Anthony J. Alvarado, a successful educator who served as the first Hispanic schools chancellor in New York City but whose term was cut short when he resigned over personal financial irregularities, died Monday at his home in Coronado, California. He was 81 years old.

The cause was complications from blood cancer and pneumonia, his wife, Elaine Fink, said.

Mr. Alvarado was the innovative, 40-year-old superintendent of an East Harlem school district in 1983, when he emerged from a difficult selection process to lead the nation’s largest school system, succeeding Frank J. Macchiarola. As the first Hispanic educator to hold the city’s top school post, he generated tremendous pride in the Hispanic community. (The city has had several Spanish school chancellors since then.)

Mr. Alvarado was an apostle for more rigorous teacher training and for raising the expectation of success for students and teachers alike. And although his tenure as schools chancellor was shortened, he was nationally praised for his success in improving student achievement in two Manhattan districts and later for his effort to replicate those achievements in San Diego, where he was chancellor of education.

“Adults are responsible for children’s failures,” he said in a 2005 interview with Hedrick Smith, the host of the PBS program “Making schools work.”

“What often happens in American public education with poor children, and especially with poor children of color,” he added, “is that if they haven’t learned, the variables are poverty, the lack of parenting, difficult conditions in the community , socio-economic status, and so on. And interestingly, it never went back to the teacher or the school. And that’s why we let ourselves be fooled.”

He told The New York Times in 2004: “To teach children effectively, you must effectively – and continually – educate teachers on how to teach children effectively.”

As chancellor, Mr. Alvarado introduced full-day kindergarten classes and, among other innovations, initiated a pilot program of individual tutoring for students in upper grades to reduce the system’s 49 percent dropout rate.

But his agenda was undone by his personal financial problems, which were exposed by what would otherwise have been the low-key gun arrest of an aide who had lent him money.

On February 27, 1984, John Chin, a mid-level school board official under Mr. Alvarado, was accused of firing a gun three times through a neighbor’s window on West 95th Street in Manhattan (for reasons still unknown). In Mr. Chin’s safe, investigators discovered two uncashed checks, totaling about $10,000, that had been made out to him by Mr. Alvarado as reimbursement for personal loans.

Mr. Alvarado eventually acknowledged that his tangled personal finances — further stretched because he was supporting two daughters from his first marriage — included some $80,000 in loans he received from subordinates, among other questionable transactions.

The revelation set off skirmishes between the Board of Education and City Hall and fanned the sparks of a heated process that had led to Mr. Alvarado’s appointment in 1983, when he was among four finalists for the job.

After serving in the post for a year and nine days, Mr. Alvarado resigned in May 1984, on the eve of a Board of Education hearing on allegations by the city’s Department of Investigation that he had “a serious deficiency had shown good judgment and created a strong impression’. of impropriety” in accepting loans from subordinates.

He admitted in a resignation statement that he had made a “horrendous” judgment, but insisted he had “never used public funds or the public system for personal gain.” No criminal charges were ever filed.

Mr. Alvarado was succeeded by Nathan Quinones, who was also Hispanic, as well as others who went on to hold the position, including Joseph A. Fernandez, Ramón C. Cortines, Carmen Fariña and Richard A. Carranza.

Previously, Mr. Alvarado, as superintendent of District 4 in East Harlem from 1973 to 1983, had created mini-schools that focused on certain subjects, drawing students from elsewhere in the city to one of the poorest neighborhoods.

The process did not always go smoothly. He exceeded his annual budget more than once. And a white principal in the district, who was replaced by a Hispanic, claimed he was a victim of discrimination and was reinstated.

But Mr. Alvarado oversaw a poor, mostly black and Hispanic district, where the number of children reading at or above district level rose to 48 percent in 1982, up from 25 percent in 1979. The 32 community districts of the city rose from 32nd to 15th.

After resigning as chancellor, Mr. Alvarado felt professionally vindicated when he was hired in 1987 as superintendent of Manhattan’s District 2, which stretched from Chinatown to the Upper East Side.

Once again he invested in training teachers. He recruited experts from New Zealand and Australia, the two English-speaking countries with the highest literacy rates. He held principals accountable not only as principals but as paragons of education, and he cut the district’s central staff. Reading scores rose, and some middle-class families with other options returned to the district’s public schools.

At the same time, he received the cooperation of the teachers’ union. Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was quoted by Time magazine in 1984 said, “Alvarado’s plans and actions reflected a true educator’s concern for the schools.”

