NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Rutgers University's president, a neuroscientist, was brought in last year to turn the school into a medical sciences powerhouse, but he has quickly become a target of criticism from some lawmakers who question his ability to lead the university amid a series of embarrassments in the high-profile athletic department.

Still, Robert Barchi has the support of the state's most important politician, Gov. Chris Christie, who said Tuesday that he has "absolute confidence" in Barchi and won't meddle in university business, including its decision to hire Julie Hermann as athletic director.

There have been revelations in recent days that volleyball players at the University of Tennessee complained that Hermann abused them verbally and emotionally when she coached there in the 1990s and that she was involved in a sexual discrimination lawsuit while she was an administrator at Louisville. She was hired by Rutgers May 15 and is scheduled to start there June 17.

"I understand that there are some people that feel differently about it. It doesn't matter," Christie said during a testy moment in his monthly call-in show on TownSquare Media Tuesday night. "What matters is: What did the administration at Rutgers believe?"

Christie said he had talked with Barchi, the university's lawyer and the chairman of the Board of Governors and believes they should be allowed to run the university as they see fit.

"These are their decisions," Christie said. "Now they have to deal with the questions that are being raised."

Last month, Christie, a Republican, gave a similar view when some Democratic lawmakers first questioned whether Barchi should be president at the start of a cycle of problems in the athletic department. Then, the university fired basketball coach Mike Rice days after a video was made public of him berating players with gay slurs, kicking them and throwing basketballs at them.

The university's athletic director and top in-house lawyer both resigned under pressure. Since then, the university has defended its hiring of new basketball coach Eddie Jordan after the school said he was a Rutgers graduate when he was not. Lacrosse coach Brian Brecht was also suspended two games for verbally abusing his players during practice, something the university discovered in a probe of all its sports programs after Rice's dismissal.

In his defense of Barchi in April, Christie said it would be a mistake to let Barchi go because of his role in trying to rebuild Rutgers.

Lawmakers last year adopted a version of Christie's plan to reconfigure the state university system with the goal of making Rutgers into an elite medical science research center by having it absorb parts of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

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Rutgers president gets governor's backing