In South Carolina, a Presidency Never Got Over Its Tainted Start

Submitting his resignation as president of the University of South Carolina on Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr. brought to an abrupt and discordant conclusion a short-lived leadership tenure. The former military commander’s presidency had been marred from the start by political meddling during his appointment, and undone with Caslen’s startling acknowledgment that he had, in a recent commencement speech, plagiarized one by retired Adm. William H. McRaven.

In his unceremonious resignation, which became effective on Thursday, Caslen acknowledged that he had lost the trust of the university and irrevocably compromised his ability to lead it.

“I am sorry to those I have let down,” Caslen wrote in a statement, which was released by the university on Wednesday evening. “I understand the responsibilities and higher standards of senior-level leadership. When those are not met, trust is lost. And when trust is lost, one is unable to lead.”

Trust is a fragile thing, and this was particularly so for Caslen, a former superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. From the start, he operated with little margin for error. Some professors, alumni, and students never got beyond what they saw as the original sin of his appointment. Caslen, who was favored by the state’s governor but not the faculty, was named president after a divided board vote, in July 2019.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, the university’s regional accrediting agency, later found evidence that Gov. Henry D. McMaster, a Republican and an ex-officio member of the board, had exerted undue influence on the presidential search.

With Caslen’s resignation, the spotlight shines again on the university’s Board of Trustees, whose members are largely elected by the South Carolina General Assembly. An expected presidential search to replace Caslen will test the board, which was widely criticized for buckling under political pressure with the Caslen hire. Meanwhile, the board has said it will turn to Caslen’s predecessor, Harris Pastides, to serve as interim president.

If the board is looking to restore public confidence in its governance acumen, the group’s handling of what seemed Caslen’s slow-motion resignation process probably didn’t help.

Caslen gave a commencement speech on May 7, and he drew immediate criticism for referring to the graduates as “the newest alumni from the University of California.” FITSNews, a website that covers South Carolina politics, reported two days later, on May 9, that a portion of the speech contained an unattributed verbatim passage from a 2014 speech Admiral McRaven gave at the University of Texas at Austin. (The admiral, a former chancellor of the Texas system, planned the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.)

Other local-news outlets followed with similar reports of plagiarism, and Caslen, on Monday, admitted that he had failed to cite McRaven and said he took “full responsibility for this oversight.”

On Tuesday, The Post and Courier reported that Caslen had offered his resignation, “if the board feels I cannot provide leadership,” to the board’s chairman, who had rejected it. That news was met with bewilderment from other board members, who said they knew nothing of the resignation offer. Then, on Wednesday evening, Caslen unequivocally submitted his resignation.

Charles H. Williams, a member of the board, said he had been clamoring for a meeting to take action from the moment news broke about the plagiarizing — convinced that Caslen had lost the credibility to lead. The board did not hold a noticed public meeting, but Williams suspects the chairman, C. Dorn Smith III, got an earful from members who agreed the president should step down.

“I think Caslen figured out that the board in general wanted him to resign,” Williams said. “I did not talk to the president, but I made it clear to Dorn that the guy had to go. Whether other board members called Dorn and said the same thing, I couldn’t tell you. But common sense told you it had to end this way.”

“It probably was an honest mistake,” said Williams, describing Caslen’s failure to attribute the passage. “But the damn man was the damn head of West Point!

“If you’re going to plagiarize something, why the hell would you take one of the greatest graduation speeches ever and do it? I can’t excuse it. The man should have known.”

Smith, the chairman, did not respond to an interview request made through the university. Several other board members did not respond to emails.

A college president’s resignation is often messy. But the public back-and-forth between board members in recent days, and the failure to share knowledge with the trustees about a matter as weighty as Caslen’s initial resignation offer, left some professors and alumni uneasy.

“It absolutely points to dysfunction of the board processes and the dissension in the board,” said Drucilla K. Barker, a professor of anthropology and women’s and gender studies. “The board is not speaking as a homogeneous unit. The board was divided when the hire was made, and I don’t think things have gotten any better. I don’t think the rifts in the board have healed since then.”

When Caslen was hired through a politicized process, professors feared the worst: Was he put there to root out perceived liberalism in the faculty ranks? Or to go after tenure, as some conservative lawmakers might like?

Those fears weren’t realized. But Caslen, for all of his military decorations, lacked a credential valued most in the academy: a Ph.D. He had come from a service academy to a sprawling public research university, where faculty members press administrators out of both habit and duty. Early on, he surrounded himself with staff members who had military connections — a decision that reinforced a perception that he might impose his Army sensibilities on the university. His colorful background, including a story that he’d once killed a deer by drowning it with his bare hands, was more Davy Crockett than faculty lounge.

