He's been called "the most powerful person in Arizona" and a "thug in a business suit."

A bull in a china shop. A genius. A little of both.

Oh, and innovative. Definitely innovative.

Arizona State University President Michael Crow embraces the innovation thing, ASU's ultimate brand. The specialty license plate on his BMW hybrid even has a version of the word.

But he rejects the idea that he's the state's most powerful person. As if anyone would answer "yes" when asked, lest he seem like an egomaniac.

Not the most powerful, despite the imprint he's left so far on Arizona, both in physical development and a school growing with no end in sight and expanding well beyond the state's borders.

It could be — it will be — bigger and in even more places in the future, he says.

As ASU's president since 2002, he has propelled himself, and the school, into the minds of national higher education leaders who praise his focus on inclusion and his partnerships with major businesses and his skyrocketing research spending and his creation of an urban campus that spurred a downtown resurgence and and and …

Want to see the future of higher education? Look at Crow and ASU, they say.

In Crow's mind, it's not really about him.

He's still a "punk from a Section 8 family" who grew up in too many places to count and was the first in his family to go to college.

"I still salivate if I see Velveeta cheese. No joke, I still salivate," he told a group of hundreds of staff members gathered for a luncheon in October.

He's antsy, he interrupts, he walks faster than most 20-year-olds. He has an answer ready for any question, even ones that aren't asked.

In his free time, he plays a World War II simulation game from Strategy & Tactics. His goal is to make the computer-generated players he's playing against crash the machine because he's making them work so hard.

He loves going to the movies, but he talks during them.

It's rare to catch him off guard, but not impossible. When Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued him over something he considers a major innovation, he seemed confused and upset — and yeah, pretty surprised.

That same attorney general called Crow "the most powerful person in Arizona," implying no one else in the state had the wherewithal to stand up to him.

"Most kids' moms are the most powerful," Crow says, sounding like a seasoned politician.

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ASU President Michael Crow: innovator and disrupter Michael Crow has been president of ASU since 2002. Since then, ASU has grown exponentially and developed a reputation for innovation and disruption. David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

Power is political, and he's not a politician, he said. He's an architect. Architects aren't powerful, they're impactful.

That's what Crow calls himself: a "knowledge enterprise architect," which basically means he designs universities.

But Crow doesn't believe he's the most "impactful" person in Arizona, either.

"Probably the most impactful people in Arizona are kindergarten teachers, no joke."

He's what you would want out of a public university president, he said, the kind of person who's driving the school forward for maximum impact on society.

"Is he creative? Yes," Crow said of what a university president should be. "Does he get things done? Yes. Does he make it happen? Yes. And when he doesn't, fire him."

There's a slim chance anyone would take up Crow on the "fire him" idea.

Crow's vision for expansion achieved

If you live in Arizona, you've probably heard of Michael Crow at some point. It's hard not to know the name.

But if you don't know the man, you've for sure heard of ASU, now the largest public university in the country.

In the Before-Crow era, ASU was derided as a party school, the safety school you applied to in case you couldn't get in somewhere better.

ASU students still party. Just go to Mill Avenue between Thursday and Sunday nights when school is in session. And ASU is still accepting high school students with a B average.

But the school's identity and, to some degree, the public perception of it, have changed dramatically since Crow arrived. He is the architect of the changes that have won ASU the top spot in U.S. News & World Report's ranking of the most innovative universities for the past four years.

When he got here in 2002, he outlined in an inaugural speech what ASU should be: a public research university "measured not by who the university excludes, but rather by who the university includes." It should be embedded in the community and provide value to the public.

A well-wisher congratulates ASU President Michael Crow after a 2002 inauguration ceremony at the Tempe campus. Tim Koors/The Republic

Crow could have come to ASU and tried to propel the school up in other national rankings for "best" universities. Some university presidents have done this successfully. But it would have required making ASU more exclusive, and while that may work for rankings, it wouldn't match Arizona.

We're a young, rapidly growing state with few options for higher education and a population that's not highly educated or wealthy. We're not elitist.

Crow's vision for ASU as the "New American University" mashes quality and inclusiveness together, goals that some in academia believe cannot coexist.

His projections back in 2005 sounded far-fetched. He wanted enrollment to hit 100,000 students by 2020; ASU hit that goal early, in 2017, thanks in part to a quickly growing online market. At the same time the university has grown, its graduation and retention rates have improved.

More than half of last fall's freshman class came from underrepresented populations, a huge change from Crow's arrival. And the number of first-generation college students has tripled since 2002. Still, educational attainment for minority groups in Arizona, and across the country, lags when compared with white students.

