Ken Starr, the former chancellor and president of Baylor University, defended former head football coach Art Briles during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival on Saturday, emphasizing his “complete confidence” in the former coach.
“I believe that Coach Briles is an honorable man who conducted an honorable program,” Starr said during his conversation with Tribune CEO Evan Smith.
Briles was terminated in the wake of a sexual assault scandal at the university that also led to Starr’s removal as president. Starr later resigned as chancellor, calling his decision a “matter of conscience.” He resigned his post as law professor at the university in August, severing his last tie with the nation’s largest Baptist university.
After two Baylor football players were convicted of sexual assault, Starr hired law firm Pepper Hamilton to conduct an independent review of the university. The firm’s review found the school did not appropriately handle allegations of sexual assault brought forward by students and that members of the football team’s staff acted as though they were above the law when allegations were made against players.
“I disagree with the sense that there was a fundamental failure,” said Starr, referring to a finding from Pepper Hamilton’s review that the school’s Title IX processes were not up to par. “I love Title IX. It has been an instrument of great, great reform … [but] the pendulum has swung much too far in one direction.”
Starr, who said Saturday that he plans to write a book about his experiences at Baylor, said there is a larger, cultural problem of “interpersonal violence” that extends beyond the university, but added that Baylor is held to high standards.
“I’m going to resist the issue, or the characterization, that there was an endemic problem,” Starr said. “Is there in fact a cultural insensitivity to issues of interpersonal violence? That was not the case at Baylor and is still not the case at Baylor.”
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