Michigan State University trustees had what they thought was a brilliant idea almost a year ago. They would appoint John Engler, the former Michigan governor, as their interim president. Their thinking wasn’t hard to figure out.
Engler had been a very effective governor during his twelve years in office, and was especially skilled at bending the legislature to his will. He was a highly partisan Republican, and the legislature last year was even more Republican than it had been when he was governor.
The eight trustees – four Democrats, four Republicans – thought Engler would be able to safeguard their appropriations, get what they needed from Lansing, and get things done.
They went through the motions of interviewing his predecessor as governor, Jim Blanchard, but the fix was in, and they chose Engler. But they should have known better.
Engler did get some things done, as he states in his eleven-page letter of resignation, some of which made sense. But he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When Engler took over MSU, he had been gone from Lansing, indeed from Michigan, for 15 years. Thanks to term limits, nobody who was in office when he left was still there.
Some of the lawmakers barely knew who he was. And his governing style, something he developed in the rough-and-tumble of the legislature in the 1970s and 80s, was totally inappropriate for a university setting, and especially with sexual assault victims.
He could intimidate and bully and browbeat a legislator from Warren or Taylor into doing his bidding. Perhaps he still could. But that doesn’t work, in public or in private, with sexual assault victims, all of whom are still young and vulnerable.
Nor can you insult them or minimize their suffering. Curiously, that’s something Engler didn’t seem capable of learning, because he did it again and again. His downfall came when it did, because he told the Detroit News editorial board that Larry Nassar’s victims were “enjoying the spotlight,” while Michigan State University was “trying to go back to work.”
That was the last straw. Engler was given a choice yesterday: Quit or be fired, which is really no choice at all. The opening sentences of his resignation letter to chair Dianne Byrum was truly Nixonian: “You have advised me that the five Democratic members of the MSU board, including yourself, have requested my resignation as MSU President. The election of two new Democratic members … have created a new majority on the board.”
In other words, he would like us to see this as merely partisanship on display. That ignores the fact that the Democrats on the board unanimously supported his appointment a year ago. They weren’t being especially partisan then, and they weren’t being especially partisan now.
They wanted, and want things fixed. Now, the trustees have to decide who will succeed John Engler, which the search finally gets underway for a permanent MSU president.
My guess is that a top administrator who is already there will serve as a caretaker until they find someone, and that Engler’s ouster will expedite the overdue process of choosing a permanent president who is acceptable to the academic and outside community.
That person will have their work cut out for them.
Let’s hope MSU’s next leader has the right skills to do a job that, after a brief honeymoon period, is almost guaranteed to be terrifically hard. Let’s hope the board picks someone who doesn’t want just a job, but welcomes the challenge of reforming the culture of one of the earliest and most important land-grant universities in the nation.
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