His vision for an urban campus in downtown Phoenix, funded via a voter-approved bond, revitalized the central city so successfully that other universities have come knocking, asking how to replicate it.

And while some scratched their heads when ASU partnered with Starbucks to let the coffee company's employees enroll online for free, the program has graduated about 2,000 workers.

Crow has global ambitions for the university — "not everywhere, everywhere is too many places, but certainly a lot of places." He’s already set up an ASU site in Washington, D.C., just a 10-minute walk from the White House, and is working on one in Los Angeles.

It's a lot, no doubt. But for Crow, it's just a start. He wants ASU to be the "greatest public university known to man."

"We're in the birthing process of ASU as a world-class, globally impactful, unique American model of an absolutely fantastic university," he said. "We're right in the middle of that right now."

MORE: Michael Crow's imprint on ASU includes more than 100 new buildings

The black sheep, 'the weirdo'

Crow doesn't really have a hometown.

He was born in California. His dad was in the Navy; his parents were teenagers when he was born. They lived in public Section 8 housing at that time because they couldn't get into military housing right away.

His mother died from cancer when he was 9 years old. His dad ping-ponged across the country, sometimes leaving Crow and his four younger siblings in the care of other relatives. His youngest sister came from his father's second marriage, which was short-lived.

In total, the family moved 21 times. Crow attended 17 schools.

Michael Crow (left) with his father, George, and brother, David, in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1958. Courtesy of Michael Crow

His frequent moves helped him learn to adapt and thrive in new environments. And his inauspicious early years drive home a point for him personally and for ASU: There's no limit to what you can achieve, no matter where you come from.

Crow's youngest sister Vicki Doctor, who was born on his 12th birthday, said he was protective and playful as an older brother. And while Crow likes to say his dad thought he was weird, Doctor said their father was proud of all Crow accomplished. He died soon after Crow became ASU's president and was too sick to attend his son's inauguration.

"Dad had a whole file folder on Michael," full of newspaper clippings and other ephemera, said Doctor, whose son goes to ASU.

People who have known him the longest say Crow wasn't always powerful and commanding but has long been ambitious and persuasive.

A life-changing Eagle Scout project

Crow likes to recount one memory from childhood that still stands out vividly: On Christmas Eve 1968, after collecting enough food to feed one family for one year for his Eagle Scout project, it was time to deliver the goods to the family. He had "boatloads" of food.

He arrived at a shack with a potbelly stove, a dirt floor and an outhouse. One of the children in the family went to his school; the kid was really smart.

Michael Crow (left) receives his Eagle Scout badge in Maryland in 1969. Courtesy of Michael Crow

After dropping off the food, Crow returned to his family’s military housing about 10 miles away. He came from a working-class family, but his dad was in debt, always buying things the family didn't need. Like a color television.

That night, he watched the first image of the moon sent back from astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission.

"I thought to myself, there is something weird here," Crow recalled. "How can that kid from my school live in a dirt-floored shack and us have to give him food, and these dudes are circling the moon, sending back pictures to a color television?"

There had to be a way to make society more even, he thought.

When I first heard this story, I was struck by its poignancy. It really tied together his life, his career, why he does what he does. It dovetailed with his mission at ASU to include more people while also striving for excellence.

Then I came home and told my fiancé about it. He agreed it was a great story, and he heard Crow tell it in 2009, when he was in college.

Then, while researching Crow, I found the same story in multiple profiles written by journalists over the years. He even sent it in an email to all of ASU around Christmas.

It's a good story. It really is. It's just that he knows how good the story is and that it will affect people.

A 'black sheep' for going to college

Crow's family wasn't too big on higher education, but he gathered that if he wanted to improve the world, he would need a college degree.

He enrolled at Iowa State University, where he threw javelin. He wanted to pursue five majors, he told a woman who asked him to declare just one. She said he couldn't do that, which perturbed the young Crow.

He later required his three kids to earn double majors in college; they could go anywhere they wanted as long as they double-majored. None of the three went to ASU. Who wants to go to a school where your dad's the president? (His middle child, daughter Britt, is now an assistant professor in ASU's School for the Future of Innovation in Society.)

Michael Crow throwing the javelin at Iowa State in Ames, Iowa, in 1976. Courtesy of Michael Crow

He encourages multiple majors and programs that emphasize interdisciplinary learning for ASU students as well.

Take the new partnership ASU drummed up with James Turrell to bring students from four different schools to Roden Crater, an art installation by Turrell built inside a dormant volcano in northern Arizona. It's the quintessential example of the Crowian iteration of interdisciplinary education.

Anyway, back at Iowa State, Crow was smitten with what college had to offer. He could read all the time and talk to smart people about all the work they were doing.

