With $500-Million Payout, Michigan State President Says, ‘The Dark Cloud Has Been Lifted’

John Engler had a clear mission when he arrived at Michigan State University three and a half months ago: Settle lawsuits with more than 300 women and girls who were abused by Larry Nassar.

This week the interim president announced that he’d done just that. Michigan State will pay $500 million to the victims of Nassar, a former university sports doctor who sexually abused patients for more than two decades.

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

But Engler’s tenure at Michigan State has been rocky, to say the least. In one of his few interviews since assuming the post, the former Michigan governor on Friday defended his approach to The Chronicle. Many observers have described his style as aggressive, and have criticized him as lacking empathy toward the victims; he said it was often necessary in the face of so much litigation.

Now that those lawsuits are in the rear-view mirror, Engler said he can speak more candidly. He stressed, for instance, that most of Nassar’s victims were not Michigan State students and that some of them weren’t abused on the campus.

He also dismissed the students and professors who have protested outside his office in recent weeks and called for his resignation, saying they weren’t giving him enough credit for the changes he’s spearheaded.

He said Michigan State had reorganized its Title IX office and counseling center; hired more Title IX investigators, sexual-assault prevention specialists, and counselors; and tightened supervision of athletic trainers, who may have been in a position to know about Nassar’s abuses. He also touted the size of the university’s incoming freshman class — the largest and most diverse ever, he said — as an indication that the Nassar scandal had not affected enrollment.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. I figured this would be a good time to reflect a little on your tenure. What grade would you give yourself?

A. In the three months that I’ve been here, we’ve completely revamped all the policies relating to patient care and safety to ensure that Larry Nassar could never remain hidden in any MSU clinic in the future. At the same time we’ve been very busy working on what we think is the longer-term issue relative to campus respect and civility and the way women are treated on this campus.

The strategy’s been comprehensive. What’s been challenging: The campus community, I think, struggles with understanding the adversarial nature of litigation. When you’ve got 300-plus plaintiffs and 10 plaintiffs’ attorneys representing them, that can create a lot of chaos. The attorneys are very able advocates on behalf of their clients, and the university, because of privacy laws, restrictions under Title IX, and restrictions under Ferpa [federal student-privacy law] — every time we turn around, there might be something we would like to say, but we are prevented from saying that.

Very different than the world that I came from. In politics you can give as good as you get. But you can’t do that at the helm of a university. What we tried to do is say, Look, it’s not about what is being said, it’s about what’s being done. The record we’re compiling will make Michigan State one of the safest and most responsive campuses that can be found anywhere in the country.

Q. Now that you’re more free to speak, is there anything that you wish you could have said previously?

A. One of the things we’re now able to point out is that, of the 300-plus victims, 31 were MSU students over that period of time. Many of the young women have never been on our campus except to come and visit Larry Nassar, and a significant number were never on the campus. They were treated at a ranch in Texas or an Olympic site somewhere around the world. Nassar came to Michigan State wearing the red, white, and blue of the Olympic Committee, and he attracted so many of these young women for treatment who then became his victims because of the Olympic connection.

The other thing that I think surprised people — let’s say Nassar’s abuse began in 1997, which is assuming Day 1 when he arrived here. At this point, 332 is the number that have come forward. About 175 moms were in the room with daughters during the treatment. And from 1997 to 2016 there were no complaints filed by any of the mothers. So it was a very unfortunately skillful, evil criminal that we were dealing with in Dr. Nassar.

Q. Are you suggesting that Michigan State has been shouldering too much of the blame?

A. No. Look, we’re not going back. It’s a fact: Nassar was a doctor in the osteopathic-medicine college of Michigan State University. The university never denied that. The university has repeatedly apologized for that and feels great embarrassment over the fact that this man could have been here.

I’ll give you one example of something that was fixed. In 2004 one of the early complaints against Nassar was made in a township near the university. The police investigated and concluded there were no crimes being committed, but they did not tell Michigan State. If something similar arose today, one of the township’s first calls would be the campus police department. The campus police, under another change, would immediately tell the Title IX office about it. In this case the revelations of the local police department would have triggered an on-campus investigation — and in all likelihood could have been successful in recognizing that this doctor was abusing patients.

There literally is no aspect of the university that hasn’t already been reviewed and updated, or is in that process — the review is done, and we’re looking to hire somebody.

Q. Yesterday when you were asked about where Michigan State would find the money to pay for the settlement, you said, “Find a leprechaun.” What did you mean by that?

