried halls, transformation did take hold — at UD’s executive offices in Hullihen Hall on the Newark, Del., campus.
On March 20, chief operations officer John Long announced his retirement. On April 9, Emerald Christopher, a women and gender studies professor, resigned, citing the university’s refusal to extend funding for UD’s Anti-Racism Initiative, which she headed.
On April 21, chief financial officer Mary Remmler told trustees at a special meeting that the school faced an operating deficit of $25 million. Also that day, the school told staff and retirees it was pulling out of the state health insurance program to cut costs. Nine days later Remmler, too, resigned.
And on May 13, university president Assanis resigned, a year short of completing his 10-year contract.
The university declined to comment on reasons for its leaders’ resignations.
Siegfried, the CPA owner of Wilmington-based Siegfried Group and Siegfried Advisory, didn’t waver at the team’s departure. He remained committed to bringing an educational vision to UD, that he describes as “conservative.”
Siegfried’s gift will fund Siegfried Hall, boosting business classroom space almost 40%, and the new institute. Siegfried, a 1981 graduate of UD’s business college, notes that he also pledged $6 million for UD scholarships, pushing his total commitment to $77.5 million.
In contrast with Marc Rowan, the University of Pennsylvania billionaire donor who led the 2023 public pressure campaign and donor boycott to oust the University of Pennsylvania’s president and board chairman and called on trustees to end left-wing, “anti-American” control of Penn’s main college, Siegfried says his goal isn’t to replace UD liberals.
He says he wants his Siegfried Institute to serve as a pro-“rule of law and property rights” and “free-enterprise” balance to the government-oriented Biden Institute.
Siegfried talked with The Inquirer at his Wilmington office. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Why are you doing this initiative now?
I started talking to Dennis Assanis in the late 2010s. UD is in a time of change. Terri Kelly [the UD board chair] said this will be a blueprint for future gifts.
I’m an entrepreneur at heart, trapped in a CPA’s clothing. I’m not paying for everything; the university has to match $50 million. Being entrepreneurial, I thought it would challenge the university. Everyone should have skin in the game.
Is there a model for what you want University of Delaware to be?
I took Dennis [Assanis], Bruce Weber the [former UD business] dean, the head of development, and the marketing people to High Point University, where my two boys went. [High Point, a private, Methodist-founded school in North Carolina, calls itself “the premier life skills university” and a “God, Family and Country school,” stressing “personal initiative and free enterprise.”]
How would you change Delaware’s business school, besides adding classrooms?
Bruce Weber helped me write a mission statement. We have some phrases I think you might be surprised to find at a university: “The basic principles of limited government, rule of law, and free enterprise.” And “conservative economics,” with direct reference to Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
I asked John A. Burtka [executive director of the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute] to help launch the Siegfried Institute, and he came back with a proposal which Delaware loves. He’s picked out conservative, limited-government, constitutional professors from seven universities to be part of this.
We had 43 drafts before we all agreed. We signed the contract in March and made the announcement. And then we got an email back [from university officials Siegfried won’t name] that ‘we can’t say conservative because it’s connected to a political party,’ and the university gets about 11% of its funding from the state.
I asked, ‘But you have a Biden Institute. Doesn’t that connect to a political party? When you have a DEI office and hang banners for Black Lives Matter, doesn’t that connect to that same party?’
I also told them the phrase limited government is in the Constitution that Delaware was the first state to ratify. Of course, it belongs in the mission statement. [Siegfried agreed to changes he called “wordsmithing,” but his key terms and his trio of conservative economists, remained.]
To get anything passed at UD, you have to engage the faculty. Faculty said we believe this needs a voice at the university. Faculty defended our doing this.
I’m looking forward to debates between the Siegfried Institute and the Biden Institute.
Was President Assanis’ departure, joined by several of his top appointees, linked to your gift and to today’s political currents?
I do not believe it was political. Dennis is a fairly liberal guy. He would love for people not to pay tuition. There’s a liberal pillar at Delaware. I’m not trying to take it away. I’m trying to add a conservative pillar.
You talk a lot about measuring leadership, showing it, accepting it from others. Who are your model leaders?
Leadership is getting other people to do what you want them to do … when you get people to believe and feel what you believe and feel.
Leaders show ambition. Courage. Doing what’s uncomfortable. President Ronald Reagan, [Chrysler boss Lee] Iacocca, DuPont CEO Edgar Woolard when he was on the Apple board and got Steve Jobs to come back. And Jesus Christ. That’s my being raised Roman Catholic.
In my firm, I’m a benevolent dictator. But you need humility. To work with DuPont [his firm’s first big client], I had to put my ego in the lower left-hand drawer.
Is President Donald Trump a model leader?
Trump has changed this country for the better. But there’s a lot of room to grow. I believe he has done many things to move the country back to be closer to its core values … The table is set for successful growth that will benefit our nation and the world.
I couldn’t have done this in any other country. You need the rule of law; you need limited government. Responsibility, resources, authority, that’s the leadership triangle I learned [as a young CPA] at Arthur Young.
If you don’t take responsibility for yourself, why would anyone trust you?