"Going to college for me was like being dropped into a movie with unbelievable everything," he said.

This whole idea of college led to harassment from his great-grandmother, he told a group of hundreds of ASU staff at a luncheon on Halloween. Only people who couldn't work or use their hands went to college. It was for morons.

"I turned out to be kinda like the black sheep in my family, the weirdo," Crow said.

(The other thing he told people at this staff luncheon was that he had just returned from a trip to Ghana, where he got sick, but didn’t have any Cipro, a drug that treats bacterial infections that can attack your gut in ways that people don't usually mention among strangers, especially not during lunch.

"I had a small digestive problem that became a major digestive problem," Crow told them. He was talking about diarrhea, without saying diarrhea, and it was not the first time that day he had mentioned the topic.)

On the road to innovation

Crow married his college girlfriend and they had two children. The marriage ended in 1997. He really doesn't want to talk about his divorce — and he doesn't want me to write about it — but the root of it stemmed from Crow's constant movement, his perpetual quest to learn more and try out new ideas. He couldn't be a dentist, or anything that's 9-5 and steady, he said.

"You don't want to get divorced if you can avoid it," he advised.

It's hard and destabilizing, especially for kids. But he knew there was no such thing as a "steady state" for him.

After getting his doctorate at Syracuse University, he returned to Iowa State, where he eventually became the director of the Institute for Physical Research and Technology at Iowa State. In 1991, he moved to Columbia University, where his national reputation started to take root.

He eventually became the executive vice provost and oversaw the university's Earth Institute. He also kickstarted a new online learning platform, called Fathom, which closed in 2003, shortly after he left the university.

He met his second wife, Sybil Francis, in a "very geeky" way while he was at Columbia, Francis said. They were both at an academic conference, and afterward he sent her a handwritten note along with a copy of his book. She responded by mailing him a copy of her dissertation with a note. The rest is history. They have a daughter who goes to UCLA.

Before he came to ASU, and still today, Crow has served on the board of In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit venture capital firm tasked with funding new technologies for national security entities, namely the Central Intelligence Agency. He's been the chairman of the board for 12 years.

The role gives him contacts in national corridors of power.

He doesn't use any technologies that aren't yet available to the public for himself, he assures me. His job in all of it is to find talent and understand how the technologies work, he said.

This affiliation with the CIA has sometimes morphed into a rumor that Crow is a CIA agent. As far as I know, he's not. Not that he'd tell me if he was.

No silver spoon in sight

Despite how far he's come from that "punk from a Section 8 family," his upbringing is never far from reach.

When he told staff at the October luncheon that he was a first-generation student, a woman in the audience said she was glad to have another example for students.

That's exactly what Crow intends to happen: He can serve as a reminder that it doesn't matter where you start.

He once was on a plane with a donor (the donor's private plane) coming back to Arizona from Colorado, and the donor asked him about his life story. After Crow related all of the above — the Section 8 housing, the many moves, the first to go to college — the donor was stunned.

"'I thought you were some sort of silver spoon, Ivy League, button-down, J. Crew guy,'" Crow said the donor told him in reaction.

"Are you kidding me?" he said.

But before you start to think he's like you, let's be clear: He has a well-appointed home in Paradise Valley, and his bedroom window looks out on Camelback Mountain. He and Francis decorated the home to mimic their New York City apartment, down to the same paint colors. He has nice art. He also has two cats, a dog and a couple of snakes that were his daughter's (Francis feeds them frozen mice).

MORE: How does ASU President Michael Crow manage 90 meetings per week?

Crow makes more than $1 million per year, which includes housing and vehicle allowances.

There are stacks of books in every room of his home. Some he's currently reading, some he's still thinking about, some are old favorites. On any given night, you may find him with Francis, both working on their laptops in Crow's office.

"People come over to our house and they're like, 'What are you people?' And we say, 'Well, we're basically graduate students,'" Crow said.

Francis said the ASU version of Crow is slowed-down compared with how he used to be, which is wild considering he has 75 to 90 meetings per week. Sometimes he schedules meetings with his wife.

But at Columbia, he pulled all-nighters, she said. These days, he's getting five hours of sleep per night.

ASU President Michael Crow weighs in on who is the most influential Arizonan ASU President Michael Crow talks about who is the most influential person in Arizona, from school teachers to innovators. David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

Early battles with traditionalists

Since Crow got the ASU president gig 17 years ago, he's charged at full speed, single-mindedly focused on his goal of creating a public university unlike any in the world.

What is now ASU opened as the Territorial Normal School in 1886 and operated largely as a teachers' college for many decades before becoming Arizona State College. But state leaders only allowed Arizona State College to become Arizona State University in 1958, and only after a public vote.

