Obtaining information for appropriate oversight is indeed a trustee right. At the same time, handling sensitive information in a responsible manner is essential to maintaining the public trust, especially urgent in this case, given the pledges made by Freeh Report investigators that anonymity would be maintained. It is incumbent upon the trustees to enter into signed confidentiality agreements with the university to manifest their good faith. In this context, we cite “Inside the Nonprofit Boardroom,” which we distribute widely to higher education governing boards. It reads, “Board members must make it their business to see that the nonprofit corporation they serve performs at the highest ethical and moral level. …The conduct of all activities by all persons representing the corporation in any way, at any time, must be right and proper. The actions must be—and must be viewed as—ethical.” As Penn State trustees engage in the review of information regarding the horrific Sandusky case, it is our hope, too, that they model another central premise of responsible governance: that they act not as representatives of a single constituency or a single point of view, but as independent arbiters of the overall welfare of the institution and guard the public interest.
Last month, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni wrote a letter to the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to express concern about Penn’s treatment of law professor Amy Wax and about the fact that Penn recently lost its long-standing “green light” rating from FIRE. Penn was one of FIRE’s original green light institutions. For years, FIRE held it up […]
After a tumultuous year for free speech on campus, Higher Ed Now asks Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to share his impression on campus speech controversies. From protests to microaggressions, he describes the campus culture that fosters censorship and threatens academic freedom and civil liberties for students and faculty.
Emotionally charged testimonies from over 150 women captured national attention this month as disgraced doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for criminal sexual assault. But as the curtain closed on the courtroom drama, Michigan State University (MSU) became the subject of intense inquiry. From 1997 to 2016, MSU employed […]
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