At Michigan State, a Disruptive Presidency That Few Could Muster the Will to End

Susan Walsh, AP Photo

Finally, enough was enough.

With a unanimous vote here on Thursday, Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees forced out John M. Engler as interim president, denouncing his recent suggestion that sexual-abuse survivors were “enjoying” the “spotlight” and bringing to an unceremonious close one of the most bafflingly contentious exhibitions of higher-education leadership in recent memory.

Engler’s appointment last January came at the height of a crisis for Michigan State, which had been rocked by revelations that Larry Nassar, a former university sports doctor, had for years sexually abused girls and women under the guise of medical treatment. The board saw in Engler, a former Republican governor, an able political tactician who could help to reach a swift legal settlement with the abuse victims, setting the table for a permanent president. What the trustees didn’t count on was how corrosive Engler’s relationship would become with the survivors, whose motives he repeatedly impugned.

For many here, including some newly elected trustees, Engler’s ouster brings into focus the tragic miscalculation of his initial hiring and illustrates the folly of an entrenched view, held by some board members, that firing Engler would somehow be more disruptive than keeping him in place and hoping his behavior would change.

But time after time, the trustees saw, Engler could not help but throw gas on the fire. When he did it again last week, telling The Detroit News’s editorial board that abuse survivors were reveling in the recognition that they have received for speaking out, the trustees quickly concluded that there could be no more second chances. The calculation had changed: Keeping Engler in place, even for a few more months, when a permanent president is expected to be named, posed too great a risk to the university’s reputation and assured the long-delayed healing process would be further forestalled.

Daniel J. Kelly, the board’s vice chairman, came to that conclusion with regret.

“I’m not ashamed to say that I had hoped we would get through four to six months, get to a new president, and see a new day,” Kelly said after the board voted.

Kelly had stuck by Engler back in June, when The Chronicle published an email in which the interim president suggested that an outspoken abuse survivor was sure to get a “kickback” from her lawyer for stirring up other victims. But when Engler did something similar last week, Kelly said, he knew there had to be a change.

Michigan State’s eight board members are elected with political-party affiliations, and a recent election tilted the board’s balance toward Democrats. But the trustees pushed back against Engler’s suggestion, in a resignation letter sent on Wednesday, that his ouster had stemmed from a change in the board’s political alignment.

“It’s not a partisan decision,” said Kelly, a Republican. “I don’t think it’s a Democrat or Republican position to condemn comments that are not consistent with the values or what we hope to be the values of the university.”

The Temple of Doom

Room 401 of Michigan State’s Hannah Administration Building, where the board holds its meetings, has in the past year transformed into a cathartic temple of doom. It is not uncommon to enter its confines, through a metal detector, and find a spectacle. Its reliable features of late include tearful women yelling at trustees about feeling abandoned by the university’s leaders. At times, they have graphically described their abuse as board members looked on uncomfortably from a long wooden table.

It was in this room where Engler, during his tenure, would often shuffle through stacks of papers as the women spoke, ignoring them as they begged him to look in their eyes. He usually wouldn’t.

It’s still a haunting room, but on Thursday it showcased a tangible and undeniable change. The board has three new members, and they helped choose as Engler’s successor Satish Udpa, an executive vice president and former engineering dean who has been at Michigan State since 2001. Udpa has broad support at the university, where faculty members and administrators were whispering to trustees that he was a safe and stabilizing choice.

After the meeting, reporters swarmed Udpa, who was eclipsed by a barrage of cameras and lights. Kelly, the trustee, stood at the back of the room, tall and lanky in a gray suit, staring off into the distance. Most reporters didn’t seem particularly curious about his opinion, critical as it had been in forcing Engler’s resignation. What was the failure that had finally tipped the scales? What was Engler’s fatal flaw? Kelly, usually tight-lipped with the news media, took a stab at that.

“Unfortunately, I don’t believe he understood the bigger issue of culture at the university,” Kelly told The Chronicle. “He tried to put it in the rearview mirror for the new president, and that’s a mistake.”

Last January the board wanted someone tough and decisive, Kelly said, “and that’s what we got.”

People were fired.

Policies changed.

A settlement was reached with abuse survivors.

But at the same time Engler put salt in the wound. He was tough on everyone, including the victims.

Kelly still can’t bring himself to say that hiring Engler had been a mistake. He can’t even say that the university would have been better off if the board had fired Engler in June, when his “kickback” comment came to light.

“June was not today,” Kelly said.

The Nassar Scandal and the Crisis of Michigan State’s President

Within a year the university lost two chief executives — Lou Anna K. Simon, sank by the scathing, heart-rending testimony of the sports doctor’s scores of victims, and John M. Engler, whose interim presidency ended amid a backlash over his bare-knuckled tactics.

