Welcome to The 1909, the podcast that takes an in-depth look at The State News’ biggest stories of the week, while bringing in new perspectives from the reporters who wrote them.
(Alex)
It's Thursday, November 30. And this is the 1909, the state news weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week, I'm flying solo. And we're going to talk about Sanjay Gupta. He was the dean of Michigan State's business school. But these days, you probably know his name is one of those MSU buzzwords that's thrown around a reference to one of the many scandals that you have understand. And that's fair, because it's a lot. It's a big complicated saga with differing perspectives and borderline boring talk of university policies and shared governance. But it's an also an important issue that's played a big role in the recent discourse surrounding MSU. So today, we're gonna go through it all in detail. And again, it's a lot, but we're going to start pretty simple back in April 2022. It's an end of Year party for the business schools, MBA students. And the event begins with students and staff celebrating drinking and dancing together. But by the end, it's just the students and one member of the staff,
Charles Hadlock, had like wore a couple hats at the B School. He was the Department Chair of the Finance Department. He was a professor and he was an associate dean. And he's also a highly successful researcher. He was a big deal in the college. But late that night, the loan faculty at the party, he strayed from that professionalism. We haven't been able to talk to anyone on the record who was at the party, but we do have an MSU Title Nine investigation based on interviews with witnesses and a review of videos from the party. And it found that had like got very drunk, and non consensually touched and sexually harassed multiple students. And today is the followed word of how bugs conduct spread fast. And that's where Gupta gets involved. Gupta wasn't at the party. In fact, he was out of town on a business trip when it happened. But the day after two broke administrators who heard about what happened approach their dean with concerns. Gupta would later recall those conversations saying that they told him had luck was quote, dancing suggestively and acting inappropriately. He said that someone may have used the word grinding to describe the conduct. And both of them told Gupta that they were concerned and we'll be reporting the incident to the OEE, which is the MSU office that investigates sexual misconduct. Now Gupta is a mandatory reporter, meaning the biochemist whose policies he should have reported the conduct to lie to, but he made a decision not to. He would later say that he made that choice based on two things. One, he knew that the others were already reporting so he didn't feel it was important for him to additionally report. And two, he says he wasn't sure that the conduct described to him was sexual misconduct. When he would later be asked by investigators about that decision, Gupta said that he didn't know what the word grinding meant.
And when they asked him why he assumed it wasn't sexual, if the administrators who told him about it said they were reporting to the lie, he said he suppose that they were just playing it safe. Later, Gupta would be told about the incident again, this time from Hadlock himself. He told his Dean that he got, quote, too drunk and was quote, really sorry. But he said Little else that's according to Gupta is retelling of the conversation. And Gupta says that he didn't ask any follow up questions about exactly what happened because MSU policies prohibit reporters like Gupta from investigating sexual misconduct. They're just supposed to report it to the OEE who would presumably do the rest. Then over the next few months, the summer of 2022, a few more people get involved in all this, the OEE, the General Counsel's Office, Ms. US Department of faculty and academic staff affairs. They're all looking at different sides of this, but mainly it's what it had, like do, what did Gupta know? Why didn't he report it? And what did anyone else do about it? And this all coalesces in August, a few months later, when Gupta his boss, then Provost Teresa Woodruff makes a big decision. She sits Gupta down for a meeting and she tells him that he has to resign as dean of Broward College. In the more than a year since Woodruff has said little in public about that choice. But through her interviews with investigators filings that a lawsuit and letters we've obtained that she sent to MSU board, we can piece together her reasoning. She says that Gupta is mandatory reporting failure was not acceptable for someone at his level, that he should have known the conduct was sexual and reported it regardless of whether he assumed others would do so for him. She also directly addresses his defense where he says that the
MSU policies prevented him from learning enough to make an informed reporting decision. Woodruff says he's right that he should not have investigated the conduct but would have been within his rights to ask had like and others some quote common sense questions to clarify what they meant. And while she acknowledges that her ousting of Gupta was a big move, she thinks it was right given the context. She talks about MSU is recent troubled history with sexual misconduct Larry, mainly the Larry Nasser scandal, with all that in mind, would have had the now infamous August 2022 meeting and ask Gupta to resign from his post. He did sending an email to the college announcing his exit within an hour But that was far from the end of things quickly this all becomes the saga that you know because MSU is board gets involved. The board was split on Woodruff decision to remove Gupta some of them voted against certifying the personnel report, including his resignation. And after doing that remove, they agreed that more information was needed. They wanted to learn what all went down who thought what, and so they sought an outsider to review things. So soon after goop is resignation, the board hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct a full outside investigation of everything. And that choice wasn't universally supported. In fact, Woodruff and her boss, then
