Nikias Is Standing Firm as Scandals Mount at USC. But This Is What the End of a Presidency Looks Like.

Here we go again.

Professors at the University of Southern California are once again scrolling through the website of the Los Angeles Times to figure out what stomach-churning compromises its leaders may have made to resolve cases of serious misconduct within the university’s ranks.

The Times reported last week that a former gynecologist in the student health center had been the subject of numerous claims of sexual harassment and misconduct, only to receive a private settlement and be spared any report to the state’s medical board. For hundreds of faculty members, this latest controversy is the final insult, presenting a pattern of concealment, misjudgment and failed oversight by the university’s administration.

Professors have trained their anger on C.L. Max Nikias, the otherwise respected and accomplished president of the university, who they say has lost his moral authority to lead and must resign.

It is in moments like these, an increasingly common crisis of higher education leadership, that university presidents find themselves emptied of much local political capital and tenuously clinging to the support of trustees — the group that is often the last to turn on a president, but the one that is the most consequential when it does. The most recent such example comes from Michigan State University, where Lou Anna K. Simon, widely regarded as an architect of the institution’s rise to national prominence, saw her campus-level support erode amid a scandal involving Larry Nassar, a sports doctor who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing his young patients. Before long, trustees began to peel off, leaving Simon little choice but to resign.

Southern California’s trustees are publicly sticking with Nikias for now, but watch that space. The release Tuesday of a letter signed by more than 200 senior-level professors is the sort of organized shot across the bow that can mean the end — leaving a president without a core base of support among high-ranking faculty members, whose endorsement (or at least complacency) is so critical to sustaining the top job in a crisis.

The tactic that Southern California’s professors have employed, bypassing the Academic Senate and petitioning top-ranked professors for what is effectively a no-confidence vote, is similar to a method that was used to great effect several years ago at the University of Illinois. There, more than 120 high-profile faculty members on the flagship campus signed a memo that opposed the direction of the university under Michael J. Hogan, a system president who was admonished for his abrasive leadership style and meddling with campus-level affairs.

That letter at Illinois, which lent the imprimatur of the university’s most respected professors to the forces of opposition, made it safe for rank-and-file faculty to join in more forceful calls for Hogan’s resignation, which came within a couple of months.

What’s happening at Southern California, in other words, often signals a college presidency in its bell lap.

Teflon President

Nikias has survived scandals that would already have brought down a president who lacked continued board support and self-assuredness. College leaders have bowed out for far less than the not-so-distant case of Carmen A. Puliafito, a former USC medical-school dean whose drug-fueled double life was exposed, in 2017, by the Los Angeles Times.

The episode was a huge embarrassment for the university, prompting rolling disclosures from the president about what administrators had known and when they knew it regarding the former dean’s misdeeds. This lent strength to the narrative that the university shared the full truth and took appropriate action only after it was pressured to do so.

Until the report hit the newspaper, Puliafito’s ophthalmology practice privileges remained intact, even as complaints had swirled for years about his abusive and bizarre behavior. The dean’s interim replacement, Rohit Varma, was forced out not long after that report, just as the Times was preparing to expose a sexual-harassment case against Varma from 15 years earlier that the university had quietly settled for $135,000.

Questions about Southern California’s vetting processes and the forthrightness of its leadership predictably emerged, putting Nikias on the defensive, where he has been since.

The president was not made available for an interview for this article.

Nikias, who has spent a quarter century at USC, rose, in 2010, from the provost slot to the presidency with seemingly little real competition for the job. For most of his tenure at the top, Nikias has accumulated more big donations than vocal critics. Many professors have, until now, given him the benefit of the doubt, accepting that the president of such a vast enterprise cannot be expected to learn of every employee transgression or to chase down every rumor.

What has changed is that, in the wake of numerous public crises that all feel similar in some way, Nikias has claimed ignorance, deflected personal responsibility and demonstrated a willful or subconscious desire to be spared the details of bad information, his faculty critics say.

After news broke about George Tyndall, the gynecologist who is accused of misconduct, Nikias issued a letter stating that Tyndall “should have been removed and referred to the authorities years ago.

“I am struggling,” Nikias continued, “with the question — as you are: how could this behavior have gone on for so long?”

Some faculty members latched on to Nikias’s language, which they said diluted responsibility to include everyone — and therefore no one — and cast Nikias yet again as a shocked and perplexed spectator, rather than the man with whom the buck rightfully stops.

Gregory C. Keating, a law professor who signed the letter calling on Nikias to resign, said that he sees the president’s recent comments as part of a broader pattern of evasion and self-protection.

“Max does give the impression of operating with a management style where he keeps a distance from things,” Keating says, “so he can take credit when there is credit to be taken and avoid responsibility when there is blame to go around.”

On the Defensive

Under fire for its inaction against Tyndall in the face of complaints, the university has issued a “Statement of Facts,” seeking once again to tell its own version of a troubling story that has taken on a life of its own.

According to the statement, Southern California’s Office of Equity and Diversity received a complaint in 2016 accusing Tyndall of making sexually inappropriate comments to patients. The report was “immediately” investigated and Tyndall was put on administrative leave, never to return to the student health center, the university says.

The investigation concluded that Tyndall had violated policies on harassment. During interviews, medical assistants also reported that they were concerned about how the physician had conducted pelvic exams with “digital insertion prior to insertion of a speculum,” the university’s statement reads. The university did not report Tyndall to the Medical Board of California until March 9, a decision that officials concede was a mistake.

But serious questions persist about years of prior complaints that failed to provoke serious action. Six women have sued the university, saying that they were sexually violated by Tyndall and that Southern California failed to protect them. About 300 women have contacted the university since the news broke, and their complaints have been forwarded to the Los Angeles Police Department as it begins a criminal investigation.

