How a Transformational President Set Michigan State on a Course to Disaster

These days, Michigan State University is caught in a cycle of perpetual damage control.

The sports doctor Larry Nassar sexually abused young women for nearly two decades. More than a dozen people were aware. They didn’t stop it. Prosecutors say Nassar’s boss brushed off complaints. He faces sexual-misconduct allegations of his own. Several top administrators have resigned. The interim president has spent as much time on the attack as he has spent apologizing.

The scope of the crisis grows with each passing week, as various outside investigations, including one by the state’s attorney general, delve into how Nassar’s serial abuse went so long unchecked.

In the meantime, there is a growing sense that something is truly broken at Michigan State. That sentiment arose again on Tuesday, when a university trustee released a memo that cast the Nassar scandal in the larger context of a deeply rooted “cultural problem.”

Brian Mosallam, the trustee, echoed the sentiments of many at the university, who say that Michigan State’s knee-jerk defensiveness, exhibited time and again as allegations of abuse surfaced, fits into the decades-long story of an institution where leaders have seldom acknowledged mistakes or countenanced any information that might threaten the narrative of Michigan State’s excellence.

“For the past few decades, even before my time as a trustee, MSU has culturally positioned itself defensively,” wrote Mosallam, a financial adviser and former offensive lineman for the football team. “Our typical response to allegations of wrongdoing is to simply state that this institution did no wrong. I fundamentally disagree with this approach. We must admit failure when it happens.”

Mosallam’s memo signals a larger reckoning underway at the university. Many people, from trustees to faculty members to students, are now rethinking the implications of a culture that took shape under Lou Anna K. Simon, whose 13-year tenure as Michigan State’s president ended with her unceremonious resignation in January.

People often describe Simon by saying, “She was MSU.” She’s been in East Lansing since she was in her 20s. She became provost in 1993, interim president in 2003, and permanent president — the first woman to hold that post — in 2005. A generation of professors and administrators hasn’t known Michigan State any other way. Her fund-raising prowess and deep knowledge of the campus burnished the university’s reputation and turned Michigan State’s iconic Spartan into a powerhouse brand.

However, 25 years under one individual’s leadership can have downsides. For those who have watched the university prosper, the Nassar scandal has prompted reflection on the trade-offs associated with two decades of status-climbing. It’s demanded hard questions about whether Michigan State’s ambition, molded by a tough-minded president, blinded the university to many of its imperfections. Or to the actions of a predator in its midst.

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.

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It’s not yet clear whether Simon had any knowledge of the abuse, other than being informed of a 2014 sexual-misconduct complaint filed against a then-unnamed sports doctor. Michigan State did not make any senior officials available for interviews for this article or provide comment.

But nearly two dozen current and former faculty members and administrators who did speak with The Chronicle described Simon as a driving force behind the campus culture that so many people now call into question. She was encouraged, they said, by hands-off trustees who prioritized athletics and the Michigan State brand.

More than three months have passed since Simon’s resignation. In the rocky tenure of John Engler, the former Republican governor who took over as interim president, many people have observed familiar problems. They see insularity. They see a lack of empathy.

They see the university’s reputation being prioritized over student well-being. They see an inability to acknowledge wrongdoing. They see no desire to listen.

From the start of her presidency, Simon had vast ambitions for her university. Early in her tenure, she declared that Michigan State needed to become a “world grant” institution. The term she coined sought to blend two often-competing aspects of the university’s identity: its land-grant roots and its blossoming research program.

There’s no question that Simon was passionate about the university’s foundation as an agricultural institution. One professor put it this way: “When she gets going on the land-grant mission, I will take a pitchfork and bale hay.”

At the same time, she believed it was imperative for higher-education institutions to put global competitiveness at the forefront. “The potential for universities to drive societal growth and development for the greater good of the world and its inhabitants has never been more appropriate or necessary,” she wrote in a paper co-authored with Hiram Fitzgerald, a professor of psychology and associate provost for university outreach and engagement.

Simon wanted Michigan State to lead the charge. And given her sophisticated understanding of the 50,000-student institution — after all, she’d never worked anywhere else — she was perhaps better positioned to orchestrate that transition than anyone else.

So, with the Board of Trustees’ support, she courted donors. She stimulated research activity, particularly in the sciences, and pushed for key academic programs to raise their national rankings. She advocated for major campus projects, such as a $45-million museum of contemporary art.

