Once again there is a leadership crisis at Michigan State University, with President Kevin Guskiewicz leaving MSU for the presidency of Clemson University. Once again there are recriminations about an unsupportive Board of Trustees that made life difficult for the president to the point that he decided to leave after just over two years. This, even though several signature (board-approved) projects are barely off the ground, including a bold plan to create a single medical school – Michigan State University Medicine – with two accredited physician training programs, one offering the D.O. degree and the other the M.D. degree. Another plan from his work here is to create a new College of Health Sciences that brings together several departments, majors, and programs into a new unit attractive to undergraduates seeking to work in healthcare. Finally, Spartan Ventures, also board approved, will serve as a nonprofit MSU-affiliated corporation to focus on revenue generation and the business of managing athletes in a rapidly changing college sports landscape where the athletics tail wags the university dog.
Any one of these projects is a major undertaking, and that Guskiewicz could see them all initiated and adopted during his very short tenure at MSU clearly speaks to a leader impatient with the status quo and unafraid to advance bold moves. That they were all approved also suggests that his board adopted his vision and were ready to support significant change in academics and athletics at MSU.
So, what happened? In his parting message to the MSU community, Guskiewicz took aim at some board members for “publicly undermining decisions” and “putting personal interests above the best interests of the university.” Wrapped inside this criticism was a recent board meeting, hastily called on a Sunday night, at which a new code of ethics was presented for board members to discuss and sign off on. The other agenda item was for the board to vote on a proposed increase in the president’s salary of nearly $1 million, which would have made him among the highest-paid presidents in the Big Ten. This meeting was clearly an effort for the board to get right with a president they saw as an attractive poaching target for other universities. And it implicitly signaled that the board understood itself as the reason he might be poachable.
The code of ethics, with its “duty of loyalty,” has become a point of resistance for some board members. The duty of loyalty is being equated to a “loyalty oath” or “gag order,” with all the negative implications inherent in such terms. The civil liberties group Foundation for Individual Rights & Expression, which takes on free speech causes in academia, has weighed in with its own disapproval regarding the duty of loyalty language. In fact, “duty of loyalty” is a standard governance expectation for members of fiduciary bodies like the MSU Board of Trustees. As a board member and former president of a large 501(c)(3) professional organization, I have a similar duty of loyalty expectation. This means acting on behalf of the best interests of the organization – not the perceived interests of myself or of constituents in the organization. Inherent in this expectation is that any concerns or disagreements I may have with a decision should not be broadcast to the public, including among our 30,000 members. My job is to be a vigorous advocate for my point of view in our board meetings and to try to persuade my colleagues towards my way of thinking before we vote on an issue. Failing that, my duty is to publicly support the final board decision and move on.
At issue with the MSU board, of course, is that its members view themselves as public servants of the citizens of Michigan because they obtain their positions through statewide partisan general elections. Their meetings are held in public, so the public is aware of disagreements within the board prior to votes being taken. Board Chair Brianna Scott brought the new code of ethics to the board to emphasize – and gain board endorsement of – what she correctly pointed out is a standard governance recommendation for expectations once the board has decided on an issue. Writing an op-ed to demand that MSU reverse course on policies previously adopted by the board or doing media interviews to criticize and question the constitutionality of board decisions are textbook examples of actions that fall short of these expectations.
I wish that Guskiewicz had stayed on to see his bold initiatives to fruition and to work to help educate board members as to proper behavior. His leadership skills could very well have enabled him, along with Scott and others who seem to understand the proper roles of members, to help coach all the board members into becoming the high-functioning group their individual talents and experience suggest they can be. It seems increasingly clear that we need to pass the amendment under consideration, and favored by a bipartisan group of legislators and former governors, that trustees and regents of the three major universities in Michigan – MSU, University of Michigan and Wayne State University – be appointed rather than elected in partisan general elections. That would perhaps mitigate the notion that university board members are more beholden to voters than to the best interests of the universities they serve.
But irrespective of how board members get seated, they must commit themselves to certain expectations of their position, and that includes a better understanding of the duty of loyalty than we are seeing from the MSU board right now.
Victor DiRita is Rudolph Hugh Endowed Chair of Microbial Pathogenesis at Michigan State University and former president of the American Society for Microbiology.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: DiRita: Duty of loyalty is governance 101 for university board members
Reporting by Victor DiRita, For the Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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By Victor DiRita, For the Lansing State Journal | USA TODAY Network
