In less than 48 hours, Michigan State University’s board chair found the ground giving way beneath her feet.
Sparked by a call for her resignation from a handful of trustees that was made public on Sunday, others quickly lent verbal ammunition to the effort to depose Rema Vassar. The chair of the Faculty Senate called for her resignation. The interim president, Teresa K. Woodruff, seemed to align herself with the protesting trustees, citing their letter as proof that her relationship with the board has been “challenging.” And Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said she would consider using her power to remove Vassar.
The pile-on is the latest flare-up for a board that is no stranger to open conflict. But this battle is about far more than conflicting personalities. Instead, state politics and enduring wounds from past scandals lurk just beneath the surface. The board is scheduled to meet in private on Thursday and for its normal public meeting on Friday morning.
In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, Vassar cast the move against her as a status-quo faction of the board’s rejection of change. “This is an old-style political hit job on me,” she said. “I guess I’m still naïve in a lot of ways. I’m not well versed in the ruthless politics of MSU.”
Vassar denied all charges leveled against her on Friday by a board member, Brianna T. Scott, also a Democrat, saying she had been targeted because of her race. Vassar is the first Black woman to lead MSU’s board and one of only a few minority women to lead major research-university boards across the nation. Scott is also Black.
“Since the election of Dr. Rema Vassar as chairperson — an election in which I was the deciding vote — the BOT has become more fractured, more contentious, and Dr. Vassar has developed a pattern of violating our codes of conduct, ethics, and conflict of interest, including engaging in repeated undue influence, and bullying of board members and administrators,” Scott wrote in the letter. (A lawyer, Scott said in an email she wasn’t available on Monday for an interview because she was in court all day. She did not return an email asking for an interview on Tuesday.)
Scott’s letter made several specific allegations against Vassar, including that she had bullied Woodruff, violated the university’s ethics code, and refused to cooperate with an investigation into who had leaked the name of the woman who recently accused the now-former football coach of sexual misconduct. (Dan Kelly, a trustee who chairs the board’s Audit, Risk, and Compliance Committee, said on Monday evening he had directed the university’s general-counsel office to investigate the allegations.)
In a statement late Monday night and then again in her interview with The Chronicle, Vassar denied all the charges.
“The allegations leveled by Trustee Scott and two of her enablers are fabrications, misstatements, innuendo, and untruths,” Vassar said. “I am disappointed by Trustee Scott’s clear disregard of the very codes of conduct she accuses me of violating. Trustee Scott disingenuously purported to invite board discussion while disseminating this letter to the public.”
Several sources with direct knowledge of the board’s workings told The Chronicle that one sticking point referenced in the letter is central to the effort to depose Vassar: 6,000 emails about Larry Nassar — the former sports doctor now in prison for sexually abusing hundreds of athletes — that the institution has kept secret for a half-dozen years. The letter accuses Vassar of unilaterally moving to release the emails, long a demand of some of the Nassar survivors, but then never holding a vote to authorize it.
‘Her Friend Is Aggrieved’
The Nassar scandal, which erupted in 2016, still casts a long shadow over Michigan State. So does Whitmer, the state’s political power center and a national star of the Democratic Party.
The governor told reporters on Monday morning she was concerned about the allegations raised in the letter and was ready to remove Vassar if the situation warranted doing so. Michigan State trustees are elected in a statewide vote, but governors have the power to remove them, like other elected officials, through a trial-like procedure.
“I’m taking it very seriously,” Whitmer said in an impromptu news conference. “I think the allegations, if accurate, amount to a serious breach of conduct in what we expect of our board members.”
She also said she wasn’t looking forward to having to take action, “but if necessary, I will.”
Whitmer’s press office did not respond to requests for further comment.
Whitmer has keen interest in Michigan State beyond her roots there as an alumna. She has appointed several people to the board following resignations, including Renee Knake Jefferson, also a Democrat, in 2019 after Nancy Schlichting resigned in frustration with the board’s lack of transparency.
Whitmer and Jefferson have a long and deep relationship — when Jefferson moved to Michigan, in 2005, she and Whitmer lived across the street from each other in East Lansing. Whitmer also officiated at Jefferson’s wedding, in 2020, at the governor’s official residence on picturesque Mackinac Island.
