LSU needs to leverage its recent victory over Clemson in the college football national championship game to help attract a world-class leader as its next president, according to national political consultant James Carville, an LSU alumnus, staunch advocate and instructor in the Manship School of Mass Communication.
“I think LSU has an almost neo-historic opportunity here,” Carville says. “It does matter that we have a championship football team. It matters across the board and it matters that we have a governor who actually likes us and in the middle of that we have an opportunity to pick a new president. The window is open for the first time in a long time and we have to take advantage of it.”
The Board of Supervisors is expected to begin a search sometime this year to replace F. King Alexander, who stepped down in December after accepting a position as president of Oregon State University, though there’s no word on when a search might begin or how extensive and open it will be. The board is also planning to look at its leadership structure and may consider splitting the top job into two positions, as it was until late 2012—a system president, and an administrator to oversee the LSU A&M campus.
Board chair Mary Werner has told Daily Report she has heard from multiple stakeholders and constituent groups that are urging the board to revisit the issue.
Gov. John Bel Edwards also says he thinks the position should be split in two, though not all members of the board agree.
For his part, Carville doesn’t have an opinion on what kind of leadership structure is best for LSU. He does say all the chatter of creating two positions from one suggests the board may be trying to pave the way for a particular candidate or candidates.
“I don’t know this but if I’m reading these tea leaves, it looks like they’re doing this in anticipation of something,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going on but I do know when they start talking about changing the model, it makes me kinda believe that they’re lining up the stars for something.”
Werner says she hasn’t been approached by anyone or on behalf of anyone about the leadership position and that she would like to conduct an open, transparent national search.
Carville says whatever the board does, it better do it right and capitalize on the momentum that currently exists, “because the window does not stay open long.”
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