Final Report of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee
October 17, 1996
Comments of Jeffrey S. Lehman, Chair
Introductions
Members of the Presidential Search Committee, and Regents of the University of the Michigan.
We, the members of the Presidential Search Advisory Committee, sometimes referred to as the PSAC, are here today to present you with our final report. With your permission, I would like to begin by presenting the eleven other members of the PSAC in alphabetical order.
Huda Akil. Professor Akil is the Gardner C. Quarton Professor of Neurosciences and Professor of Psychiatry, in the University of Michigan Medical School. She is also a Research Scientist in, and the Co-Director of, the University of Michigan Mental Health Research Institute.
Paul Courant. Professor Courant is Professor of Economics and Public Policy, and Chair of the Department of Economics in the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He is also Professor of Public Policy in the University of Michigan School of Public Policy.
Mary Anne Drew. Ms. Drew is an Administrative Associate in the Office of the Dean at the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Nora Faires. Professor Faires is an Associate Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Michigan’s Flint Campus.
Allan Gilmour. Mr. Gilmour is the retired Vice Chairman of the Board of the Ford Motor Company and is an alumnus of the University of Michigan School of Business.
James Jackson. Professor Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and a Professor of Psychology in the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts. He is also Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education in the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He is also Director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
Nathan Norman. Mr. Norman is the Manager of Building Services in the Office of Plant Operations for the University of Michigan.
Jennifer Norris. Ms. Norris is a senior biology major in the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
Doneka Scott. Ms. Scott is a graduate student in the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy and is also a graduate of the University of Michigan College of Engineering.
Fawwaz Ulaby. Professor Ulaby is the R. Jamison and Betty Williams Professor of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the University of Michigan College of Engineering. I should mention that Professor Ulaby rescheduled a teaching obligation in order to be here today, and will have to leave us at 9:45 to rush to catch a plane.
Martha Vicinus. Professor Vicinus is the Eliza M. Mosher Distinguished University Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and History. She is also a Professor of English and the Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature in the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
Our Role
Before we describe our work and our conclusions, I would like to take a few moments to situate our efforts within the much larger context of your selection of the twelfth president of the University of Michigan.
Just under a year ago, you, as Regents, constituted yourselves as a committee of the whole, the Presidential Search Committee. You then reached out to the larger University community, and to the general public, in an unprecedented effort to gather information and suggestions concerning the University’s leadership needs. You actively solicited and received a substantial amount of written advice. And you conducted nine open public forums, at various locations in Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, Grand Rapids, and Detroit. Many of us who ultimately became members of the PSAC had the privilege of participating in those fora.
You then interviewed several candidates for the role of search consultant, and you selected Malcolm MacKay and his firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, Incorporated. Malcolm was not able to attend this morning’s meeting, but he gave me a letter to you that I will read later on this morning.
You then worked to develop a detailed set of selection criteria, criteria that would guide the remainder of the search process.
With the framework in place, you asked us if we would volunteer to assist you with the middle phase of your search.
As you might have discerned from the titles of the members of this committee, we are a group of people who are intimately familiar with the exercise of decisionmaking authority. At the same time, we are also intimately familiar with the role of advisor and staff member. And we know the difference between the two roles.
On this committee, we did not hold decisionmaking authority. Rather, we had only the duties and responsibilities of advisors. You asked us to devote ourselves to making a considered judgment and giving you our best advice. Moreover, you asked us to be publicly accountable for that advice. You instructed us to stand up before the whole world and say what we thought, to put our own personal and collective reputations behind our recommendation to you of five or more individuals.
Of course, any group of twelve people has been and remains free to give you advice as well. And you remain as free to listen to the suggestions of others as you do to listen to our suggestions. We are powerless to demand that you listen to our advice. All we can do is sit here this morning, in the public eye, and attempt to persuade you that we are bringing good advice. Advice that reflects the contributions not only of our group of twelve, but also the ideas and knowledge that we have absorbed from the many different communities that care about this great university.
