What Didn’t Work: Tongue-Tied at the Top

The American board moved to reform governance as well, but more slowly. Where the Smithsonian regents looked at each other and said, “We all have a problem,” the two sides of the American dispute looked at each other and said, “You are the problem.” American might have recovered much faster, and with far less damage to the university, if its trustees had found a way to resolve their differences more quickly and privately.