Since then, the school has searched for an identity. The one that seems to have stuck the longest in ASU's modern history is that the university is a safety school at best, a party school for frat bros at worst.

ASU's present isn't as intrinsically tied to partying or fraternities these days. It doesn't have a Greek row on campus anymore; it instead has a "Greek Leadership Village," basically a dorm.

Crow has worked to reset the public's understanding of what ASU is and what it could be. That's ongoing, and maybe why he starts so many sentences with, "The thing people don't understand is ..."

His massive reinvention of the university didn't always go smoothly, especially in the beginning.

The "innovations" he put in place at ASU, and his outspokenness in defending these ideas, have given him a national name in higher education and beyond. They're also a source of criticism about him.

He's tried to rapidly grow the university while improving its quality. Part of that included dismantling the trappings of a typical university, like academic departments and the sanctity of tenure.

He also deepened relationships with donors and private businesses, which invited ire from folks who thought the university should first be a public good, not a tool of private companies.

These days, the list of "partners" for ASU projects is long and recognizable, from Uber to Starbucks to Google.

On one day last October, he met with global Adidas executives and the vice-chairman of Pepsi. Try to name another Arizona leader with a similar calendar.

Some of these outside donors, such as the Charles Koch Foundation, have invited criticism over the school's independence and the influence of donations.

ASU President Michael Crow takes a conference call in his office in 2007. Jack Kurtz/The Republic

Plenty of skeptics doubted he could pull off the massive transformation.

"President Crow either will transform ASU into a first-class research university that just happens to be the single largest public university in the country, or he will fail. And, should he fail, Arizona then may continue on its historic path — ceding its brightest students and its prospects for an advanced economy to other states," a 2007 opinion piece in The Arizona Republic warned.

He wasn't — still isn't — a caretaker president who would seek approval or praise from elected leaders.

In his earlier ASU days, he reportedly clashed with former Gov. Janet Napolitano over efforts to fund new research facilities at the universities. Apparently, Crow had questioned whether Napolitano wanted to react to facts — or her emotions.

She threw him out of her office, "slamming the door so violently as his derriere crossed the threshold that her DPS guards came running, thinking it was a gunshot," according to a Phoenix Magazine profile from 2004.

He was much more serious back then, when he first started as president, according to Francis. Someone once asked her if Crow had a sense of humor, which she found amusing because he can be "really silly." After a few years, he became more himself at work, she said.

No money, more problems

Perhaps the biggest source of concern for the future of ASU has been, to some degree, out of Crow's hands, a tough proposition for someone used to getting what he wants.

As ASU grew, one key driver of the university stalled: the amount of money the state spent on higher education.

ASU's student body doubled from 2002 to 2018, from about 55,000 students when Crow arrived to more than 111,000 last year.

State funding during that time increased from $312 million to $320 million, or less than 3 percent, according to ASU.

Even during the Great Recession, which decimated state spending in nearly every area, Crow didn't adjust his ambitions or expectations for the university.

ASU President Michael Crow gives testimony about budget cuts in front of the Arizona House of Representatives' Appropriations committee in 2011. David Kadlubowski/The Republic

"I don't retreat very easily," he told the New York Times in 2009. "The economy is shifting faster than the university can adjust, but we're trying to protect students from the hurricane. We're protecting the core of the core."

To "protect the core," ASU increased tuition, cut jobs and brought in more out-of-state and international students.

Resident undergraduate tuition cost $2,585 per year when Crow came to ASU. It was $10,822 last fall, an increase of more than 300 percent. Student debt upon graduation has increased, too, although it lags the national average.

Part of Crow's success at ASU could be attributed to the fact that no one in the state has been able to counter him — or really even tried.

Crow seized on a vacuum in Arizona's higher education landscape, said Scott Jaschik, CEO and editor of Inside Higher Ed. While some governors or regents in other states have directed massive change in their university systems, Crow has mostly struck out on his own and set the path he sees fit for ASU, Jaschik said.

Crow now goes to other states, or those from other states come here, to talk about the need for disrupting state university systems.

Critics fight 'MiCrow Management'

Early on, Crow set out to restructure the university into colleges based more on themes than traditional subjects (there’s now a School of Human Evolution and Social Change, a College of Public Service and Community Solutions). Some of these changes caused strife with faculty.

He was conducting an experiment, some said. And it was unclear whether the efforts to create new institutes and programs really would create more collaboration across disciplines or if they were simply rebranding, a 2010 story said.