A. That is one of our longtime capital reporters playing his usual games. I’ve just been meeting with our finance people this morning, and I said that when we have a plan, everybody will know. At this point we haven’t settled on a strategy. We have some pretty good ideas, but no announcements are forthcoming.

There are people who said, Well, you can’t use state appropriations to pay for this, you can’t use tuition to pay for this, you can’t use endowment money because that’s restricted. We’re not the federal government; we can’t print the money. But the reality is that Michigan State University has to look at its finances. We have to look at reserves that we may have accumulated. Can they be used? What role would bonding play? There’s a series of rather complex strategies that we have to work through.

Three days ago, “Will there ever be a settlement?” was always the question. Now it’s OK, you’ve got a settlement. We’ve moved right on beyond the fact that this is a very significant settlement.

Q. In a memo that Brian Mosallam, a Michigan State trustee, released last week, he highlighted what he sees as a serious leadership-culture problem. He wrote: “We must terminate all those who acted contrary to our values.” Calling out the leadership team of Michigan State does, by definition, include you. What do you make of what he wrote?

A. It’s interesting. The other trustees are the ones who should comment on one trustee who put something out without even having a discussion with them. It’s unfortunate that in his document he failed to reflect upon all of the changes that have been made, some of which he had supported and voted for.

Q. Mosallam and Joel Ferguson, the board’s vice chair, have publicly feuded and seem to loathe each other. Are you worried that tensions on the board will hamper the ability of Michigan State’s administration to bring the university out of this crisis?

A. No, I’m not worried about that. I do worry, and I’ve talked openly to the trustees about this, that governance is important to the presidential-search process. The expectations are high that we can recruit an outstanding new president. But any candidate will look at governance. The Board of Trustees of a university should be a policy-setting board. One of the challenges at Michigan State is that from time to time you’ve had trustees who’ve sought to become operational managers of the university.

That, I think, is not a welcome signal to a candidate who would consider the opening at Michigan State. They would want to come in and become, in effect, the individual in charge of running the university on a day-to-day basis — and have the Board of Trustees confine themselves to policy making. Trustee Mosallam is a brand-new trustee and hasn’t been on boards and doesn’t have a lot of experience. So he has sometimes tended to look at, well, this is how I would run it, versus this is what the policy of the university ought to be.

Q. The Chronicle published a story last week about Lou Anna K. Simon’s lengthy tenure at Michigan State. A lot of faculty members and administrators said she and the board helped create a flawed administrative culture that has become deeply ingrained. As someone who now holds the job of president, what’s your take?

A. I didn’t read the story, so I won’t try to go into detail on that. But what I have found is that unlike my previous roles as governor or heading large national organizations, the university structure is one where everyone is very keen on talking about their desire to participate in every decision that’s made, but not as eager to accept responsibility for those decisions. And sometimes higher education is its own worst enemy because it takes forever to make a decision.

The freedom of tenure is a great thing. But at the same time, and we’ve gone through this with one doctor on this campus, there are people who have clearly fallen far below the professional standards that they should meet. They stay in place for far longer than they should. When people in the private sector or government look at that, they say, How in the world does this person keep her or his job? We need to address those kinds of issues.

Q. Some students and professors have protested outside of the administration building and called for your resignation, as well as the trustees’ resignations, in recent weeks. They say that you haven’t displayed empathy to Nassar’s victims and aren’t helping Michigan State heal. What is your response to them?

A. They’ve been so busy protesting that they’ve missed significant, fundamental reforms that are taking place.

One of the things I felt very encouraged by was the response of parents and students: to be able to say that, with all we’ve been through, we have our largest-ever freshman class coming in. That is really a great testimony to the strength of Michigan State. It’s also testimony to the belief that I have, and so many here have, that our best days are ahead. We’re going to be probably the safest campus in the country, given the changes that we’ve been making here. It’s a great time to be a Spartan. And with the announcement of the settlement, it is as if the dark cloud has been lifted off the campus.

We’re not saying there’s no more work to be done; there is. But what we are asking people is, what do they want to see done? A lot of people are very vague and general. They talk about their feelings. We need to actually have policies.

Q. You’ve faced criticism for comments like “Kaylee, your time is up,” telling one of Nassar’s victims that she needed to stop talking at a recent board meeting. Would you change anything about how you’ve communicated with the victims?

A. The results speak for themselves now that we have a very fair and equitable settlement. I think many of the more theatrical elements that we’ve been dealing with will recede. We will begin a very positive period where the focus will be on: Here’s what’s changing, here’s what remains to be changed. Here is how, when we look back on it, Michigan State responded to a very serious crisis. It did so in a compassionate way.

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.