When you first summoned us to appear before you on March 1, you charged us with two primary responsibilities:
First, “to provide information and advice to the Presidential Search Committee and develop and recommend for consideration a prospective pool of candidates.”
And second, “to present the Presidential Search Committee with a list of all prospects and a list of at least five recommended names to be considered for the presidency.”
You then went on to elaborate those responsibilities in some detail, providing a clear structure within which we were to conduct our affairs. You asked us to conduct a “vigorous search,” and you emphasized the need to recruit candidates, “contacting prospects, discussing the opportunity with them, and attempting to interest them in the position.” You also asked us to conduct both the recruiting and the reviewing in closed meetings, ensuring that confidentiality is strictly observed. And you asked us to use your “presidential selection criteria as the benchmark by which to evaluate candidates.”
Finally, you asked us to report back to you with two lists: “a list of all prospects” and “a list of at least five unranked recommended names to be considered for the presidency.”
For the past seven and one half months, we have worked hard to fulfill those responsibilities, and today in this public session we are pleased to present to you the results of our research, along with our candid advice.
The individual members of this committee are used to speaking up. And so it has not been easy for us to remain virtually silent about our work over the course of the past seven and one half months. And it is truly enjoyable this morning to know that this morning, just this once, we will have a chance to express ourselves.
This morning, each member of the PSAC us will speak to you, in his or her own, individual voice. We will discuss a different aspect of our work. But I believe you will be astonished at the way, even as we speak individually, this group has grown to think and act with a single, collective voice.
I would like Fawwaz, before he has to leave, to spend a few minutes talking about the approach we have taken to working together on the PSAC, and what it has meant to all of us.
[FAWWAZ ULABY]
Fawwaz mentioned the hundreds of hours that each of us devoted to preparing for our recommendations today.
We obviously do not have the time to replay each of those hundreds of hours in detail this morning. But we would like to give you and the University public a clear sense of the different activities that lie behind our conclusions.
For, to carry out our assignment, it was incumbent upon us, as your agents, to learn about the kind of President you are seeking, to identify possibilities, to evaluate those possibilities against the benchmark you had established, and to recruit the most promising possibilities to agree to participate in a public final phase.
How did we learn about the kind of President you are seeking?
From the beginning, we had the benefit of your published selection criteria. Those criteria are lengthy,
specifying the President’s duties and responsibilities, and identifying the a set of mandatory professional and personal qualifications for the job.
I would like to ask Martha Vicinus to review the qualifications you demanded, and the way we believe those qualifications are realized in the leaders whom we are commending to you this morning.
[MARTHA VICINUS]
In applying the criteria that you set forth, we did not rely exclusively on our own judgments. You charged us to recommend leaders who would be able to work successfully with all the many subcommunities that have a stake in the ongoing life of this truly unique university, the University of Michigan. And you also charged us to recommend leaders who could communicate effectively with the many external communities that have the power to shape our destiny.
Each member of this committee came to the PSAC with prior attachments to different pieces of the Michigan community. As a group, we knew from the beginning that the President would have to be more than just a good academic, more than just a good teacher, more than just a good administrator, more than just a persuasive advocate for the University in the external environment. Our next President would have to be all those things.
I would like now to have three of my colleagues say a few words about how, over the past eight months, we sharpened our understanding of what it takes for a President to be effective in every domain where a President must go to implement the policies established by the Board of Regents.
First, let me ask Nora Faires to say a few words about the way the complexity of this institution shaped our thinking about the Presidency.
[NORA FAIRES.]
Now I would like to ask Nathan Norman to talk about how his connections to the staff of this university contributed to our deliberations.
[NATHAN NORMAN].
As Fawwaz mentioned, we were truly fortunate to have among us two outstanding representatives of the student community. Doneka and Jennifer will speak about how the ideas of students were incorporated into the overall work product of the committee.
