Two weeks ago, legal ethics professor Renee Knake was appointed to fill a vacancy on the MSU Board of Trustees by Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Knake replaced Nancy Schlichting, who had resigned over what she saw as the failure of the board to advance the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal investigation.
WKAR’s Scott Pohl talks with the new Trustee about her perspective on MSU’s handling of the Nassar case.
SCOTT POHL: You had your first Board of Trustees meeting last Friday, and you said “no one should experience sexual harassment or assault as a rite of passage in their university experience.” You called for major structural reform and a culture of accountability and transparency. That leads me to your announcement that you'll be examining 6,000 documents that have been withheld from the Attorney General of Michigan regarding the Larry Nasser sex abuse case. Have you begun looking at those documents?
RENEE KNAKE: I haven’t. I'll start that review later on this week.
POHL: Is there an end date that you have in mind for this kind of a review? When do you expect to be finished?
KNAKE: It's so hard to know, because I haven't yet seen (them). I'm told that 6,000 documents means many more pages. One document, for example, could have dozens or hundreds of pages. I'll certainly know more once I once I get into it. I'm committed to reviewing them carefully, and however long it takes, I will put the time in to do it.
POHL: I want to ask you what you think you might do if you discover what you consider to be a smoking gun in these documents?
KNAKE: Well, it's a great question. I have no idea what I'm going to find. This is what I do know. I know that there has been a lot of concern about the release of these documents. I know that I was coming on to a board that had still made an agreement where I think they were going to be released at one time and then they decided not to. So for me, I didn't see how I would be able to make much of a difference if I just came in and took a position one way or the other without actually looking at what's in the documents, and so I asked if I could do so. As it turns out, it was a question that other trustees had asked as well, and so I won't be the only one that's looking through them.
POSSIBLE RELEASE OF NASSAR DOCUMENTS
Whatever I find, I will use that to inform my ultimate position on whether or not I believe they should be released, whether there should be a so-called waiver of privilege, what should happen next. Renee Knake
POHL: Do you know which if any of the other trustees have already seen some or all of these documents?
KNAKE: I don't know the answer to that. You'd have to ask them.
POHL: Can you tell me which other trustees might be joining you in reviewing the documents now?
KNAKE: I believe that trustees Kelly, Scott, and Tebay are going to be joining, and there may be more. Again, you need to talk to them each individually. I don't want to speak on behalf of another trustee, other than I'm just here to say that I know the board is still really thinking about it, this question of what to do with the documents. I just hope that being in the mix, that I can contribute to moving that conversation forward.
POHL: Your predecessor, Nancy Schlicting, resigned in frustration over the failure to conduct an independent investigation into the Nassar scandal. Replacing her with you doesn't seem to change the fact that trustees Byrum, Ferguson, Foster and Scott had opposed the investigation and thus were able to block it no matter what you might do. How do you create change in that kind of an environment?
KNAKE: Well, that's exactly why it didn't seem to make much sense to me to take a position one way or the other. First of all, as a lawyer, I wouldn't be comfortable making that kind of pronouncement without actually seeing the material myself, but even if I were to do so, to your point, it wouldn't have been responsive to the concerns that I've been hearing from the survivors who believe very strongly that those documents should be released, and I definitely understand their concern. For me, I thought there's got to be a different way, a third way, it doesn't have to be this or that. What do I need in order to make an informed decision? And for me, it was the ability to see the documents if I could.
To the administration's credit, they are absolutely allowing me and the other trustees to review them. We are committed to doing it. I imagine it's going to be quite time consuming, and that's just part of what I believe is my obligation as a trustee.
When I took the oath, that was part of my commitment to put in the time and energy and effort for something like this or anything that may come up for the university going forward. I'm there to use my background and my experience and my time to help move the university forward.
EXPECTS TO SEE ALL 6,000 DOCUMENTS
I've been given no reason to believe I won't have full access to them. Renee Knake
POHL: In calling for transparency at that last Board of Trustees meeting, will you call for the release of these documents no matter what you find in them?
KNAKE: I can't answer that. I can't prejudge without actually seeing what's in them. That's part of why I want to look at them.
POHL: It's possible that these documents, if released, would make it more likely that MSU would suffer a blow to its reputation and add to the financial costs associated with litigation. How do you mesh the desire to be transparent with your fiduciary responsibility to do what's best for MSU’s finances?
KNAKE: Well, I think that's part of taking this approach which is different than the approach that's been taken before I joined the board, which is to actually roll up my sleeves and spend time really understanding what's in the documents. I will be looking at them with an eye to how best to respond to the concerns of the survivors and to be very respectful to helping them move on, and also with an eye to what is best for the whole institution.
POHL: You were appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. I'd like to learn about the process. First of all, how do you know each other, assuming you do know each other? Who approached who, and why did you want this job?
KNAKE: When the governor asked me to consider this, she told me that she was approaching me because of my background in legal ethics, and also the work that I've done as a scholar on gender equality. I knew her as a friend, but she was approaching me from that background. She contacted me, and I was really honored that she would think of me. I will tell you that it is quite a wonderful thing as a law professor and an academic when someone comes and asks you to apply the work that you write about and teach about, to apply it to a problem in the real world.
I think that she saw filling this seat as having a unique need for someone with a background in legal ethics and gender equality, someone who would come in and really listen to the survivors, but also someone who, while I don't have a degree from Michigan State, I think I am a Spartan in the sense that I do have a decade of time that I spent here as an academic in the beginning of my career. It's been a few years since I've been here, so I have this unique background also in the sense that I understand a lot of the university but I am now very much an outsider. So, I think that whole combination was what led her to believe that I was the right person at the right time for this particular position. And again, I was honored to accept the position and to serve out the term.
POHL: You spent 10 years on the faculty at the MSU College of Law, but now you're a professor of law at the University of Houston. You've continued to live in East Lansing as I understand it. Can you explain how you've worked in Texas for three years while remaining a Michigan resident? Why haven't you moved there?
KNAKE: Because my kids live here in East Lansing. I've raised my children in East Lansing, my son learned to walk during the MSU band practices in the afternoons. Now, my children are in middle school and high school in East Lansing, so I have not wanted to disrupt their lives, even though I had a really extraordinary professional opportunity to take the Doherty chair in Legal Ethics at the University of Houston. So, I commute back and forth, and we make it work. It has allowed me to keep those strong roots and ties in this community and also grow professionally.
POHL: Is serving on the board going to make it more difficult to maintain your day job in Houston?
KNAKE: I don't think so. For example, that's not exactly how I thought I was going to spend my semester break, but right now I'm on semester break, so I finished grading my exams yesterday. My students will be so happy to know that their grades will be coming out soon. Now, I have time to turn to other items on my agenda as a member of the Board of Trustees. Later this week, I will be starting that document review, and I am able to balance both pieces that way.
Fortunately, as an academic, I work really hard, but I do have the luxury of structuring a lot of that work around my own time in terms of the writing and research I do. I actually think it's a good fit for taking on a volunteer service role like this. Again, it's an opportunity for me to give back that's directly related to my research and scholarship and also directly related to a community that's very close to my heart, because I started my academic career here. I've raised my children here, right in not just the backyard, but the front yard of Michigan State University.
