Editorial: Max Nikias rightly steps down from USC, but his departure alone won’t solve the school’s problems

Facing growing anger over two appalling and damaging scandals that have thrown the campus into disarray, the University of Southern California’s Board of Trustees announced Friday evening that President C.L. Max Nikias would step down. That was the right decision and a necessary first step toward restoring accountability and repairing trust in USC leadership.

Nikias had been under fire from students, faculty and alumni over how he and other university leaders handled the two cases of egregious misconduct. In both, Nikias failed to respond forcefully or appropriately or transparently. As a result, he lost the trust of the faculty, hundreds of whom signed a letter last week saying he no longer had the “moral authority” to lead the school. On Wednesday, the faculty senate approved a resolution calling for his resignation.

But Nikias’ departure alone will not solve USC’s problems. The Board of Trustees and whoever ultimately becomes the university’s next president will have to grapple long and hard with the larger cultural and institutional flaws that allowed misconduct to continue, that let serious complaints go ignored and that hid bad behavior, rather than forcing it out into the open. That will require more than the creation of a few task forces and the issuance of reassuring news releases.

Among other things, says William G. Tierney, a USC professor who specializes in higher education, the Board of Trustees will have to step forward to play a stronger oversight role, rather than acting as a cheerleader (or, as the current chairman of the board once put it, a “servant”) for the president. And the faculty senate will have to speak up more often — as it did last week — when it believes the administration requires guidance or advice. Nikias was apparently a difficult man to challenge; colleagues say he didn’t want to hear bad news, didn’t suffer critics gladly. He was an extraordinarily successful fundraiser who expanded the university and moved it up in the national rankings, but he was not much of a listener, relying instead on a narrow team of loyal aides. The next president will of course need to raise money and continue to build the university, but he or she must be careful about what is sacrificed in the process.

The most recent — and most shocking — scandal to rock the campus and push Nikias toward the door was that a gynecologist at the student health clinic had been repeatedly accused over decades of making sexual comments and touching young patients inappropriately during pelvic exams. The university removed Dr. George Tyndall only in 2016 after a nurse reported him to the campus rape crisis center; he was forced out of the university in 2017. But his misconduct was not revealed to patients or the USC community until a Times investigation was published this month. More than 300 people have since come forward to USC, many with allegations of mistreatment and sexual abuse dating back to the early 1990s.

The Tyndall case came almost a year after The Times revealed that the dean of the medical school, Dr. Carmen Puliafito, was doing drugs and partying with young criminals and addicts.

At the heart of the Puliafito and Tyndall scandals was a disturbing pattern. USC administrators ignored or downplayed concerns of misconduct. When the complaints could no longer be ignored, leaders offered secret settlements to make the problem employees go away. They failed to report the doctors to authorities and neglected to reach out to patients.

Nikias could have used these troubling cases to demonstrate his commitment to protecting students and patients. He could have sent a message that misconduct would not be tolerated. Instead his decisions and behavior suggested that his top priority was protecting USC’s reputation, not its students or patients.

In the end, the efforts at damage control only hurt USC’s standing in the community. That should be a lesson to the Board of Trustees, which now has to find Nikias’ replacement. Yes, USC should be ambitious in fundraising, in hiring talented professors and in performing groundbreaking research. But a great academic institution has to ensure its core values — including transparency, accountability and the safety of its students — don’t get sacrificed in the pursuit of growth.

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UPDATES:

2:30 p.m.: This editorial was updated with additional analysis about the future of USC.

This editorial was originally published at 5 a.m.