Some professors back then said they were mistreated, that Crow was a top-down, dictatorial, corporate-style leader. They worried the restructuring and large-scale changes would harm students. There was an anonymous blog started about his leadership style, which the blog dubbed "MiCrow Management."

ASU President Michael Crow speaks to staff during a staff forum at the ASU Polytechnic campus on Oct. 31, 2018. David Wallace/The Republic

There are some in academia who still fundamentally disagree with Crow's vision for higher education.

Critics have derided the corporatization of higher education and changes to storied institutions that make college more business-focused than education-focused.

A columnist for Inside Higher Ed said Crow's 2015 book about designing universities for the future was more dystopian than inspiring. But the columnist, John Warner, said there didn't seem to be robust faculty pushback on most of Crow's machinations. Warner called ASU a "factory of credentialing" where there was nothing more than "lip service" paid to educational quality.

"They are increasing enrollment and cutting deals with Starbucks in an effort to hoover up 'market share,' which to my knowledge is not a recognized trait of quality education," he wrote.

"Arizona State is indistinguishable from Amazon."

Crow said criticism over increasing corporatization at ASU is "well-taken and an appropriate caution."

About that whole 'thug in a business suit' thing

Some of Crow's initial critics have changed their minds about him. Kind of.

His rough demeanor in the early years, and the massive changes he made to the university, led one professor to tell The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2005 that Crow was a "thug in a business suit."

Crow's plan wouldn't work, anthropology professor Geoffrey A. Clark told the publication. It was a "pipe dream" and ASU would come out a poorer institution because of Crow's actions, he said.

Last year, after more than a decade, Clark sent Crow a letter apologizing for the remarks. The apology letter, which goes on for more than two pages, acknowledges that Crow made major advancements and should be commended for those. But Clark still carries some angst about how Crow's plan went down in the early 2000s.

Clark, who has been at ASU since 1971 and is now a professor emeritus, wrote that he's been "astonished" at Crow's success in elevating the school.

"In short, too many accomplishments to enumerate (although the PR machine you've built does a good job of that)," Clark wrote.

Clark wrote he was angry about how a particular professor was treated, how Crow was building a "corporate model" of the university and how there seemed to be a policy to "obliterate the past."

Show caption Hide caption ASU President Michael Crow smiles while teaching the multi-discplinary Science, Technology and Public Affairs class to (from left at front) masters student Sarah Lords, masters... ASU President Michael Crow smiles while teaching the multi-discplinary Science, Technology and Public Affairs class to (from left at front) masters student Sarah Lords, masters student Emma Biscocho and doctoral candidate Sara Aly El Sayed, along with other ASU doctoral, masters and undergraduate students at the Fulton Center at ASU in Tempe on Jan. 30, 2019. David Wallace/The Republic

Obliterating the past offended Clark because, he said, he's part of that past. He worked hard for the university, and that should have been acknowledged and respected. He wasn't just "lying on a beach in Mexico drinking margaritas all those years," he wrote.

"In closing, I readily acknowledge your spectacular accomplishments and would have enthusiastically supported them were it not for the way you went about achieving them. Frankly, I think you could learn something from Lattie in respect of dealing with people," Clark wrote, referring to Lattie Coor, Crow's predecessor.

Clark included a postscript, asking for Crow to restore parking passes for emeritus professors.

Crow wrote back, annotating Clark's letter with his own comments. At the part where Clark posits Crow could have accomplished his goals without the turmoil, Crow simply wrote, "perhaps."

He included a handwritten note thanking Clark for his letter. "History is sometimes a better tutor than immediate emotions," Crow wrote. He said he added comments to the letter "just for the record."

And he said he would resolve Clark's parking issue.

Is that a chip on his shoulder?

Crow is careful and defensive of ASU's reputation. He still has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.

He wouldn't call it that, though.

"It's not a chip. I can see how things are in other places where the universities are considered really important, and here they're just less important so far," he said. "I think that will change, I think that is changing, but they're just less important."

Crow carries stats about ASU in his head, ready to toss them out in the middle of a conversation to affirm that the university is way better than you think.

The students and community should know, and the faculty should boast, that ASU is both inclusive and excellent, Crow says. You can be both. ASU is proving that, he says.

This is Crow's whole ethos, his plan, his "design aspirations" that guide ASU's rise.

So, when a piece of that equation is critiqued, Crow can bite back.

ASU students sound off on Michael Crow Arizona State University students share their interactions with and thoughts on ASU President Michael Crow and the university. David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

At a forum at the ASU Polytechnic campus in October, students in person and via live feeds from the other campuses asked Crow questions, raising concerns about tuition costs, seeking advice on how they could find space to build rockets, and asking why the Tempe campus had banned electric scooters.

