The University of Minnesota Physicians, Fairview Health Services, and Attorney General Keith Ellison have reached a ten-year agreement that will prevent the medical school and hospital from shutting down next year. The University of Minnesota Board of Regents responded by calling the move a “hostile takeover.”
For years, the University has been unable to secure long-term funding to operate its medical school and hospital—state assets that the University and Legislature have a responsibility to fund and manage. The fact that doctors and Fairview had to ask the Attorney General to intervene is a clear warning to the governor, legislators, and regents: they have drifted too far off course and must steer back from the rocks.
Dr. Frank Cerra, former senior vice president for health sciences at the University, highlighted Fairview’s practical strengths in a recent Star Tribune commentary. He praised Fairview’s ability to focus “on the practical politics of the possible” rather than “political navigation” that would harm the future of health care in Minnesota. Cerra, a highly respected voice at the Legislature, is writing boldly between the lines: the Legislature and Regents have become too politicized to oversee the practical realities of patient care.
In 2023, Sanford Health—a Sioux Falls-based hospital system with more than 100 years of service to the Dakotas and Minnesota—proposed partnering with the University to build a $1 billion hospital for its medical students and residents. The deal collapsed over fears that Sanford would not comply with Minnesota law following the Legislature’s repeal of restrictions on abortion and pediatric sex change treatments.
Whether you believe Sanford was the right partner (Cerra opposed it, arguing we should solve this without a SD hospital’s help) the decision should not have been derailed by political activists who essentially vetoed a hospital based on opposition to South Dakota’s governor.
In 2025, the Legislature adjourned without fulfilling its constitutional duty to elect four University of Minnesota regents—a task most lawmakers would trade for digging a hole in frozen ground. Regent candidates must now earn votes from representatives and senators in an overly politicized process. Yet the Legislature has failed in this duty only a handful of times, and none in the past 25 years, until now. Governor Walz filled one-third of the board with his own discretionary appointees, further eroding trust in a board already seen as too political.
Over their 28-year partnership, the University and Fairview have trained tens of thousands of medical students, residents, and fellows. They are now spread around the state, the country and the world. Running a medical school and teaching hospital that attracts the best demands excellence.
Conversely, bad things happen when politics trumps common sense. In May 2020, University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel sent a letter to the Minneapolis Police Department severing their relationship, which had provided extra protection to students on campus. The attacks on students that followed this decision harmed safety, recruiting, and fundraising. But more than that, they cemented a perception that the U couldn’t protect its kids because it lacked common sense. Minnesota’s land-grant university cannot afford to trade common sense for partisan activism.