In 1998, after eleven years leading District 2, Mr. Alvarado was hired as Chancellor of Education, the No. 2 position, for the San Diego School District. There he instituted coaching for teachers and increased student instruction in reading and writing. But he was seen by many in the city as an assertive outsider, and he became a lightning rod for opposition to most reforms.

He later served as a professor of education at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and served on the board of Educational Testing Service, the nonprofit organization that develops and administers standardized tests.

Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the Center for Education Equity and professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, said Mr. Alvarado was “a dynamic and incredibly creative leader in education” in a telephone interview: “He not only had important, innovative ideas, but he could also implement them. He was an inspirational force who turned things around in two community school districts.”

Anthony John Alvarado was born on June 10, 1942 in New York and raised in the South Bronx. His father, Juan Alvarado, a Cuban immigrant, was the manager of a clothing factory. His mother, Victoria (Davila) Alvarado, born in Puerto Rico, was a homemaker.

After graduating from Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx, Mr. Alvarado earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Fordham University in 1960, followed by a master’s degree in the same subject, also from Fordham.

He began teaching English in the New York City public schools in 1965, first as a substitute teacher and then for a year at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. He was appointed to several administrative posts at the Board of Education headquarters in Brooklyn before becoming superintendent of District 4, a predominantly black and Hispanic area, in 1973.

In addition to his wife, Mrs. Fink, Mr. Alvarado is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Maria and Gloria Alvarado; two from his second marriage to Ellen Kirshbaum, Rachel Moreno and Emily Alvarado; nine grandchildren; and a great-grandson.

As district superintendent and chancellor, Mr. Alvarado fearlessly challenged a bureaucracy that, he said, had curbed individual initiative.

“There is always the question: Can the octopus ensnare you so much that there will always be an arm around you pulling you from the direction you want to go?” he said when he was appointed chancellor in 1983.

“The octopus is the system, the bureaucracy,” he added. ‘I walk around with a pair of scissors in my back pocket. If I see a tentacle, I take it out.”

The chancellor of a Wisconsin state university was fired this week after posting pornographic videos online with his wife.

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents unanimously voted to fire its chancellor, Joe Gow, who had led the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse since 2007 and had been its longest-tenured leader since the 1960s. Carmen Wilson, Mr Gow’s wife, was also dismissed from her unpaid position as an aide to the chancellor.

Karen Walsh, the head of the board, which oversees the system’s 13 universities, said in a statement that the board was “alarmed and disgusted by his actions,” without specifying what they were.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr Gow and Ms Wilson said they believe they were fired over the videos, which featured sex scenes together and with others under the username Sexy Happy Couple. Both said they felt it was wrong for the university to punish them over the videos, arguing it violated their free speech rights.

“Censoring people is not what we are about in higher education,” Ms. Wilson said. She added that the videos are only available to those looking for such content. “If they go looking for it, they are free to do so,” she said.

Mr Gow, 63, said he and his wife, 56, have been making videos together for years but recently decided to make them publicly available on porn websites and were pleased with the response. They said they never mentioned the university or their jobs in the videos, several of which have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. The couple have also made a series of videos in which they cook meals with porn actors and then have sex.

“We have that show, ‘Sexy Healthy Cooking,’ where we interview artists and really humanize them in ways you wouldn’t see in their other work,” Mr. Gow said. “It’s an interesting process, and the people we work with are completely professional and great to work with.”

Jay Rothman, the president of the University of Wisconsin System, said Mr. Gow had caused “significant reputational damage” to the university.

Mr. Rothman said the current plan was for Mr. Gow, who is also a communications professor, to return to his faculty role after a paid administrative leave. But Mr Rothman said he had asked the university to review Mr Gow’s permanent status and that a law firm would investigate the matter.

Mr Gow said the university “does not follow its own policies on academic freedom and freedom of speech,” adding: “They also don’t seem to realize that the First Amendment would be critical in this situation .”

Mr. Rothman said it was “ridiculous” for Mr. Gow to claim that the First Amendment gave him “a ‘free pass’ to say or do anything he wanted.”

“We expect our chancellors, as leaders of these great institutions, to be role models for our students, staff and faculty, as well as for the communities we are privileged to serve,” Mr. Rothman said.

In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided a case involving a police officer who was fired for selling a pornographic video of himself. In the case, City of San Diego v. Roethe court ruled that the officer’s First Amendment rights had not been violated. The court ruled that while public officials have the right to speak on matters of public interest, a pornographic video does not fall into that category.