Chris, a student who joined the forum via live feed, told Crow he pays for tuition out of pocket and expects a certain level of quality from his teachers that he's not getting. He had a class with a 14 percent success rate, he told Crow.

"What are we doing to have better-quality teachers when we do come to class and actually having teachers that are wanting to teach us, instead of just standing up there and lecturing?" Chris asked.

Crow challenged the premise of the question.

"So Chris, that's a pretty harsh assessment given that we teach over 20,000 individual classes and maybe you've taken 10, so what you should talk about is your experience rather than the experience of every other student," Crow responded.

"But having said that, I take your experience to be important and meaningful."

Crow's dust ups with Obama, attorney general

Sometimes being an innovator invites criticism. Sometimes it means being sued by the state attorney general. Sometimes it means being the butt of jokes.

But Crow regrets nothing.

He's not a "regret-oriented" guy. He looks at mistakes he's made or things that could've gone better to figure out how to learn from them, but regretting isn't for him, he said.

"You only have one life. I'm not a person that believes you should spend much of your one life in regrets," he said.

He is prone to critiquing others, though. Any journalist in Arizona who's covered ASU with any regularity has probably received a Crow criticism in their inbox. They're biting and intense.

In one instance, in 2004, the State Press, ASU's newspaper, printed a photo of a woman's pierced nipple on the cover of its accompanying magazine. After ASU megadonor Ira Fulton complained, Crow threatened to yank funding from the State Press, according to accounts of the incident.

He's known for saying exactly what he thinks, without couching critiques in easier-to-digest compliment sandwiches. It doesn't really matter who's on the receiving end, either, or how powerful or revered that person is.

There was the time when ASU wouldn't give President Barack Obama an honorary degree when he spoke at the university's commencement in 2009.

It's simple to Crow: ASU doesn't give honorary degrees to active politicians or donors. Obama obviously is an accomplished guy, but he was an active politician then, Crow said, and that's that. (At the time, an ASU spokesperson said Obama hadn't accomplished enough to warrant an honorary degree.)

In retrospect, the school could have handled the information a bit better, Crow acknowledged. But he still wouldn't have given Obama the honorary degree. It was a great speech, though, Crow added.

ASU President Michael Crow responds to ASU being sued by state attorney general ASU President Michael Crow responds to a surprise lawsuit from the state attorney general on Arizona State University's real-estate projects. David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

Now, the state's top prosecutor is going after one of Crow's big ideas at ASU: His use of university-owned property to generate income for the school.

As state funding for higher education plummeted during the recession, the real-estate income helped fill in the financial gaps. The lawsuit from Brnovich mystified Crow, as did Brnovich's earlier lawsuit over tuition.

He doesn't get why the real estate deals are controversial, really. The university should use its assets to generate money, and private colleges do this all the time, he said.

"Some people don't want us to do that because some people don't want us to have any resources," he said. "OK, what would you like us to do? We have to figure out how to advance the university. These are not life-altering arguments; they're differences in opinion about how to advance a university."

ASU's newness becomes a plus

A major part of Crow's success in elevating ASU's reputation stems from his ability to recruit talented people from the top-tier, elite institutions he seemingly dislikes.

His power of persuasion helps ASU compete with the likes of Columbia and Oxford when looking for new hires.

He's never not recruiting, either students, donors or faculty. At that student forum on Halloween, he answered a question about a recent donation to the Watts College that would create five new professorships.

He has his eye on Matthew Desmond, author of the best-seller "Evicted," who graduated from ASU in 2002 and now teaches at Princeton, for one of those new spots, he told the hundreds of students listening.

"I hope he's listening," Crow said of Desmond, who likely was not aware of a forum where students aired grievances.

He told an October luncheon for new tenured faculty that he has something to offer that other, more entrenched colleges can't compete with: a freedom and openness to ideas.

There's no other place that's quite like Arizona, he told them. And that can be weird and discombobulating, but it can also be great, he said.

That weirdness — really, that openness — has allowed Crow to revamp ASU, reorganize colleges, diversify its student body, he suggests. Pulling off such a major redesign may not have worked in other places.

"Why is that going on in Arizona? It's going on in Arizona because this actually turns out to be a place where you can be unbelievably innovative," Crow said. "Because no one's going to get in your way. That's a weird thing about even the politics here. Some people think that there's a political dominance here of some group. There's no political dominance here."

Still, it's a big adjustment to move to Arizona and to move to a school such as ASU, he said. There's the physical strangeness. The desert is really quiet, and the smell of the rain is something else. Haboobs will beat your car. Your kid may be stung by a scorpion or see a rattlesnake outside the front door (two events he said happened in his household).