• With Criminal Charges Dismissed Against Michigan State’s Ex-President, Sex-Abuse Accountability Hits Skids Again
• Michigan State’s Ex-President, Who Faces Criminal Charges, Will Retire With a $2.5-Million Payout
• John Engler Is Out at Michigan State. Here Are 3 Moments That Got Him Booted.

It’s true, as Kelly implied, that the political dynamics on the board are different than they were seven months ago, when just two members, both Democrats, called for Engler’s removal. But there’s a case to be made that the board missed an opportunity to cut its losses last summer and so needlessly put the university through more predictable trauma. Such is the view of Nancy M. Schlichting, a Democrat who was recently appointed by a Republican governor to fill a vacancy on the board.

“If you look at who has served on this board, most of them have never led a large organization,” said Schlichting, a former chief executive of the Henry Ford Health System. “So I don’t think they fully appreciated the damage that happens when you have the wrong leader in place — thinking that just not changing would keep things more stable. In fact, it’s the reverse. Mixing it up, changing it, people will immediately respond to the right leader. And culture can change overnight for the worse or for the better, depending on the individual who is leading.”

Schlichting said she was skeptical of Engler’s leadership from the start, but she concluded almost instantly that his most recent remarks about the survivors should spell the end of his tenure at Michigan State. That’s a consistent view from the trustees, who said in interviews on Thursday that what had seemed to many like a slow, evolving march toward Engler’s eventual resignation was in fact a fait accompli from nearly the moment that The Detroit News published its interview.

The newspaper led its coverage of the interview with his assertion that a new fund, created to provide counseling to abuse survivors, might not apply to those who had been part of the university’s legal settlement. Engler had effectively gone rogue once more, getting out in front of the trustees, who had the authority to define the fund’s parameters. They weren’t happy about that either.

In his 11-page resignation letter on Wednesday night, Engler primarily listed his accomplishments and appeared again to try to exert control over the board. He would resign, he said, but on his own terms — in the middle of next week. Yes, Engler was out of state at a family funeral, so the extension had some plausible rationale. But was this just another power play?

“I’m sure it was,” said Kelly Tebay, a newly elected trustee. “It’s John Engler.”

An Unpredictable ‘Political Animal’

By Thursday afternoon, a light snow was beginning to fall in East Lansing, where the winter has been mild. The ground is usually solid white by this time of year. Any day now, a Lyft driver told a reporter, there would be snow everywhere. It should have happened already, the driver said.

He dropped the reporter off at Snyder Hall, where a very small piece of the university’s recent revolution took shape. It’s where Stephen L. Esquith, dean of the Residential College of Arts and Humanities, has an office, overlooking a courtyard with a large, red sculpture.

Esquith, who was previously chairman of the philosophy department, had been avoiding the reporter for weeks, but on Thursday he was finally ready to talk. At Michigan State, as everywhere, deans know a lot and speak a little. So it was significant on Wednesday, as Engler’s ouster seemed imminent, that nearly two dozen deans, including Esquith, signed a letter to the board that concluded, “We do not support his continued leadership and ask the board to take appropriate action.”

Esquith’s office is a menagerie of wooden carvings and masks. He has a quiet voice and freshly cropped silver hair. With each question, he’s contemplative and he conveys a look that borders at times on resignation.

Reflecting on the last year, Esquith said, “I don’t think it had to be this way.”

That’s the crux, isn’t it? Did the board, looking for a quick fix to a difficult problem, choose a sledgehammer when it needed a scalpel? Deans don’t like these kinds of questions, and Esquith is no exception. He wouldn’t quite put it that way, he said. But he would say that Engler “had a very strong belief that he was right. He was not known for compromise.”

Engler was a “political animal,” Esquith said, and he did what political animals do: He centralized power, whether that was in university communications or IT. He didn’t care for faculty meetings or appear curious about professors, Esquith said, which rendered false Engler’s brief, ceremonial appearances in formal university settings.

Engler put people on edge, too, creating an environment where everyone felt replaceable.

“He remained true to form, someone who believes if people aren’t on board, you just get new people,” Esquith said. “No one knew what was going to happen next. That was his governing style.”

The deans continued to do their jobs, Esquith said, carving out spaces to change the culture in their individual colleges. But Michigan State didn’t feel like a place that was doing everything it could for abuse survivors. In the midst of an emotionally fraught crisis, the university had never created legitimate spaces for conflict resolution — where people who felt damaged and ignored could finally be heard. Instead, there was a rubber room where they all screamed into the void: Room 401.

The folly of it all seems clear now. No matter how bad things got, most trustees argued, change was somehow worse. Putting the future of the university first meant making people miserable for one more day. And one more day. And one more day.

“There’s an inertia you have to overcome,” Esquith said. “Protecting the institution often comes at the expense of the people in the institution. And then you have to wonder: What’s the institution for?”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.