If Mr. Gow were to pursue legal action, he would likely face an even tougher road than the police officer in that case, experts said, because courts have often found that public entities have more discretion in removing top officials than rank-and-file employees.

Mary Anne Franks, a professor at George Washington University Law School who studies free speech and other issues, said Mr. Gow had raised interesting questions about what types of speech a university feels obligated to allow.

That question has caused consternation and turmoil at colleges and universities across the country — though these typically involve divisive political issues.

Ms. Franks noted that another University of Wisconsin System college said this year that she could not take action against a student who had posted a racist video online.

“Whether it’s intentional or not, he’s throwing open the idea that the people who say they’re really committed to freedom of speech and want discussion on every possible topic don’t really mean it,” Ms. Franks said.

Mr Gow has highlighted the issue in the past. During a celebration of Free Speech Week in 2018, he invited a porn actress to speak to students about the porn industry. The then-president of the University of Wisconsin System said Mr. Gow had used “poor judgment” in inviting the actress. This is evident from a letter published by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

During his nearly 17 years leading the roughly 10,000-student university along the Wisconsin-Minnesota border, the school’s full-time student body grew at a time when enrollment at other University of Wisconsin campuses was down significantly. He also oversaw a significant upgrade of campus facilities and emphasized the importance of freedom of expression.

In September, Mr. Gow announced his intention to resign as chancellor and return to the faculty. At the time, university officials praised him, and Mr. Gow said Resigning at that moment felt like ‘going at the top of your game’.

Michigan State University confirmed a new president on Friday, an effort to introduce a permanent leader after years of turnover, scandals and infighting.

Kevin M. Guskiewicz, a neuroscientist who has been chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2019, was unanimously elected president by the board of trustees on Friday and will begin his term in March.

Dr. Guskiewicz is the sixth president of the state of Michigan in six years. The university was rocked by a sex abuse scandal when Larry Nassar, a doctor who worked with gymnasts at the school, pleaded guilty in 2017 to molesting girls under the guise of providing medical treatment, and school officials came under fire for did not quickly intervene to stop the abuse.

Since then, Mel Tucker, a football coach, has been fired found it by university investigators who violated the university’s sexual misconduct policy. In a separate incident, during a football game this fall, Michigan State displayed an image of Adolf Hitler on its video screens during a pregame quiz, prompting a apology.

The Michigan State Board of Governors has had an audience mutual struggle months about governance, ethics and allegations of bullying.

The accumulation of disagreements and embarrassment even led Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a college graduate, to denounce the state of Michigan in October for a lack of “clear unified leadership or guidance and, tragically, no accountability.”

In an interview on Friday, Dr. Guskiewicz, who spent 28 years at the University of North Carolina, said one of his first goals was to increase transparency at Michigan State and reassure the university community after years of tumult.

“It’s a place that craves stability,” he said. “There have definitely been some challenges over the last five to seven years. And I know I will bring experience and expertise from UNC Chapel Hill. We have had our own challenges. And you know, for some of these things, there’s no playbook for it. And you have to trust your instincts and surround yourself with really good people.

Dennis Denno, chairman of the university’s Presidential Investigative Committee, said in a statement about Dr. Guskiewicz: “We are confident that he has the intellectual vision, broad worldview and personal integrity to inspire our university community to new levels of excellence. And we look forward to working with him to foster a climate of community, engagement and mutual respect.”

Dr. Guskiewicz, a native of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, first visited Michigan State in November on a campus visit with his wife, Amy, before interviewing for the president’s job in Detroit. He went jogging around the sprawling campus and attended a football game, he said, “an important step for me because we believe we are part of the campus community and we want to be in a place where it feels good.”

Dr. Guskiewicz moves from one politically charged job to another. In recent years, North Carolina Republicans, who control the state legislature, have wielded enormous power over the state university system, providing the board with allies who have shaped campus staffing decisions, changed research ambitions and influenced the fate of a Confederate statue at the university. campus in Chapel Hill.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said Friday that Dr. Guskiewicz to leave UNC – one of the nation’s most academically renowned public universities – for Michigan State was an indictment of North Carolina’s recent approach to higher education.

“UNC boards with extreme appointees who are completely controlled by legislative Republicans appear to prefer chaos and meddling over sound and stable leadership, and these actions will ultimately damage our state’s economy and reputation,” said Governor Cooper, who is a bachelor’s and law degrees from UNC Chapel Hill. , said a statement.

The UNC System did not comment on the governor’s statement.

Alan Blinderreporting contributed.