[DONEKA SCOTT AND JENNIFER NORRIS]
Every one of us grew and changed, in the course of our work. We came to appreciate anew the importance of some fundamental human qualities. I would like to ask Huda Akil to discuss what is perhaps the most important of those qualities. And to link that quality to a central issue in the life of this University.
[HUDA AKIL].
Identifying
By now, I suspect that many of my reporter friends are beginning to squirm. “What about the names? What about the lists? We believe that your committee members were genuinely transformed and became genuinely informed about the role of the president. But how did you decide whom to recommend?”
So let us turn now to the matter of names.
We would like to begin that topic by addressing a widespread misconception about what hiring a university president entails.
One popular but deeply erroneous account of what presidential search entails goes like this. You advertise. You collect applications. You start with a batch of people who could are qualified for the job and want it. You sift. You make cuts. You get down to a manageable number. You interview. You cut
some more. You’re done.
By this account, the search is a process of elimination. The most important decisions have to do with who gets thrown out. Among the many people who are qualified to do the work and are clamoring to get it, who gets whacked away, and who gets to be the lucky winner.
But as you are well aware, that is not what Presidential Search processes are about at all. You do not start with a big batch of qualified applicants.
After we advertised this position and announced it widely, a grand total of eleven people nominated themselves for the job. Eleven. One subsequently withdrew.
But, some will ask, what about that 300 number I kept hearing about? I thought you had 300 applicants?
The 302 prospects we will present to you shortly include the eleven people who nominated themselves, plus 291 people who were nominated by others.
Why don’t more people apply for university president?
Because the job itself requires, indeed demands, proven success in prior positions of substantial responsibility. The relevant pool is small to begin with. It consists exclusively of people who are happy and succeeding in their current positions. The most time consuming work in a search process is not decisional. The only real decision in the process – selecting one person out of the small pool of people who are truly qualified and who have been recruited into a state of potential interest – comes at the end of a lengthy process of identification and recruitment. In this search, you are the decisionmakers. Our committee's role was first to identify prospects, then to recruit, and ultimately to recommend.
I would like now to ask James Jackson to speak about the critical tool of identification and recruitment – the tool of conversation.
[JAMES JACKSON]
As the chair of the committee, it was incumbent on me to look far and wide for prospects whom we might want to recruit. I devoted a great deal of my time during the months of March and April and May to gathering advice that I could bring back to the committee, as we worked to refine and clarify our collective understanding of the kind of person we needed. I attended meetings of alumni groups, including the national board of the Alumni Association, describing our work and soliciting input. We wrote to the university faculty, soliciting suggestions. I went with different members of the committee to sit down with every dean on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses, to gather advice and suggestions.
I spoke with people whose perspective on the University of Michigan comes from outside Ann Arbor as well. Some of our outreach efforts took me outside of Ann Arbor, even outside of Michigan. Since I was prohibited by our attorneys from speaking with our current Board of Regents, I tried to learn more about the Presidency by speaking with some past Regents and with trustees of other universities that had recently completed presidential searches . I spoke with eight different widely admired present or former Presidents of great universities, both public and private. I spoke with some past and present high government officials who know Michigan and its mission well.
This outreach brought us a very clear set of reminders of just how important this university is, and to just how many people. It brought us a vivid appreciation of how many people care about the special role that this institution plays – in our local community, in our state, in the nation, and even in the world. I must tell you it made me enormously proud to be associated with such a great institution. And it made me feel enormously fortunate to be part of an institution with so many devoted friends.
This outreach also brought us names. It brought us 291 suggestions of people whom others thought might perhaps fulfill the requirements that you have set forth, the aspirations that we all share for our next leader.
Most of the 302 names came to us as just that, names. But you had given us a frighteningly stringent job description. How would we know whether a given name might perhaps meet the description you had set forth? How would we know whether the person could conceivably have any interest in being considered for the role, according to the process that you had defined?
