AUM’s new rector resigns, cites need to ‘move on’

The recently appointed rector of the American University of Malta (AUM), Victoria Fontan, confirmed that she resigned from her post, citing a need to “move on” after spearheading a years long effort to relocate a group of Afghan students who were forced to flee their home country after the Taliban’s takeover.

Fontan, who was appointed as the AUM’s rector in July, resigned towards the end of November, The Shift can confirm.

“I came to Malta to relocate my students to a safe place. That mission is now complete and their resettlement process is going according to schedule,” Fontan told The Shift when reached for comment.

“I spent years working with these students and now, I feel like I just want to move on with my life. A huge part of my professional career was dedicated to the education and protection of Afghan women, and now, I hope I’ve earned some peace,” she added.

An undisclosed number of students who previously attended the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) were brought to safety in Malta after a harrowing escape from the Taliban’s clutches, as detailed in an interview published by the Times of Malta last month.

Now, Fontan says that the cohort of students who she guided towards Malta are currently undergoing the process of applying for temporary residence permits, which should be concluded by the end of the month.

She maintains that, due to the European Court of Justice’s strict jurisprudence in favour of the protection of Afghan women due to persecution from the Taliban, the female cohort of students who are in Malta and in Europe are now “perfectly safe.”

In her interview with The Times, Fontan had referred to plans to expand the student population with partnerships with unnamed American entities, suggesting that a new era was in store for AUM.

When asked about how this tallies up with her decision to resign, Fontan stated that her original plan was always to focus on the safe relocation of her students first.

“Unfortunately, those partnerships to develop new programmes for AUM did not come through,” she added, noting that she did not have authorisation to disclose details about AUM’s failed negotiations with their US based counterparts.

When asked if AUM had confirmed a successor following her resignation, Fontan was not in a position to disclose this information, stating that she only knew that an unnamed successor from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was identified and that he was “on his way” to Malta.

AUM did not list Fontan’s resignation on its website, nor did it make any public announcements about the change in personnel.

Fontan then made a public announcement on her LinkedIn profile, shortly after The Shift’s questions were sent earlier on Thursday.

In a follow up story, the Times published Fontan’s resignation letter, in which she reportedly blamed AUM for “governance and oversight arrangements” which made it “no longer possible to fulfill the role with the level of accountability, clarity of authority, and institutional coherence that the position requires.”

Fontan’s departure after a mere five months at the helm marks another notch in a long list of individuals who walked in and out of AUM’s doors, an institution that has been steeped in scandal since its inception.

Murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was among the first to sound alarm bells about AUM’s credentials and the massive amount of public land which was originally going to be allocated to it, a project which was the brainchild of disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Following massive public backlash against the government’s plans to give over 90,000sqm of land in Żonqor to AUM, the institution’s campus was relocated to Dock 1 in Bormla for a few years.

Since it opened, AUM has failed multiple quality audits, has refused to divulge the total number of students on its campus, and has generally turned out to be a far cry from Muscat’s past promises about bringing residual income to Cottonera’s communities from the economic activity that was supposed to be generated by AUM’s students.

Though these failures clearly meant that AUM was in breach of the concession terms under which it was awarded public land in the first place, that did not stop prime minister Robert Abela from rewarding the institution with more public land.

In 2022, The Shift had exclusively revealed how the prime minister handed AUM’s Jordanian owners the deal of a lifetime, giving them the right to purchase roughly 31,500 sqm of prime real estate at Smart City for the bargain bin price of €0.47c per square metre.