And the less-tangible strangeness: Because so many people come to Arizona from somewhere else, it's a dynamic place, he told the new professors.

And ASU fits right into that.

"There are no sacred cows here. The only sacred cow we have is the success of the students. Everything else is on the table," he said.

They had a choice, and they picked ASU

At the welcome lunch, about a dozen new faculty detailed their paths to ASU from Australia, Canada, Arkansas, Washington, Florida, Scotland. Some were from Columbia, where Crow worked for a decade. The Columbia ties are strong in ASU's faculty these days.

Some boasted that they chose this university for a reason, and they had options.

One professor called coming to her new job at ASU "literally a dream come true." Nicola Foote, the new vice dean of the Barrett Honors College, was a first-generation student, like Crow. She had turned down elite institutions in her native United Kingdom at a couple points in her life.

"I'm from Britain originally, where the concept of honors education is not well-developed," Foote explains.

Crow jumps in, a common thread in his meetings. He interrupts a lot. He knows he does this, and he tells people he regularly works with ahead of time that it will happen, but he doesn't mean any disrespect.

"Because they have two honors universities, Oxford and Cambridge, with 64 kind of really stuck-up colleges in those places, but go ahead," Crow says to Foote, as people chuckle.

The interrupting has a purpose. His brain is moving quickly, and if he senses you're going to answer in a way that gets to 60 percent of the answer, he may jump in to get you 80 percent of the way there.

ASU President Michael Crow (center) listens during luncheon for new ASU faculty on the ASU Tempe campus on Oct. 16, 2018. David Wallace/The Republic

He has so many meetings per week. There's limited time. We gotta get to the answer, you know?

"I'm more like a choreographer than an interrupter," Crow said later, rebranding what interrupting means.

"What I mean by that is, I'm not throwing out my idea, saying my idea is better than your idea. I'm usually trying to get them to say something else or to take a particular tangent to what they're saying. Or I'm trying to bring efficiency to the discussion," he said.

In a room full of people, the chance that Crow will interrupt is pretty much 100 percent.

Nilda Flores-Gonzalez taught sociology as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago before coming to ASU in 2018 as the associate director of sociology at the School of Social and Family Dynamics.

"Really, my job is to rebuild the department of sociology, which we don't have, so I'm restarting that," she tells Crow and the other new professors.

"Well, we're not restarting it as a department," Crow interjects.

"Well it's not a department, it's a program within the school. … One of the things I've been doing lately has been, there's a lot of sociologists on campus, but they're all scattered around," she continues.

Crow jumps in again.

"That's our hope. We want them all scattered around, and the reason we eliminated the program was because it was so weak, it wasn't worth keeping open. You're now coming back in and then knitting the thing back together," he tells Flores-Gonzalez.

This idea is now a tenet of ASU's whole ethos: Professors and students should be collaborating, working across disciplines. No one should be in silos. There shouldn't be a department of sociology where sociologists just work with each other. You should be on board with that if you're coming to ASU.

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A magnet for national attention

Crow may still salivate at Velveeta, but he's equally at home at a fancy New York City club among some of the country's largest media outlets and nearly a dozen other university presidents.

The Penn Club in midtown Manhattan had the nicest paper towels I've ever seen. They were beyond soft and had a coat of arms printed on them, surrounded by the name "The Penn Club." They didn't even look wet when they were wet. The bathroom had dispensers for hand lotion and mouthwash.

In December, Crow hosted an annual dinner there with a mix of journalists from places like the New York Times and NBC and university presidents who Crow thought were interesting.

The dinner showcases Crow's stamp on the national higher-education scene: Two presidents in attendance used to work at ASU.

ASU President Michael Crow speaks during a student forum at the ASU Polytechnic campus on Oct. 31, 2018. David Wallace/The Republic

The dinner started more than 30 years ago at Columbia, but Crow took it over when he came to ASU. Over a three-course meal, journalists peppered the presidents with questions about what's important in higher education right now. Crow was the moderator, choosing who could ask questions and who should answer.

That major media outlets turn out and presidents fly in from around the country to attend underscores Crow's national pull.

He regularly makes lists of university presidents to watch. He speaks all over the country. He’s everywhere.

Part of the recognition stems from his longevity. In the time since Crow took over at ASU, the University of Arizona has had five presidents.

But most of the national recognition comes from the massive overhaul Crow undertook, and how abnormal some of the moves were in higher education.

Higher education is a "mature industry," said Mark Becker, the president of Georgia State University (No. 2 in innovation). Historically, it's not a business that's seen a lot of change in structure.

