M. Peter McPherson
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Melville Peter McPherson (born October 27, 1940) is president emeritus of the
Association of Public and Land-grant Universities The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is a research, policy, and advocacy organization of public research universities, land-grant institutions, state university systems, and higher education organizations. It has member ca ...
. He previously served as a special assistant to President
Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...
,
administrator of USAID The administrator of the United States Agency for International Development is the head of the United States federal government's Agency for International Development (USAID). The administrator is officially nominated by the President of the Un ...
under President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
, Deputy Secretary of the
U.S. Department of Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ...
, President of
Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
from 1993 to 2004, and Chairman of
Dow Jones Dow Jones is a combination of the names of business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones. Dow Jones & Company Dow, Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. That company eventually became a subsidiary of News Corp, and ...
.


Early life, education, and personal life

McPherson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. McPherson received his undergraduate degree from
Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
in 1963. Returning from the Peace Corps, McPherson earned a master's in business administration from Western Michigan University in 1967 and a
law degree A law degree is an academic degree conferred for studies in law. Such degrees are generally preparation for legal careers. But while their curricula may be reviewed by legal authority, they do not confer a license themselves. A legal license is gra ...
from
American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
in Washington in 1969. McPherson's wife, Joanne, passed away in June 2022. They each had two children from previous marriages and seven grandchildren.


Peace Corps service

His public service career began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, where during 1964 and 1965 he spent 18 months in Lima running a food distribution program and setting up credit unions. He called the experience a defining moment and said his experience in the Peace Corps helped him learn how to adapt. "When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, it was just a different culture," McPherson said. "I found I couldn't be a gringo and be effective. It's just a matter of asking people what they want to get done, finding out what the formal and informal rules are and figuring out ways to do things differently, while doing practical work in that environment. But that process was a challenge."


Service in Ford and Reagan Administrations

After law school, he worked for the
Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...
, where his specialty was international taxation. He joined the administration of fellow Michigander
Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. ( ; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He was the only president never to have been elected ...
in 1975 as special assistant to the President and Deputy Director, Presidential Personnel Office.
Dick Cheney Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
was White House Chief of Staff. After his government service in the Ford administration, he joined a private law practice as managing partner of the Washington office of
Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP is an international law firm based in Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, Ohio. With approximately 400 attorneys working out of offices in California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, D.C., and London, the firm is a ...
, an Ohio law firm. In November 1980, he was named General Counsel to the Reagan-Bush transition. McPherson held several high-level positions in
President Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
's administration. He was White House Counsel for the early weeks of the Reagan presidency. He served as
administrator of USAID The administrator of the United States Agency for International Development is the head of the United States federal government's Agency for International Development (USAID). The administrator is officially nominated by the President of the Un ...
from 1981 to 1987 where he led the U.S. response to the Great Famine in Africa in 1984–85. During that famine, the U.S. delivered 2 million tons of food to Africa in a 12-month period. With UNICEF, he and USAID led the worldwide effort to deal with diarrhea and dehydration, then the biggest killer of children in the developing world. This involved massive increase in the use of Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) and saved millions of lives: "At AID, you learn the process of deciding as a group large issues," McPherson said. McPherson's interest in world humanitarian and agricultural issues has made a difference for millions of people. While administrator of USAID he was also chair of the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. McPherson is also widely considered one of the most effective administrators of USAID. McPherson served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department from 1987 to 1989. At Treasury, he was one of the three U.S. negotiators in the final weeks for the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988. After his service in the Reagan administration, McPherson was a Group Executive Vice President for Bank of America. His responsibilities included renegotiating the bank's $8 billion trouble debt with developing countries, managing the bank's operations in Latin America and Canada, and managing the bank's global private banking. Also at the bank, he was a member of the U.S. banking industry committee that advised the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the restructuring of its financial structure. He chaired the U.S. banking industry committee that advised the U.S. government on the negotiations of
NAFTA The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ; es, Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, TLCAN; french: Accord de libre-échange nord-américain, ALÉNA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that crea ...
, the trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.


President of Michigan State University

In 1993 he was selected to become President of
Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
from 171 publicly identified candidates, effective October 1. During his tenure as President of MSU, the school's international undergraduate study program became the nation's largest. McPherson also gets credit as the only president of a major university to keep tuition at the rate of inflation through a Tuition Guarantee plan. He led a $1 billion capital fund-raising campaign and brought a private law school to the 45,000-student campus. He developed the idea and was a leader of the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor that provided grants for research and commercialization of intellectual property. McPherson officially retired from MSU at the end of 2004. While at Michigan State, he chaired the Blue Ribbon Committee to review the Lansing School System, chaired the State of Michigan Committee to Review Charter Schools and chair the Blue Ribbon Mid-Michigan Committee to review children’s issues from birth to age five. Ironically, it was during McPherson's tenure at Michigan State that employee
Larry Nassar Lawrence "Larry" Gerard Nassar (born August 16, 1963) is an American former physician and convicted child rapist. For 18 years, he was the team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team. He used his employment as th ...
's sexual assault and molestation of hundreds of female gymnasts occurred on the campus. Despite contemporaneous reports of the assaults and molestations, Michigan State under McPherson's aegis took no action. McPherson took a five month leave of absence as President of MSU in 2003 to serve as the Director of Economic Policy for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, where he reopened the countries banks, helped establish a central bank and helped put in place develop a new currency. In August 2004, McPherson was among five recipients presented with the Distinguished Service Award by U.S. Treasury Secretary
John Snow John Snow (15 March 1813 – 16 June 1858) was an English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the so ...
for his service in Iraq.