Michael W. Quick, the provost, has categorically denied that the university’s actions, including paying Tyndall a private legal settlement to avoid a lawsuit he had threatened, amounted to a cover-up. The full details of the allegations against Tyndall, Quick said in a written statement, were not divulged to university leaders until 2017 — and even more details are emerging now.

“Absolutely we should have known about this much sooner, and we are all going to have to work together to create a culture and structure where reporting is safer, easier, and a responsibility we all take seriously, no matter our rank or position,” Quick wrote. “That has been the charge that our Task Force on Workplace Standards and Employee Wellness has been grappling with over the past year.”

For Keating, the law professor, this rhetoric amounts to too little, too late. Culture and wellness are important, he said, but the press releases coming from the administration read like “managerial gobbledygook that just doesn’t seem that responsive.”

“People have come to a certain view after repeated crises,” he said, “which is that they are simply not, within the central administration, behaving appropriately in terms of learning what they should learn.”

Journalistic Watchdog

Across the campus, there is a growing sense that the Los Angeles Times is the only organization keeping the administration in check and ensuring that the broader university remains informed. Compounding those frustrations is the sentiment that the university is compelled to do the right thing — reaching out to Tyndall’s patients, for example — only after administrators have to defend their actions to a newspaper.

“Many of us on the faculty are very grateful to the Los Angeles Times for their reporting, for doing the kind of investigation that should be happening in house” said Ariela J. Gross, a professor of law and history. “We feel like, wow, we need to read the newspaper to find out what’s happening at the university.”

The administration’s defensiveness about the news media, Gross continued, is symptomatic of a larger knee-jerk aversion to learning the whole truth. Professors are increasingly impatient, for example, to see the findings of an independent investigation that the university commissioned nearly a year ago about its handling of the Puliafito matter. (University officials did not respond to an inquiry Wednesday about the status of that investigation or whether the findings would be made public).

In place of a targeted inquiry, Gross said, there has been an emphasis on the squishy question of culture — broadly spreading responsibility beyond the central administration.

“We hear a lot of talk about cultures and structures, and not taking moral responsibility,” Gross said. “A lot of it sounds as if we’re all responsible for a culture in which people can’t come forward. No we’re not. Cultures are created from the top.”

Quick, the provost, concedes that the administration may never be able to regain the confidence of some on the campus. And that is certainly a view one hears from faculty.

“It is up to us to earn back that trust,” Quick wrote in his statement. “For some of you that will take a lot; I am sure for some it is likely irreparable. Please know that I am committed to doing what I can to re-earn your trust, as is everyone in senior leadership.”

Trustees Call for Investigation

The professors who signed the letter calling on Nikias to resign come from 14 schools and 26 departments. The petition was hurriedly organized by Gross and some of her law-school colleagues, who asked that only tenured professors, who have greater job security, sign onto it.

In a cutting appraisal, the letter states that Nikias has breached the trust of the campus, leading an administration that has been “wrong at every turn, and not only in hindsight.”

“We call upon President Nikias to step aside, and upon the Board of Trustees to restore moral leadership to the university,” the letter reads.

Dan Simon, a professor of law and psychology, said that the past year has left “a complete stain on the institution.” The incidents of misconduct by men in powerful positions, he said, are compounded by the fact that Puliafito and Tyndall were “paid off to go quietly into the night.” The university has said that settlements were the most expeditious way to separate from the employees, but Simon worries about the message that the university has sent through its handling of these matters.

“I can understand the impulse to cover up, but I disagree with following through with that impulse, because it’s wrong,” he said. “As an educational institution, we have a particularly high duty to do better. But there have been three such incidents, which has given people the impression that we can’t expect the university to change itself.”

Jennifer B. Unger, a professor of preventive medicine, agreed that the university has sent a troubling message about its values.

“There’s plenty of outrage in the med school about how the university covers up scandals and allows men in power to continue acting badly if they’re bringing in money for the university,” Unger wrote in an email.

She said she was discouraged that, within about an hour of the faculty letter’s release, the university’s trustees had issued a short statement of support for Nikias. That left Unger and her colleagues feeling that no one at the top gave much thought to the faculty’s concerns.

“At this point, I’m finally realizing that USC cares more about money and its reputation than about individuals,” she wrote. “Maybe that was true all along and maybe it’s true everywhere and we were just too naïve to realize it. I hope in the future USC will address its problems instead of covering them up.”

On Wednesday the board’s leadership announced that it would form a special committee and hire outside counsel to investigate the “misconduct and reporting failures” in the student health center.

“The behavior exhibited by the former physician was reprehensible,” the executive committee said in a statement, “and we will hold people accountable if we find they failed to report or take action to ensure the well-being and safety of patients and students. To those affected, we are deeply sorry.”

Where Does the Buck Stop?

Increasing pressure is expected from professors, who see task forces and investigations being formed in lieu of real accountability.

More than 15 of the letter’s signatories came from the School of Cinematic Arts, one of the university’s most renowned programs. Elizabeth M. Daley, the school’s dean, said in a short statement to The Chronicle that she and her colleagues “will do whatever we can to support” the president’s new action plan, which calls for revising the university’s code of ethics and improving reporting protocols so that “people are held accountable for their conduct.”

“All of us here at the School of Cinematic Arts, faculty and staff, are first and foremost concerned about the safety and well-being of our students,” Daley wrote. “We are all deeply disturbed by the current situation.”

For Nikias, the current situation presents an untenable dilemma. He is calling for change to a deeply rooted culture, which is the very sort of transformation that professors say cannot happen if Nikias remains at the helm.

“We just live in a world in which the buck stops at the top,” says Dan Simon, the law and psychology professor. “It’s usually the strongest way to express those values, to demonstrate that an institution is actually committed to reform.”

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