We began to gather information. Suggestions, recommendations, Who’s Who listings. Information gathering blended with recruitment Malcolm made contact with the prospects, asking for resumes and permission for the committee to consider them. If a resume was not directly forthcoming from the prospect, we sometimes had to be creative. One of the things I learned in this search, perhaps a bit to my horror, is that search consultants can be pretty clever at getting resumes. Many people authorize their secretaries to distribute their resumes to anyone who asks. Some people’s resumes circulate fairly widely, often without their knowledge. When an authentic resume was truly unavailable, Malcolm was often able to construct a surrogate resume. Sometimes we found biographies in Who’s Who, or out on the World Wide Web.
Ultimately, we were able to amass biographical information on virtually all of the 302 people who nominated themselves for the position, or who were nominated by others. We will shortly present that information to you in tabular form.
As we developed more information about each of the 302 people, we began to schedule ourselves for the summer and fall. We committed ourselves to making time to meet with any prospect who might ultimately emerge as a standout within the set of recruitable and qualified people. We adopted a special deliberative process for the extension of invitations to meet with us. It was a process that allowed each member of the committee to speak, to suggest, and to seek out new information with respect to any prospect. And that same process allowed us to develop a consensus about whom I should call to invite to speak with us.
The process was painstaking and time consuming. But through it, a few names within our prospects list began to draw into focus as the most likely possibilities to satisfy the stringent requirements that you set forth for the twelfth president of the University of Michigan. As consensus emerged, we would recruit the objects of our attention to come meet with the Committee.
Recruiting
Now let me say a few more words about how we reached the next stage in the recruiting process.
I would call the prospects and describe the process that you had developed. I would report that we had gotten their name and ask if they might be willing to be considered. They would indicate that they were flattered, but that they could not allow themselves to be considered because they loved their current jobs, they had no desire to leave, they did not want to do anything that might hurt their effectiveness in the jobs they loved, and they did not want to do anything that might misunderstood as dissatisfaction with the jobs or the institutions they loved.
And I would persist. I would point out that, according to the search process that had been publicly announced last January, meeting with us was permitted to be kept completely confidential. Their privacy could be respected. Only if both we and they were sufficiently high on one another that we wanted to recommend them for the final phase would they have to confront the necessity of public, nonconfidential participation in our search process.
Often, I was told, that this limited, short period of confidentiality, was not enough. Unless I could give fairly high assurances that the Open Meetings Act would be held unconstitutional soon enough to change the shape of this search, they simply could not go even begin to consider a conversation with us.
But for some of the people whom we were most excited about having the chance to meet, the proffer of confidentiality during the advisory phase, to be followed by a final, selection phase of voluntarily accepted public scrutiny, was an acceptable combination. All they needed was an assurance that what had publicly been described as a confidential phase would indeed be a confidential phase. They wanted to know that if the possibility of a fit did not materialize, they would not be harmed.
They asked me to give my word that the University’s proffer of confidentiality would really be honored.
“I’m willing to take my chances on the possibility that we just won’t be able to go to the point where your committee recommends me. Just promise me you won’t hurt me, or my employer. Just promise me you will do no harm.”
And I gave my word.
I promised that our offer of confidentiality was real. I promised that if for any reason they might not want to go through the final phase or my committee might not want to recommend them to you, we would not knowingly do anything that might hurt them.
And that is how some of them ended up coming quietly on summer weekends to spend two-hours in a meeting with the committee. These meetings were earnest, focused, and highly informative.
And they mattered to us. I would like to ask two members of the committee to speak about the impact of these interviews on our thinking about whom to recommend, and on the critical role they played in our recruiting efforts.
First, I would like to turn to Paul Courant.
[PAUL COURANT]
And now, I would like to turn to Mary Anne Drew.
[MARY ANNE DREW].
As Mary Anne indicated, we were deeply impressed with the people we had met. Now it was time for us to think more about what further information we needed in order to recommend to you a slate of five candidates. We had a consensus on a small group of people who seemed to stand out as likely satisfying your stringent requirements. But we needed more information.
