Turmoil continues at Michigan State University, after the faculty vote that they have no confidence in the Board of Trustees.gettyFaculty at Michigan State University have voted in favor of a resolution of no confidence in the MSU Board of Trustees. The vote was overwhelmingly in support of the resolution, with 86% of the 1,394 faculty who cast ballots indicating they lacked confidence in the board. Only 8.6% voted that they had trust or confidence in the board, and 5.4% abstained.In a more closely divided vote taken at the same time, a majority of the university’s Academic Congress rejected a no-confidence resolution against MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz. Slightly more than half of the faculty (53%) rejected the resolution against him, while 37.5% voted in favor of it, and 9.5 % abstained. The vote on the two resolutions took place shortly after Guskiewicz had reversed his initial decision to leave MSU to take the presidency of Clemson University. On May 27, Clemson had hired Guskiewicz to become its 16th president. But on July 7, Guskiewicz, citing personal reasons, backed out on Clemson, saying he had changed his mind and would be remaining at MSU.A Messy Exit and ReturnGuskiewicz’s departure from — and abrupt return to — Michigan State have been marked by controversy. In a highly unusual move, the then-outgoing president made a point of criticizing the functioning of the MSU Board of Trustees, which has had a long, well-publicized history of tension, infighting, and attempted micromanagement.In his farewell message to the Spartan community in May, he stated that “effective university leadership requires a shared commitment to collaboration, trust and a forward-looking vision," and while he noted that many members of the university community had “embraced that spirit, it has become increasingly clear that there are differing perspectives within the Board of Trustees regarding how best to move MSU forward.” He went on to say, “at times, too much energy has been spent revisiting past conflicts and internal disagreements rather than focusing collectively on the opportunities and aspirations ahead of us,” before adding, "while I firmly believe we are all better when there is a diversity of viewpoints informing decisions, our ability to make meaningful progress is hampered when disagreements move from offering alternative perspectives into publicly undermining decisions and putting personal interests above the best interests of the university and our faculty, staff and students. What is perhaps most troubling is the actions of some to abuse their access to privileged and confidential information to mispresent facts, manipulate situations and selectively use and leak that information to promote personal agendas."Guskiewicz’s announced exit for Clemson came less than two weeks after Michigan State had offered him a contract extension along with a $1 million raise that would have almost doubled his current salary.After he changed his mind about going to Clemson, Guskiewicz sent a message to the MSU campus on July 6 in which he revealed his intent to remain in East Lansing and apologized for the uncertainty that his about-face might have caused, before adding that “the board has demonstrated a commitment to implementing a more robust governance structure, including recent improvements to the Code of Ethics and Conduct.”A day later, Guskiewicz told The Chronicle of Higher Education, “we’ve had productive conversations about how the board can operate more strategically, more effectively. That means trying to function as a board of the whole, as I like to say, and functioning as one team in a partnership that I felt was eroding to some extent over the past several months. But I think that there’s been a recommitment to this one-team approach.”His optimism may have been premature. According to Inside Higher Education, not all of MSU’s board members had seen Guskiewicz’s new contract before he and Board Chair Brianna Scott signed it. Board member Mike Balow said he only learned from Scott at the board meeting where Guskiewicz’s new contract was approved that the president wanted to stay. “It’s not clear to me why it wasn’t shared with the entire board before it was signed, or before it was shared with the outside world,” Balow said.Not the First Time at MSUWhile no-confidence votes against university governing boards are much less common that those directed at university presidents, they are not unheard of. In fact, this is the second such vote at Michigan State in recent years. The last one occurred in 2022 after former MSU President Samuel Stanley resigned, citing friction with the board and its failure to govern effectively. At that time MSU students voted no-confidence in the board as did the university’s faculty senate by a vote of 55-4 over the trustees’ "chaotic approach to governance and inappropriate involvement in academic personnel decisions."After the faculty votes this month, Guskiewicz issued a statement expressing appreciation for “the support of the Academic Congress and for the outreach I have received from many faculty and staff across the university who took time to communicate their personal support over the past several weeks.”He added, “while sentiment toward the Board of Trustees amongst those who participated in the vote was disappointing, I personally want to thank Chair Brianna Scott and other trustees for their commitment to Michigan State University. I view shared governance as a partnership and I look forward to working together with every member of our Spartan community who wants to move Michigan State forward in the coming weeks, months and years.”