Jeff Landry’s shameful attack on higher education
In trying to remake the state Supreme Court, Louisiana’s governor is undermining Northwestern State University by making it a pawn in his political games
I hope someone at the Southern higher education accrediting organization is paying attention to the political games Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is playing with Northwestern State University (NSU) in Natchitoches.
Landry is turning NSU into his pawn as he tries to reshape the state’s Supreme Court.
According to Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Tyler Bridges in Wednesday’s paper:
Gov. Jeff Landry is supporting Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Genovese to be the next president of Northwestern State to achieve two goals in one bold move, political and legal sources say.
Landry can help a friend land a coveted position, and he can replace Genovese with a more conservative justice on the seven-member court.
During Genovese’s eight years on the court, he has regularly voted against tough-on-crime measures, a key issue for the governor.
With Landry’s support, Genovese is the frontrunner to be named Northwestern State’s president by the University of Louisiana System board on July 18.
Genovese is, by all accounts, a decent person. But he’s never managed a large institution or organization. He’s never been involved in higher education administration. None of that matters to Landry because he does not wish to appoint Genovese to the NSU position for any reason other than his desire to create a vacancy on the state’s high court.
More reporting on this from Tyler Bridges:
“The governor gets two out of two,” said Tony Clayton, the district attorney for Iberville, West Baton Rouge and Pointe Coupee parishes and perhaps Landry’s most prominent Black supporter in Louisiana. “He gets a president at a university in line with where the university should go and gets to replace him with a Supreme Court justice who will be somewhat in line with his conservative policies. It’s a win-win for the state.”
No matter what one ethically challenged district attorney may think, this would not be a “win-win” for the state.
When a governor intervenes in a president’s search to remove someone from the state Supreme Court to install a more dependable ally, we shouldn’t call that a “win-win.” We should call it what it is: an unethical, overtly political maneuver.
Landry's actions should alarm those at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) who care about the institutional integrity and governance of the universities it accredits.
A governor strong-arming the University of Louisiana Board violates core SACSCOC accreditation principles.
To earn and keep accreditation, SACSCOC requires the following:
1. The institution has a governing board of at least five members that:
(a) is the legal body with specific authority over the institution.
(b) exercises fiduciary oversight of the institution.
(c) ensures that both the presiding officer of the board and a majority of other voting members of the board are free of any contractual, employment, personal, or familial financial interest in the institution.
(d) is not controlled by a minority of board members or by organizations or institutions separate from it.
(e) is not presided over by the chief executive officer of the institution.
Landry’s use of a president's search to engineer a Supreme Court vacancy blatantly violates (a) and (d).
Fortunately, it would not be unusual if SACSCOC investigated Landry’s influence over NSU.
As reporter Piper Hutchinson reported recently in the Louisiana Illuminator:
Whether something qualifies as undue influence is up to the SACSCOC Board of Trustees, which is made up of university administrators from the 11 states in the Southeastern region the accreditors serve.
The organization has given notice to several schools where politics have played an outsized role.
In 2020, the organization found South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, also a Republican, had undue influence on the university’s search for a new president. In 2017, it gave the University of Louisville two years to right the ship after then Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, exercised undue influence by abolishing the school’s governing board. In 2021, SACS opened an inquiry into the University of Florida denying professor requests to serve as expert witnesses in a voting rights case.
What Landry is doing is damaging to Louisiana’s higher education system. If you thought most Louisiana college presidents are cowards eager to mollify governors and lawmakers (and they are), wait until you see how they behave once Landry starts choosing college presidents.
SACSCOC should be appalled, and you should, too.
In my recent book, Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU, I wrote about the dangers of politicizing a state university. Huey Long’s meddling in LSU's affairs almost caused the university to lose its accreditation in the mid-1930s. Only Long’s death in September 1935 saved the school from that fate.
Long’s handpicked LSU president, James Monroe Smith, was imprisoned in 1940 after he and his cronies were caught stealing from LSU. Even the governor, Richard Leche, got caught up in the LSU-centered chicanery and went to prison.
As I wrote in my book, Long also politicized NSU (then Louisiana State Normal College) in 1929, forcing the state Board of Education to fire the college’s president and install someone more willing to fulfill the governor’s wishes. The new president happened to be Long’s third cousin.
Those sorry episodes are cautionary tales. Everyone benefits when politicians work to strengthen our universities (and, to his credit, Long did a lot of that).
Essential to making our universities stronger is ensuring their governing boards, not the governor, have institutional control.
But when governors and other political leaders use the state’s colleges and universities for personal or political plunder, they weaken those institutions and our state.
If NSU and the state’s higher education system ever needed courageous independence from a governing board, it’s now.
Genovese should announce that he will not participate in this illicit scheme. And the UL Board should assure the public it will conduct a fair, objective search for the NSU president free of outside interference or pressure from Landry.
Allowing Landry to strong-arm the board and direct the search will irreparably damage NSU. And it might cost the school its accreditation.
Landry is such a light weight, but he has a powerful platform. How can we keep incompetent people like him out of the hen house?
Pay attention to elections. Your vote has consequences.
Well done Bob. This is what happens when you have a situation where there is dominance by one party and cowardice/ weakness in the opposition. Democrats should be thanking you, along with the rest of the citizens of this state. https://www.nola.com/opinions/letters-democrats-dont-have-spine/article_3ffab02c-1eb6-11ef-a14e-4be447d41f97.html