Jefferson, the Doherty chair in legal ethics at the University of Houston Law Center, suffered a surprise loss to Vassar in a January 2023 board vote for chairwoman. Vassar told The Chronicle that she thinks Whitmer “would have preferred her [Jefferson] to be the chair,” adding that the governor has been “a partner” to the university in the past.
If Whitmer is asked to remove Vassar, the chair said she hopes the governor will be impartial. “Her language about the allegations against me was very careful, as opposed to some folks who just believed everything they read. Does that carefulness then translate to judicial impartiality? I don’t know, but I hope so. I know her friend is aggrieved.”
In a statement she made publicly after this article was published, Jefferson said she was not upset. “I do not feel the least bit aggrieved about not being chair,” she said. “I was relieved, not aggrieved. I do not aspire to be chair.” She also disputed Vassar’s statement that the effort to unseat her was politically motivated. “One thing I can state without question is that politics are not the issue,” she said.
Whitmer was also the interim prosecutor in Ingham County, where Michigan State is located, when the Nassar crimes started to surface. Her actions then were a topic in her first gubernatorial run, with some Nassar survivors questioning what they saw as her lack of action in charging Nassar with sexual-assault crimes. Meanwhile, Whitmer and others defended her actions, noting that warrants her office issued led to Nassar convictions on charges of child-porn possession.
When Jefferson, who has since been re-elected to the board, was first appointed, she promised to read all the emails in question. She did so and then said at a board meeting that there was no smoking gun in them and that they were consistent with information already in the public realm.
Vassar told The Chronicle she had not read the emails.
‘The Best Interest of the University’
This latest leadership skirmish erupted about 24 hours after Michigan State administrators tried to distance themselves from a picture of Adolf Hitler that was displayed on the football stadium’s scoreboard before a game against the rival University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. It is the latest in a litany of black eyes that have colored Michigan State, including the firing of the football coach, Mel Tucker, after he admitted to masturbating during a call with a nationally known advocate for combating violence and sexual assault on campuses, and high leadership turnover among both presidents and trustees who have made plain their distaste with the style of governance that emanates from the board.
Woodruff, the interim president, issued a statement late Monday night that seemed to at least partly endorse the veracity of the letter’s claims against Vassar.
“As the university bylaws state, I serve to promote, support, and protect the interests of Michigan State University. As outlined in a recent trustee letter, these responsibilities have been challenging at times,” she said in the statement, according to the Lansing State Journal.
Vassar said in her statement that the move against her would only damage the institution. “As the first African American woman ever elected to chair this board, it is very disappointing that instead of showing unity and a steady hand during a tough time for our university, three members of our MSU Board of Trustees are more focused on undermining me instead of working together to do the job we were elected or appointed to do,” Vassar wrote. She declined to name the three board members when questioned.
Vassar, known in Michigan circles as Dr. Rema, told The Chronicle she is different from others who have served on the board. “I ran on change. I’m not status quo. Because I’m an educator, I ask different questions. There’s extreme pushback,” she said. Vassar, a Democrat who holds a doctorate from UCLA in urban schooling, is a professor in the department of administrative and organizational studies at Wayne State University’s College of Education, in Detroit. She was elected to MSU’s board in 2021.
Scott said in the letter that it had been “difficult” to write. “I have been threatened by Dr. Vassar that speaking out against her decisions would result in her turning the Black community against me —- and I myself am a Black woman,” she wrote. “I have also been warned that speaking out will cause unwanted attention to the Board of Trustees and will harm the university and interfere with our current presidential search. But of the many values I’ve developed as a Black person, as a woman, and as a Spartan, chief among them is standing up for what’s right and what is in the best interest of the university I love so dearly.”
In her statement, Vassar referenced the Hitler incident, “the persistent racism Black students have endured,” and the presidential search as some of the urgent work that the recent conflict is distracting from. “Students, faculty, and staff are counting on us to ensure a bright future for this university,” she wrote. “I will not let them down.”
