Ms. Raab said, as did many of her champions, that those who criticized her were just uncomfortable with strong female leaders. “Where are the stories about men and their leadership style?” she asked. “It is always the same story. Where’s the impact and what’s the importance, at the end of the day, of this conversation?”

Asked to name a legitimate criticism of how she leads, she drew a blank.

When Ms. Raab sought the presidency of Hunter, she had never worked in higher education. A corporate litigator who held positions in the administrations of Mayors Edward I. Koch and Rudolph W. Giuliani, she had degrees from Cornell, Harvard and Princeton, but no Ph.D. She did, however, have a powerful emotional connection to Hunter College High School, to which she commuted from Washington Heights as a teenager, and she had a powerful vision for Hunter’s future. Most important, she had the support of Mr. Giuliani, who was mayor at the time. Over the objections of many at CUNY (someone called in a bomb scare during her campus interview), and even over the objection of the chancellor, she got the job.

To people used to the collegiality of academia, her methods could be jarring.

In interviews and e-mails with more than 30 current or former Hunter employees, the same few complaints arose repeatedly. Several people described being shunned by Ms. Raab without explanation.

“When I finally knew something was really wrong I was in the elevator with the president and I said hello and she just ignored me,” said a former staff member who declined, as some others did, to be identified for fear of professional repercussions. “I offered to help her carry something, and she just completely ignored me.”

Others said they were punished for expressing views not identical to hers.

“Academics like to fight and argue,” said Joan C. Tronto, a former chairwoman of the Hunter Senate, who now teaches at the University of Minnesota. “After an argument’s over, you can still work with the people. But Jennifer Raab, after someone has disagreed with her, can never work with that person again.”

After making a minor accommodation for students protesting one of Ms. Raab’s initiatives, one faculty member said, her dean called her in for a formal reprimand on what she was told were the president’s orders. “Later that year I applied for funding for conference travel and research, and I was told by someone in the provost’s office that the president had personally crossed my name off the list and that I shouldn’t bother applying,” she said.

Ms. Anderson, who wrote the letter criticizing Ms. Raab, said she was trying to buy some time for her boss, the dean of arts and sciences, who she felt was being persecuted and who has since left.