She raised her own profile as a college president, serving terms as chair of the Association of American Universities and of the NCAA’s executive committee. She honed her pitch about her vision for Michigan State and made that pitch often — in the Legislature, in the nation’s capital, even in Dubai.

Her aspirational mind-set was deeply influential, according to those who worked with her.

“We’ve been through 20 years of Lou Anna Simon pulling the levers,” said Raymond (Chip) Brock, a professor of physics and former department chair.

“For those of us with administrative roles, you just fall into the habit after a while of thinking, What would Lou Anna think of this?” he said. “When you were bringing in faculty or dean candidates, you think, How would they do in front of Lou Anna?”

“If you wanted to propose something to her, you had to be on your game,” he added. “She made me a much better chair. With her, you couldn’t be half-prepared.”

Fred Poston worked with Simon both as vice president for finance and operations and as dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She was demanding, he said. “It was like administrating with your sister. We would fight and argue.”

Poston recalled how she’d often test administrators in meetings: If they didn’t stand up to her and call her out for being wrong about something, she’d assume she was right and move on. Challenge her a few times, though, and you’d earn her respect. “She wasn’t tolerant of ignorance and ineptitude,” he said.

A decade ago, Michigan State was a finalist for the right to build a major federal research complex. Simon, Poston, and a handful of university scientists traveled to Washington to try to sell the proposal to a Department of Energy committee.

“We get there, and she starts it off,” Poston said. “She stood up — she’s small, not big and commanding. But, boy, she has a big personality when she gets in front of a group.”

Simon, who isn’t a scientist, deftly navigated a maze of details about nuclear astrophysics and the properties of atomic nuclei without missing a beat. “They were astounded,” Poston said, “that our president could do this.”

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, became one of Simon’s signature accomplishments.

But Michigan State needed to promote such achievements more aggressively, in her view.

Heather C. Swain, now Michigan State’s vice president for communications and brand strategy, told The New York Times that when she’d been brought on at Michigan State, in 2006, Simon told her: “I want to build a brand.”

Enter “Spartans Will,” an advertising blitz involving newspapers, TV, YouTube, and other online platforms. Even airport signs. It began in 2010, at a cost of about $478,000.

In the past, Michigan State had avoided using its sports mascot and logo in marketing its academics. To this day, some are bothered by the campaign’s unabashed emphasis on athletics. But like it or not, the Spartan sells.

“When do we give up?” asked one of the TV ads for Michigan State’s research and global engagement. “To a Spartan, the answer’s simple: never.”

“We’ve always had a little bit of an aw-shucks attitude about what we’ve done,” Simon told the Lansing State Journal in 2013. “It also is a way of recognizing that we simply have to raise more private dollars. And we have to worry about reputation and ranking and positioning in a very crowded world.”

“Spartans Will” has become a key part of Michigan State’s identity. Walk anywhere on the sprawling campus, and there it is. On soap dispensers and lampposts, in parking garages and lecture halls, Sparty is everywhere.

Simon’s efforts paid off in many ways. Outside grant funding nearly doubled during her presidency; the combined endowment of the university and the MSU Foundation nearly tripled. Everyone on the campus knows about FRIB — even if they don’t know what exactly FRIB does.

Simon’s pursuit of elite status and a strong brand compelled her to create an administrative culture that served those goals. She surrounded herself with people who bought into her vision, many of them institutional loyalists.

Of the 15-member executive-officer cabinet that was in place in January, when she resigned, 12 were hired while she was president, and more than half were Michigan State graduates. Eleven had been in East Lansing for at least seven years, seven of them for at least a decade.

When Frank Fear, a professor emeritus and a former senior associate dean in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, first came to Michigan State, in the 1970s, he considered the university to be a “progressive” campus. For instance, it financially divested from apartheid-era South Africa before many other universities did.

But by the time Fear became a dean, in the mid-2000s, things had changed. The administration, he said, had become an “all roads lead to Rome” kind of environment, with the police chief and athletic director reporting directly to Simon. More vice-presidential positions had been created.

Many public universities have followed a similar path, he said, moving from “open critique and collaboration to executive management and board control.” But the shift in East Lansing was especially significant, he said.

Instead of “leading for the public good,” Fear said, the administration was consumed by a focus on winning at sports and raising more money. The humanities and social sciences, for instance, didn’t win as much support from Simon because the grants in such fields aren’t as lucrative.

As her administration became increasingly closed off, many faculty members said, the academic side of the campus became fragmented. The deans rarely met as a group. Faculty members grew disengaged. Their role in governance shrank. Their voices got quieter.