We decided to obtain candid references from people who had detailed knowledge of the prospect’s talents and performance in the many different areas that you had singled out as especially important. Candid criticism is, of course, not easy to come by. References would agree to speak candidly with me, but only if I promised to treat their comments as confidential and not for publication.
I gave my word that I would keep their comments confidential, and they offered candid, personal comments.
And those comments entered into our understandings of the prospects. We reviewed them, resumes, the articles, the sourcing information that we had obtained. We re-examined your selection criteria, the forum transcripts, and the advice we had obtained from others. And once again we deliberated. The product of those final deliberations was a consensus that we should, as a committee, bring to you our collective recommendation of five people:
Recommendations
And now the time has come. It is time to share with you our regrets and our excitement about the people we recommend to you today.
First, the subject of regrets. And, in truth, I have but one.
I deeply regret the fact that we have only four names to bring forward to you today. The PSAC has, at this time, only four names whom we are endorsing and who have committed to participate in the Final Phase.
If we had been able to hold this morning’s session on Monday morning, as originally scheduled, we would have brought you five names.
But late yesterday one of those five called me and withdrew. That person withdrew because, between Monday and this morning, our final phase had been restructured. Originally, it was expected that any finalist who so desired could, after enduring a public interview with the Board, hold private meetings with individual Regents, to explore each one’s views about the university and its governance.
But as you are all too aware, a preliminary injunction prohibits those meetings from taking place.
And so yesterday one of our five recommended finalists withdrew from consideration for the Presidency. This candidate told me the following. “I cannot go forward with such a process, because it no longer provides any opportunity for candid conversations about sensitive issues. Without that opportunity, I am no longer sufficiently confident that I will be able to assess adequately whether I could accept the Presidency at Michigan, if it were ultimately offered to me. And without that opportunity, I am no longer sufficiently confident that your Board of Regents will be able to make a fully informed choice.”
Members of the Board of Regents, the actions of the newspaper have harmed this University, by depriving you of the option of selecting that candidate.
The citizens of Michigan and the residents of Ann Arbor have an enormous financial, cultural, and emotional stake in the success of this university. They are hurt when you have less than a full range of choice about who should lead us into the next century. So are our students, our faculty, our staff, our alumni, and all those around the world who care about Michigan.
We are a public university, with a public trust. We have been damaged by the ruthless legal maneuverings of a profit-motivated, private corporation. And I am at a loss to understand how, in taking those actions, they had the nerve to claim that they should be viewed as representatives of the public.
I would like to make one side comment at this time to my friends the reporters, who are obviously in no way responsible for this and who have conducted themselves with great professionalism throughout this search. My side comment is that neither I nor any members of my committee will reveal the name of this fifth candidate. That would breach the word we gave when we first persuaded that person to allow us to begin recruiting.
Members of the Board.
As profound as the regret is that we all feel, I do not want that emotion to be the one that you take with you today.
For the true story of our committee is a story of excitement. Excitement with the extraordinary quality of the four people whom we are recommending to you today.
This is a great University. It makes unique contributions to the people of this city, this state, this nation, and the world. It deserves a leader who embodies its own remarkable quality.
And we bring you not one but four.
It is with enormous pride that we, your Presidential Search Advisory Committee, urge you to name four extraordinary people as finalists in the presidential search. We urge you to name them, and only them, as finalists. Because we are here today, united, to place our individual and collective reputations behind them.
Please distribute the packets.
[DISTRIBUTE PACKETS]
We recommend to you the following four individuals, unranked, in alphabetical order:
[RECITE NAMES AND CURRENT POSITIONS]
I would like first to ask Allan Gilmour to comment on this list.
[ALLAN GILMOUR]
Who are these four people and why are we as a committee so enthusiastic about them?
