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A president is out, less than two years after his controversial appointment.
Sean Rayford, Getty Images
Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr. resigned this week as president of the University of South Carolina.
It was a short-lived but controversy-ridden experience for Caslen, who was appointed in July 2019. The last straw came a week ago during his commencement address, during which he referred to the South Carolina graduates as “the newest alumni from the University of California.” FITSNews, a website that covers South Carolina politics, later reported that a chunk of the address had been plagiarized from a 2014 speech given by Adm. William H. McRaven at the University of Texas at Austin.
On Monday, Caslen admitted that he had failed to cite McRaven. He handed in his resignation on Wednesday, and he wrote in a statement that he had lost the university’s trust.
But for some professors, alumni, and students, Caslen never had that trust to begin with. In 2019, South Carolina’s governor wanted Caslen to lead the university. The university’s Board of Trustees was divided but voted to appoint him.
Later, the university’s regional accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, found evidence that Gov. Henry D. McMaster, an ex-officio board member and a Republican, had held undue influence over the presidential search.
If observers were already wary of the board, its delayed response to the plagiarism incident cannot have helped. On Tuesday, The Post and Courier reported that when Caslen first offered his resignation, the board’s chairman rejected it. The board did not hold a noticed public meeting, but one member told The Chronicle he suspects the chair heard plenty from other members who thought Caslen should resign.
A culture clash.
Caslen’s lack of a doctorate primed him for a culture clash at the university. The staff members he brought on all had military connections, instead of traditional academic careers. However, his military experience helped the university navigate the Covid-19 pandemic: The campus was quick to establish a saliva-testing program, for example. Planning, testing, the safe movement of bodies from place to place: These were the sorts of problems Caslen knew, said one former faculty member.
But ultimately, the culture clash was too great.
In his resignation statement, Caslen wrote, “And when trust is lost, one is unable to lead.” Whatever trust Caslen might’ve built among his critics, he erased with his plagiarized commencement address. Read Jack Stripling’s story here.
Lagniappe.
Learn. If you’ve felt a heightened sense of guilt during the pandemic, you’re not alone. (The New York Times)
Read. More than eight-million rental properties are behind on payments in the U.S., according to census data. Nearly half of those rentals are owned by “small landlords,” or people who depend on the rent payments for their own income. Here’s a portrait of one struggling landlord and his struggling tenants in Schenectady, N.Y. (The Washington Post)
Listen. Season 2 of the podcast series Cocaine & Rhinestones focuses on the country singer George Jones. Each episode is about 90 minutes long, and some are more, but they are worth the time. (Cocaine & Rhinestones)
Watch. I’ve been making my way through Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography. Most of his films were released “before my time.” If you haven’t watched Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown or haven’t seen it since its 1988 release, check it out. (Wikipedia)
