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The scene was surreal to a visiting scholar at Connecticut College who watched as faculty and students tried to push Claire out. “She wasn’t a woman that you pushed,” the scholar said. “She is a person with passion. When she takes something on she believes she is absolutely right, and she will do whatever she needs to do. There is a fanaticism—‘I have a direct marching order from a higher being.’”

Claire’s approach didn’t surprise the scholar, who had studied leadership. “At the leadership level, transformational leaders end up being unpopular,” the scholar said. “Claire falls into that category. She was being attacked from all sides. She never took it to heart. Maybe this is her rough exterior. She was so convinced she was right and on this moralistic quest.” Objectively, the scholar saw the paradox of Claire. “She had done a lot of good for that college,” the scholar noted. “Even her foes admit that she increased the prestige of the college. And she is brilliant. She is a Renaissance woman.”

October 12, 2000

The college’s board of trustees could no longer avoid the inevitable. It had to part ways with the president who had brought more publicity and money to the school than any of her predecessors. The trustees convened an emergency meeting with Claire to deal with the details of her departure.

For starters, Claire would receive $551,550 in severance pay. Combined with her annual salary, she’d walk away with $898,410, landing her atop the Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual survey of college presidents, ahead of those at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. The trustees also allowed Claire to go on sabbatical for the spring semester, and they delayed her formal retirement date to June 30, 2001.

From a public-relations standpoint, the trustees agreed to frame Claire’s departure only in positive terms, stressing her achievements and the fact that the decision to go was hers.

October 13, 2000

George Milne hated to see Claire’s legacy clouded. He considered her a visionary leader who had simply gotten caught up in a perfect storm of events. “The controversy around the NLDC plus the challenges the college was facing all sort of came together and essentially was an unfortunate end to what was a substantial legacy,” Milne said.

But Milne didn’t let his affection for Claire compromise his awareness of his own responsibilities. He had an ability to compartmentalize, and at the moment his job was to brief the faculty. Behind closed doors he informed them that Claire planned to step down within hours. He insisted the school leadership and faculty needed to figure out how to rebuild.

“Anything that’s working in our great nation,” Claire had once said, “is working because somebody left skin on the sidewalk.” The quote had often been repeated in defending the NLDC’s plans to force the Fort Trumbull residents to leave their homes.

Now it was her turn to fall. Fighting off deep disappointment, Claire stepped to a microphone at a hastily organized press conference on campus at noon. “I thought my work at the college as a change agent was coming to an end,” she said, maintaining a smile.

In conjunction with the press conference, the school released a statement to the media. “Claire L. Gaudiani announced today that she will fulfill a long-planned transition by stepping down as President of Connecticut College,” it read. “The Board expressed unqualified support for President Gaudiani’s leadership.”

Almost exactly three years after her status as Connecticut College president helped persuade Governor Rowland to recommend her to be president of the New London Development Corporation, her actions as president of the NLDC had played a key role in the loss of her job at the college. The two-edged sword of popularity had cut both ways and taken an unforgiving toll.

“Sometimes, as a lot of social activists do,” Claire reflected, “you run into a buzz saw. But that doesn’t make you sorry that you were trying to do good for people who couldn’t do more