COLUMBIA — Mick Mulvaney, the former White House chief of staff and South Carolina congressman, is interested in leading the University of South Carolina again, a source with knowledge told The Post and Courier.
Mulvaney, then the White House budget director under President Donald Trump, inquired about the job in 2019 after Harris Pastides retired as president of the state’s largest college.
But Mulvaney became interim White House chief of staff and the job went to Bob Caslen, a retired Army general and West Point superintendent who was once a finalist to become Trump’s national security advisor.
Caslen resigned from USC in May amid a plagiarism scandal after he failed to cite the source of a passage he used in a commencement speech. Pastides was named interim president.
USC’s presidential search committee holds its first meeting June 4. The panel has not hired a search firm or announced a timetable for finding new leader of the state flagship school with eight campuses and more than 50,000 students.
Mulvaney was last the U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, but he resigned the day after the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
“We didn’t sign up for what you saw last night,” Mulvaney told CNBC on Jan. 7. “We signed up for making America great again; we signed up for lower taxes and less regulation.”
Mulvaney built a political reputation as a budget hawk, a skill some trustees sought after Pastides left two years ago as construction spending surged and state funding dwindled.
Trustees were attracted to Caslen because they thought his background outside academics and ties to the military could bring a fresh eye to how USC needed to position itself in the future.
Caslen sought to bolster USC’s online offerings and ties to military cybersecurity research. He was praised for his handling of closing and reopening of campus during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
But Caslen’s lack of a traditional academic background and a doctorate degree usually associated with the running a large college led to objections from some faculty and students. The retired general also struggled with some of the finer points of the job that includes wooing donors and giving speeches.
He called the school the “University of California” during the same commencement speech that included two plagiarized paragraphs. Caslen took responsibility for his actions and resigned after days of heavy criticism lobbed on social media and in calls to school leaders.
Mulvaney also does not have an academic background. He is an Indian Land real estate developer who graduated from Georgetown University and University of North Carolina law school before winning election to the S.C. Statehouse and Congress.
Mulvaney, 53, could be seen as a help to the college by drawing from his political connections built during his time in state and federal politics. Two other former White House budget directors lead large colleges — Mitch Daniels at Purdue University and Sylvia Burwell at American University.