“This is a Michigan State problem,” said Deborah Moriarty, a professor of piano and vice chair of the Faculty Senate. “We have an amazing faculty. And then we have an administration that oftentimes just meets and meets and meets, and talks to each other.”

Faculty members often used to write articles in the campus newspaper expressing their views about what was going on at Michigan State, Fear said. No more. “The silence from the faculty is part of the institutional culture,” he said. “It wasn’t that way before. I’ve lost friends because of my being outspoken.”

Simon’s isolation only got worse, said Sherman Garnett, dean of James Madison College, the undergraduate public-affairs unit. At the end, he said, she was “inside a siege tower.”

Still, Simon seemed like the kind of president who had the chops to weather a crisis. In 2013 she did an interview with Roger Groves, a Forbes magazine sports columnist. The resulting headline: “Michigan State Got It Right With President Lou Anna Simon.”

Part of what made her a great leader, Groves wrote, was her focus on building connections with people, which she’d adopted from Michigan State’s other iconic president, John Hannah. “Simon’s people concept includes making sure she gets to know her people and establish a good relationship first, before a crisis. Then if a crisis comes, there is a qualitative foundation for problem solving.”

But when the crisis came, that’s not what happened.

As the Nassar scandal boiled, some professors and administrators began speaking out more vocally about their concerns. Their words didn’t appear to pack much punch.

Last year more than 200 professors called on Simon to endorse an outside investigation of Nassar — a matter that was, at the time, being handled by the campus police department.

“MSU Police are accountable to the MSU administration, and that portrays a lack of investigative independence,” stated their letter, which was read out at a University Council meeting. “Moreover, that could give the appearance that MSU has something to hide, even if it does not.”

Simon was in attendance. She brushed off the appeal. There was no conflict of interest for the university in investigating itself, she and other senior officials declared. For another year, that continued to be the administration’s line.

In the meantime, Simon seemed to bend over backward to defend Michigan State’s reputation. Her public statements echoed a few themes: I didn’t know. Nobody knew. Nothing more could have been done.

She talked about how “it is virtually impossible to stop a determined sexual predator and pedophile, that they will go to incomprehensible lengths to keep what they do in the shadows.” She often used “regret,” “sympathize,” and “acknowledge” in her written statements, but not “apologize.” She emphasized that sexual assault is a societal problem, not a Michigan State one. She highlighted all of the steps the university had taken to prevent sexual misconduct.

More signs of trouble emerged, and lawsuits began to pile up. The Detroit News reported in December that at least 14 people at Michigan State had, at some point over the past two decades, heard complaints about Nassar’s abuse. Simon was among them, though she didn’t know it was Nassar at the time.

The following month, Nassar’s sentencing hearing began in an Ingham County courtroom. On its second day, Simon attended, slipping into the back of the room. Reporters swarmed around her during a break. One asked whether Michigan State had contacted any of the women and girls assaulted by Nassar. “I did not know, until listening for the last two days, the names of the victims,” she said.

A voice interrupted her. It was Lindsey Lemke, a Michigan State student who had come forward about being abused by Nassar while she was on the gymnastics team. “You had no idea who I was?” Lemke asked.

Simon averted her gaze. She explained to reporters that officials were in the process of contacting the victims and informing them about a $10-million fund to pay for counseling and other assistance.

Lemke tried again. “What about for those of us who have already had counseling, but this is now a year and a half later that you’re doing this?” She said she hadn’t heard a word from the university. Simon addressed her directly this time: Michigan State would reimburse those expenses, she told Lemke.

The president then explained that she would not attend the rest of the hearing in person. She didn’t want to be “disruptive.” “The focus of the attention should be on the people who are telling their story, and not on me or Michigan State,” she said.

“This has been a distraction for over 20 years now,” Lemke said angrily, “so that means absolutely nothing to us, just so you know.”

“I don’t think she had the wealth of personal relations that might have either blunted the danger, or alerted her sooner to the danger, or allowed her to be more graceful when she was confronted with the danger,” said Chip Brock, the former physics-department chair.

“That she failed in crucial ways,” he added, “is incredibly disappointing.”

Simon had planned to retire at the end of 2016. That September, the first revelations about Nassar were made public by The Indianapolis Star. She stayed on to steer Michigan State through the turmoil.

