University of King's College names law professor as new president

Law professor and former senior provincial bureaucrat William Lahey is the new president of Halifax's University of King's College. 

Lahey is an associate professor in Dalhousie University's Schulich School of Law. He has served as co-chair of a provincial panel on aquaculture and was previously deputy minister of Nova Scotia's labour and environment departments.

Lahey will get an administrative leave equivalent to one year's salary at the end of his five-year term.

He is the first university president to be appointed since last September when Labour and Advanced Education Minister Kelly Regan asked universities to stop the controversial practice of paying presidents after their terms are over. 

"Having a salary after someone is finished their term of work is not OK," Regan said at the time.

'We hired an academic'

King's spokesperson Adriane Abbott said Lahey's case is different from those of other university presidents, who are career administrators. 

"We hired an academic," Abbott said Friday.

Lahey would be eligible for sabbatical if he did not take the King's job, she said. Lahey will make $190,000 a year. 

Lahey's contract with King's says: "This paid leave in lieu of sabbatical is intended to provide the president with an equivalent period of sabbatical study that he would have otherwise had the benefit of had he remained in his position as associate professor of law (with tenture) at Dalhousie.

"The president's salary during this paid leave in lieu of sabbatical shall be equal to his base salary in the year immediately preceding the expiry of the term."