“He was way over his head,” said Barker, the professor. “He understood the culture he came from very well: A monoculture, very hierarchical, high respect for authority — where, in an academic culture, our mantra is really, ‘Question authority.’”

Caslen was known for a grueling early-morning crossfit regimen, which he invited students to join. But some who knew him described him as a bit of an introvert, who seemed uncomfortable with public speaking, and stoic at times. This did not always ingratiate him with the Southern society set.

It is often the small things that make or break a college leader, and Caslen’s case is illustrative of that point. Not long before his commencement flub, Caslen had offended a major university donor, Darla Moore, for failing to swiftly offer condolences on her mother’s death. In April, Moore wrote a letter describing the oversight as a final insult that would end her association with the university.

“There is not a university in the country that would exhibit this degree of thoughtless, dismissive, and graceless ignorance of the death of a parent of their largest donor,” Moore wrote. “I continue to be embarrassed and humiliated by my association with you and all you so disgracefully and incompetently display to the community you are charged to serve and to whom you look for support.”

In conclusion, she wrote, “The deepest regret of my life is the effort and resources I have expended on your behalf.”

Moore, who had criticized the politicized nature of Caslen’s appointment, dug at something more fundamental with her letter. She wasn’t questioning Caslen’s credentials: In effect, she was questioning his compassion and competence.

Supporters of Caslen’s appointment saw in the Army veteran an able leader with nontraditional experience. Having served 43 years in the Army, with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt, Caslen offered grit and battle-tested experience. When he talked about leadership, it was these quintessential notions of American virtue that appeared to stir Caslen’s passions.

In 2020, Caslen co-wrote The Character Edge: Leading and Winning With Integrity, with Michael D. Matthews, a psychology professor at West Point.

Some passages provide an eerie foreshadowing of Caslen’s resignation letter.

“Trust — perhaps the most important ingredient in effective leadership — is arguably the most important quality fostered in troops by their leaders,” he writes in the preface.

Competence alone, Caslen writes, isn’t enough.

“No matter how competent you are in the skill sets demanded of your high position,” he writes, “if you fail in character, you fail in leadership.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, one of the most significant challenges to face residential higher education in modern memory, was a crisis none would have wished for a president. Yet it was a moment when some at South Carolina said they felt lucky to have Caslen at the wheel.

Planning, testing, the safe movement of bodies from place to place: These were the sorts of problems Caslen could sink his teeth into, said Bethany A. Bell, who served on the Future Planning Group, which was assembled to navigate the pandemic.

“South Carolina was really ahead of the curve,” said Bell, who recently took a position at the University of Virginia, where she is an associate professor of education and chair of the department of leadership, foundations, and policy. “It got saliva-testing up quickly. His military logistics and those types of leadership skills, I will say, he was the right person to lead through the pandemic. The pandemic allowed him to use the skills he had.”

Bell was a strong critic of the process by which Caslen was selected, but she was impressed early on when he met with her — knowing she was a critic — and put in place several of her ideas, including a simple suggestion that he invite people to join him for coffee. But the plagiarism that undid his presidency speaks to a larger problem that wasn’t going away, Bell said.

Jeffrey Collins, AP

“Plagiarism is one of the biggest things in an academic space,” she said. “It’s just another sign that he doesn’t understand the culture … and the risk that that sort of incident can have.”

Caslen’s resignation comes just as the man whom many considered to be his heir-apparent has left for another job. William Tate IV, who had been provost, was recently named the next president of Louisiana State University. With Tate out of the picture, the board’s search is less predictable, and many are concerned that the group will repeat its past mistakes.

“Nothing is going to change,” Bell says, “unless the board changes.”

By returning to Pastides as its interim president, the board has reinstated a well-regarded leader who helmed the university for 11 years.

Often described as charismatic — “out of central casting,” a search consultant once told The Chronicle — Pastides holds a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany and a doctorate in epidemiology from Yale University. The alumni center at South Carolina is named for him and his wife, Patricia Moore-Pastides.

It is not uncommon, after a trusted leader is gone, for an organization to struggle to regain its footing. Indeed, this was a subject of interest for Caslen. In The Character Edge, Caslen wrote about how a battalion in Iraq, in 2009, “felt rudderless” after its commander, Lt. Col. Gary Derby, was killed. Caslen, who had helped to identify Derby’s replacement, received a report a couple of months later that the new battalion commander had made a significant error of judgment that required relieving him of his command. The loss of Derby had been hard enough, Caslen wrote, but the failure of his successor to uphold Derby’s standards had changed the culture of the unit. On patrol with the battalion, Caslen found the soldiers out of uniform and undisciplined to a point that concerned him.

“The battalion would continue to work hard at its mission,” Caslen wrote, “but it was never the same.”