What Didn’t Work: Tongue-Tied at the Top
Both scandals invited embarrassing publicity and congressional scrutiny. Both exposed the governance flaws of experienced and well-intentioned board members. And both could have been avoided.
As a trustee of American University from 1999 to 2005 and a member of the independent review committee that evaluated the governance issues at the Smithsonian, I watched as these organizations weathered their governance crises. In both cases, practices that discouraged frank and frequent communication among board members left the greed of executives unchecked. And in both cases, changes to these systems put the organizations back on track. Yet the Smithsonian righted itself more quickly than American University because its regents ultimately reacted decisively and cohesively.