Her exit was supposed to be a celebration of her distinguished career. The reality was anything but. In her resignation letter she praised the trustees who had defended her. She addressed the survivors, saying, “I am so sorry.” But she didn’t acknowledge personal or institutional responsibility.

Instead she blamed politics. And she cast herself as a victim. “As tragedies are politicized, blame is inevitable,” she wrote. “As president, it is only natural that I am the focus of this anger.”

Simon’s resignation was, it seemed, what almost everybody wanted. People said Michigan State couldn’t heal and move forward with such an embattled leader. But healing without her isn’t going to be easy, either.

Her ambition had long set the agenda at Michigan State. People had grown accustomed to her being in charge. Even after she stepped down, some administrators and faculty members lamented her departure, arguing that it wasn’t the right time for Simon to go. Why create more chaos, they asked, by ousting the institution’s longtime leader at a chaotic moment?

“What Lou Anna does better than anyone I’ve ever worked with — she understands how to change culture,” said Fear, the former senior associate dean. “I’ve never seen that happen in an institution this large.”

“It will take someone who is just as masterful to come in and change it again,” he said.

For the time being, it doesn’t appear that much has changed.

The same trustees who deferred to Simon, who backed her grand vision for Michigan State, who offered her a raise and a prestigious professorship as the scandal unfolded, and who largely defended her until the bitter end, are still calling the shots. And they’ll be responsible for picking a new president.

Just after Simon resigned, faculty members hoped that the schism between them and the administration would dissipate. The trustees spent an entire meeting making individual, emotional apologies, and they were adamant that Michigan State had failed. They acknowledged that the administration hadn’t listened enough.

They extended an invitation to faculty leaders, saying they wanted feedback on choosing an interim leader. They asked the university’s deans, too. Both groups were adamant about the need for an experienced academic leader and healer, ideally from outside of East Lansing, where green-and-white Spartan pride is ubiquitous.

The board quickly picked Engler, the former governor, who is a Michigan State graduate. A politician with no higher-education credentials and deep ties to the institution, faculty leaders and deans thought angrily, is not what we asked for.

One of the main reasons the trustees selected Engler was to fix the public-relations fiasco. The former governor was seen as a stable, well-connected leader whose steady hand would be invaluable as Michigan State navigated its various legal and political problems. Nearly 300 plaintiffs are suing the university.

In his first letter to the campus community, Engler tried to strike a different tone from Simon’s, aiming to keep the victims front and center: “Our main concern will always be the survivors and doing everything possible for them.”

His tone ever since, however, hasn’t been much different from Simon’s. And neither have his actions.

Engler has brought on board longtime political allies, shelling out money for a big contract with a firm run by his former press secretary, filling a new “special counsel to the president” position with one of his former top aides, and bringing on another Republican aide as the university’s chief spokeswoman. All three are Michigan State graduates.

He has tried to move the university through the turmoil quickly, drawing criticism that he has not been empathetic enough. He has attacked lawmakers and media outlets that have criticized Michigan State. He has done little to mend relations with faculty members. At one recent Faculty Senate meeting, he addressed two female professors who have been vocal critics of the administration as “you girls.”

After yet another woman sued Michigan State in March, claiming that counselors had discouraged her from reporting a sexual assault, Engler’s office issued a point-by-point takedown of her accusations. He later walked back his comments.

During an April board meeting, Kaylee Lorincz, a Nassar victim, stunned everyone in attendance. She said Engler had privately offered her a cash payoff to drop her lawsuit against the university.

There were gasps around the room. Engler looked on, stone-faced. After a couple of minutes, he interrupted her, mid-sentence: “Kaylee, your time is up.” His special counsel, Carol Viventi, then emailed the trustees and called Lorincz’s assertions “fake news.” She later apologized.

In a recent interview with The Detroit News, Engler chalked up many of the problems at Michigan State to a “diffuse and disorganized” administration. When he came in, no one was clearly in charge of anything, he said. That might help explain, he added, how Nassar was able to get away with his abuse for so long.

Mosallam, the trustee, took a broader view of who is to blame. In his memo on Tuesday, he said that accountability must begin “with those in positions of leadership,” including the board.

“By historically deferring to the administration,” he wrote, “we operated on inadequate information, insufficient oversight, and blind belief.”

He called for a university-commissioned, independent investigation that would get to the bottom of who knew what and when about Nassar’s crimes.

The failure of university leaders to stop him, Mosallam said, “was a failure of the very cultural soul of this institution.”

Jack Stripling contributed to this article.

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.