Chairman of Dow Jones

In February 2007
Dow Jones Dow Jones is a combination of the names of business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones. Dow Jones & Company Dow, Jones and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow Jones & Company in 1882. That company eventually became a subsidiary of News Corp, and ...
& Co. named McPherson chairman of the company during its annual shareholding meeting on April 18. McPherson replaced
Peter Kann Peter R. Kann (born 1942) is an American journalist, editor, and businessman. Early life and education Kann was born to a Jewish family in Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Caree ...
who earlier had announced his retirement. McPherson had served as an independent director of Dow Jones since 1998. As Chairman of Dow Jones & Co., McPherson was deeply involved in the negotiations with Rupert Murdoch over Murdoch's plan to purchase the ‘' Wall Street Journal’'. The '' Financial Times'' reported on December 13, 2007 that McPherson led the final annual meeting of Dow Jones where stockholders voted to approve the $5-billion sale of the 125-year-old company including the ''Wall Street Journal'' to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. "I know I speak for so many today when I say that this has been a difficult—and for many—a sad set of discussions," said McPherson, offering "great expectations and hopes" for the future.


President of APLU

McPherson served as president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the nation's oldest higher education association, from 2006 to 2022. During his tenure, McPherson has expanded the association's federal advocacy and worked on efforts aimed at boosting degree completion, enhancing transparency and accountability, strengthening university's research enterprise, and expanding community and economic engagement. He retired on September 1, 2022. McPherson spearheaded the creation of APLU's Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success initiative, which launched in November 2018. The effort is convening 130 change-ready institutions within 16 “transformation clusters” – reaching 3 million undergraduate students, including 1 million Pell Grant recipients. The effort is aiming to increase college access, eliminate the achievement gap, and award hundreds of thousands more degrees by 2025. It represents the largest-ever such collaborative work. APLU is broadly sharing lessons from the collaboration to help spur student-centered transformation across the sector. McPherson has also championed a range of transparency and accountability efforts. In 2007, he led APLU's role in co-founding the Voluntary System of Accountability – which was designed to enable institutions to demonstrate their voluntary commitment to publishing access, cost, and student outcomes measures for the benefit of the public, prospective students, and lawmakers. The VSA has since evolved into a data analytics tool for universities to improve their strategic planning and decision making. Building on those efforts, APLU co-founded the Student Achievement Measure (SAM) in 2014 to provide a more complete understanding of student success at universities. SAM was created to address flawed federal education data that only counts first-time, full-time students who receive federal financial aid. Another focus of McPherson's leadership has been the expansion of community and economic engagement efforts. In 2013, APLU launched the Innovation and Economic Prosperity (IEP) Designation and Awards program to recognize universities that are leaders in spurring and promoting regional economic development. Participating institutions complete a rigorous self-study process and earn the IEP designation if enough benchmarks are met. More than 60 universities have received the designation. His leadership of APLU has also included a permanent partnership with the
Coalition of Urban Serving Universities The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (commonly referred to as USU) is a selective organization of 46 U.S. universities and 1 university medical center located in metropolitan areas. The USU member schools began formally meeting in 2005. Gove ...
(USU) in an effort to incubate and promulgate the reforms necessary to help public urban research universities best serve their rapidly changing student populations. USU works with these institutions to pilot, refine, and share the most effective practices to accelerate innovation across higher education. Its work is centered on recruiting, admitting, retaining, and graduating high‐need, traditionally at‐risk students while reducing costs, reexamining campus business models, and fostering mutually beneficial campus‐community engagements.


Other activities

McPherson continues his strong commitment to agriculture and health in the developing world. He was a founding co-chair of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. He served as the founding chair of the HarvestPlus Project Advisory Board (PAC) for 15 years, and was the Chair of the board of IFDC for 10 years. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. He was a member of the International Board of Advisors of Komatsu Company, a Japanese equipment manufacturer. He served on the board of Conservation International. McPherson is also a member of Washington D.C. based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue.


BIFAD Chair

McPherson was appointed in 2002 by President George W. Bush as the chairman to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD). BIFAD advises USAID on the topics of food and agricultural safety in the developing world. He was succeeded in 2007 by Robert Easter.


Awards

McPherson has been awarded: * U.S. Presidential Certificate of Outstanding Achievement for “continued demonstrated vision, initiative and leadership in efforts to achieve a world without hunger.” * Secretary of State Distinguished Leadership Award * Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton Award * Honorary Doctorates from several universities * UNICEF award for Outstanding Contributions to Child Survival *
Jewish National Fund Jewish National Fund ( he, קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael'', previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, and subseq ...
Tree of Life Award * National Public Service Award from the American Society for Public Administration * Banker of the Year Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade


References


External links


Biographical Information
(Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections)


Peter McPherson, Former President of Michigan State University, Named Next President of NASULGC
(Press Release) * {{DEFAULTSORT:McPherson, M. Peter 1940 births 20th-century American politicians Michigan State University alumni Western Michigan University alumni Georgetown University Law Center alumni Living people Presidents of Michigan State University Administrators of the United States Agency for International Development United States Deputy Secretaries of the Treasury Acting United States Secretaries of the Treasury Politicians from Grand Rapids, Michigan Members of the Inter-American Dialogue