President Samuel Stanley, both publicly said that it was disruptive and outside the board's authority to hire this firm to investigate their decision making. But the board stood by it citing a part of the Michigan Constitution they believe gives them that authority. And while the board wanted those answers from Quinn Emanuel about what exactly happened, they didn't always intend to make those answers public. In December 2022, the firm is now in the thick of its work. The Detroit News revealed that MSU is board was secretly receiving verbal updates from the lawyers. They did so on purpose according to Detroit News's report, because they thought anything on paper could get leaked or obtained through a public records request. These verbal in person meetings kept everything just between them and the lawyers. And that was upsetting for Gupta supporters, was the faculty and students in the Business College, who would go to board meetings and demand that the board commit to releasing the firm's findings in full and stop the secret updates. And also during that period, MSU has leadership changes, putting Woodruff further in the limelight and further and raging Guca his allies. Stanley resigned shortly after goop is outstanding, the board's uproar. He says the board was interfering in his day to day running of MSU and that he couldn't stay aboard. And so Woodruff is number two, was then appointed by the board to temporarily fill his post as interim president post she still holds. And that caused even more uproar from Gupta supporters who resented her for forcing him to resign. They were going to board meetings they're speaking out. And so then in February of this year, the board changed course, and they publicly committed to release Quinn Emanuel's findings in full and that seemed to be on track, until Gupta makes a move that changes everything. Up until that point in the six months or so since he resigned Gupta hadn't really said anything. He never told his side of the story. But in late February, he laid out his version of events in a lengthy lawsuit filed against Woodruff Stanley and six other MSU administrators that he says played a role in his removal. The lawsuit tells an alternate version of all of this, saying that Woodruff wanted him gone as part of an elaborate presidential succession plot. Gupta says that in June 2022, after had ducks conduct but before would have asked him to resign, and a Stanley's relationship with the board is worsening. He was asked who might succeed him for the presidency if his contract were to be cut short, and Gupta was among the names he throughout. Gupta then says in the lawsuit that that worried Woodruff who he believes wanted the job, prompting her to engineer the mandatory reporting concerns in an effort to elbow out a presidential rival. With the lawsuit he sues her and all these alleged co conspirators for interfering in this prospective succession to the presidency. And then a month after that lawsuits filed, the board releases Quinn Emanuel's report, finally making many of these details of the saga public for the first time, and in the firm says a couple of big things. One, Woodruff's, ousting of Gupta was disproportionate with similar cases and with that misuse policies, to what Gupta did was a violation of a policy and a mishandling a report of sexual misconduct. In it, the firm says a couple things. One, Woodruff's, ousting of Gupta was disproportionate with other similar cases and with MSUs policies, to what Gupta did was a violation of policy and a mis handling of sexual misconduct. And three, it finds no evidence for or against this succession scheme theory that Gupta says is behind all this. And it also found another previously unknown tidbit that Hawaii had actually attempted to close the investigation into headbox conduct, but MSU General Counsel stopped them and asked them to continue. That prompts Gupta to amend his lawsuit making General Counsel
Brian Quinn a defendant. He also then adds all eight members of Ms. Hughes board as defendants saying that after Quinn Emanuel's report is released, he feels that they knew enough to stop the administration from conspiring against him but didn't. And since then, there's been a lot of legal back and forth MSU administrators have called the whole suta, quote, desperate last ditch plea for the court to take on the role of a super Personnel Department reversing a decision that Gupta isn't happy with. And Gupta stuck with his claims, and they've gone back on this. It's ongoing. And so that's where we're at, you know,
and I have no idea how this whole saga is gonna end. But I want to finish this sort of simplified retelling by going back to where we started with Charles had luck, because despite these issues, the consequences for WOODRUFF And Gupta the $1.6 million that MSU boards spent on That Quinn Emanuel investigation, all these impassioned speeches over the last year in the Faculty Senate and from his supporters at MSU board meetings Hadlock, the guy who started all this left the whole thing pretty much unscathed. If you're a loyalist or the 1909, you might remember his name because he talked about him in our past the harasser episode. That's because about a month after the MBA party, as the OEE, and FAFSA are investigating what happened, had luck left MSU and took a job at Pitt where he's still teaching today. He's the chair of their finance department. Because he got out before the MSU investigation concluded before all the news reports in the Quinta manual investigation pit had no idea what happened when they hired him that summer. And eventually, they did find out when a bunch of Michigan newspapers were reporting on their new professor because of his connection to the whole group desire we just talked about. And I'm told by a spokesperson that they looked into it and they discussed it. But as of now, he's still a professor at Pitt teaching your undergrad business class three times a week. So that's our show for this week. We'll be back next Thursday with more stories. Until then what we discussed today and plenty of others are available state news.com. Thank you to our credible podcast director Anthony Brinson. And most of all, thank you for listening for the 909 I'm Alex Walters.