I want to take just a few more minutes to describe the attributes that they share, attributes that we, as your advisors, believe are exactly what this University needs in its next President.
In many ways, these people are strikingly similar. And by that we mean, in the ways that you demanded through your stringent position criteria.
Each of these four people is a person of the highest integrity.
Each of these four people knows how to listen.
Each of these four people is curious about the world, always eager to learn more about aspects of life in which they are not experts.
Each of these four people is an accomplished scholar. They all understand what it means to struggle to produce scholarship of the very highest quality.
Each of these four people has a lot of energy. They are ready to become President of a great university, and to devote a decade or more to the strenuous challenge of university leadership.
Each of these four people loves the craft of teaching. They see the relationship between scholar and student as the centerpiece of the University, a relationship that must be nurtured and developed.
Each of these four people knows and loves the public university. Each is committed to the special responsibilities of leading a public institution.
Each of these four people is decent and admirable. They all have wonderful senses of humor. They all have a genuine humility that will lead them to criticize me later for saying all these nice things about them.
Of course, they have strikingly similar professional careers as well. Each has been the Provost of a first-class university since 1994. Each had prior experience as a dean. Each has spent the vast majority of his or her career working at a great public university.
But do not get the impression that they are all the same person. Lee’s specialty is law, Stan’s is medieval history, Carol’s is Victorian literature, and Larry’s is electrochemistry. They have different personal styles, different modes of leadership, different areas of special interest. If you choose among them, and we urge you to choose among them, your selection will make an enormous difference. Each of these people would leave a profound stamp on the University of Michigan. Each stamp would be decidedly different, and the choice of which stamp is significant. What we can assure you today is that, if you choose one of these four remarkable individuals, you will be choosing for the University of Michigan a stamp of excellence.
Conclusion
Before I conclude and invite you to pose us questions, I would like to do two more things. First, I would like to acknowledge publicly, the committee’s enormous gratitude to three people who enabled us to conclude this process in only eight months.
Doris Estep, the administrative assistant to this search, worked with extraordinary distinction and brought to the committee her invaluable experience with three prior presidential searches.
Amy Flanagan, on loan from the Law School, brought talent and exceptional judgment in providing supplemental support to Doris in crunch times, which seemed to be the constant description for the past four months.
And Ruth Hastie, on loan from the office of the Provost, provided supplemental logistical support for our work with Malcolm’s office, with prospect research, and with keeping me on schedule. We are all grateful for her diligence and her wisdom.
I would also like to offer a few brief comments about how we would like to work with you in the weeks ahead.
First, you have asked us for our advice, and we have come here publicly to give it. We believe that you should follow it. But we also want you to know that we understand that our role has been purely advisory.
The decision is yours, and if you choose not to follow our suggestions to the letter, we will all continue to love this great University.
Second, we would like to be of continuing help to you in whatever ways we can. We would like to share with you whatever additional insight we could provide or knowledge we might have accumulated during our careers – before and during our work in this committee.
At the same time, we understand that we are under a preliminary injunction that precludes us from speaking with you outside the presence of the media, and that precludes us from sharing documents with you that are not also distributed to the media.
And we will respect that injunction. We will have no private conversations. But we want you to know that this really does change the things we might otherwise do.
For, even as we shall respect the court’s order, we shall simultaneously respect the importance of preserving and protecting the privacy of individuals and the honor of the University of Michigan.
Speaking for myself, personally,
I will not bring dishonor to this University by revealing publicly the private thoughts of a person that I extracted by promising that they would remain private.
I will not bring dishonor to this University by giving you redacted references which, while they may protect the privacy of the speaker, subject the object of the reference to the worst form of maligning – maligning by unidentified sources.
I will not bring dishonor to this University by publicly revealing the identities of individuals whom we enticed to speak with us through a promise of confidentiality.
I will help you in any way that I lawfully can, but I will not bring dishonor to the University of Michigan.
Thank you for this opportunity to serve.