Crow "turned over the apple cart and said, 'Let's start over,'" Becker said.

Crow takes a less scientific approach to change than Becker does, Becker said. "His approach is, let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks," Becker said.

These days, ASU's reputation centers on its innovation ranking, and that's no accident. Crow has aggressively rebranded the school, wrapping buses with the ranking. Students embrace it, making memes that play on innovation and Crow.

If there were an ASU drinking game where you took a shot every time someone said the word "innovation," I would have passed out before 10 a.m. when I was with Crow.

ASU President Michael Crow smiles while co-teaching the multi-disciplinary Science, Technology and Public Affairs class at the Fulton Center on Jan. 30, 2019. David Wallace/The Republic

Crow wouldn't play that game, though. He doesn't drink alcohol. Or coffee. He does drink Hi-Ball energy drinks throughout the day.

Around campus, students frequently come up to him and ask for selfies. They know him. They know what he looks like. I couldn't pick the president of my undergraduate college out of a lineup.

He regularly gives out his email, michael.crow@asu.edu, when people say they're having an issue and don't know who to ask for help.

He teaches a class called Science, Technology and Public Affairs every spring. He requires all faculty to teach, so he better walk the walk, he figures.

The students are mostly graduate-level, from disciplines across the spectrum, including biochemistry, American Indian studies and economics. On a recent Wednesday morning, they delved into readings about the origins of science and what is considered science. They used words like "axiomatic" and "falsification." In other words, they're smart.

Couldn't win most innovative in Arizona?

As well-known as Crow may be around campus, ASU might be more appreciated outside Arizona.

"I don't think we could win the vote of being most innovative university in Arizona because there's too much politics around it," Crow said.

But the school can win that ranking nationally. That makes sense, though, Crow said; people aren't always well-understood in their own land.

(Also, it's worth noting that the U.S. News innovation rankings are a survey of university administrators who name which schools they think are most innovative. If you continually call yourself innovative and aggressively brand yourself as such, that may influence how people view you, and how they vote on a survey like that.)

Crow counts some of the country's most powerful people as friends and promoters.

Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks who's considering a run for president, called Crow "a real heroic figure in America." Crow hasn't met a problem he couldn't solve, Schultz said.

"What he's done at ASU is probably the most remarkable, stunning story in the last number of decades in terms of transforming public education at the college level," Schultz said.

What sets Crow apart from other leaders in higher education nationally is his "populist" approach, said Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed.

He's not increasing competitiveness in admissions to improve the school's reputation; instead, he's expanding the university's capacity, Jaschik said.

"I think a lot of people are paying attention to what he's doing at Arizona State because he's taking a different approach," Jaschik said.

The academic club that won't let ASU in

Still, ASU's overall rankings remain middling. That's probably not going to budge much, as long as ASU continues to admit so many students. Some specific programs at the university have moved up, and the amount of money the university brings in for research has increased significantly.

Lattie Coor, who was ASU's president before Crow, said he sensed when he arrived in 1990 that the university was much better than the faculty, students and community recognized. Some say Coor set up ASU for someone like Crow to come in and run with it.

ASU couldn't have advanced to this degree or radically changed without Crow, Coor said. But he doesn't see that as a knock on his time as president.

"I am a proud father, I tell you that," Coor said.

Michael Crow talks about ASU not being in the Association of American Universities ASU President Michael Crow talks about ASU not being recognized by or allowed in the Association of American Universities David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

Some of higher education's old guard haven't opened their arms to ASU, though. The university hasn’t been recognized or allowed into prestigious higher education organizations like the Association of American Universities, a group of 62 top research universities in the country, including Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and Iowa State University. Oh, and the University of Arizona.

That's an old organization operating on an old idea of what a research university is, Crow said. They think ASU is too big or has too many undergraduate students or has too many students with B averages, he said.

It's just "kind of weird" that they won't let ASU in, Crow said, but it's not a big deal, really.

"I don't want to be left out, but I don't really want to be in it," he said.

What’s next for Michael Crow?

In the early years, articles about Crow centered on whether he could do it — could he transform ASU, pretty much known as a party school, into an impressive and inclusive institution?

Now, the big question has changed.

Craig Calhoun, a new ASU professor who was previously president of the London School of Economics, pinpointed the next big challenge for ASU: "What on earth is going to happen after Mike Crow?"

Since Crow arrived at ASU, people have speculated that he'd leave for greener pastures.

ASU President Michael Crow talks politics at tailgate party ASU President Michael Crow talks about the toxic political environment at a tailgate party before an ASU football game on Oct. 18, 2018. David Wallace, The Republic | azcentral.com

His name pops up whenever a major university has a presidential opening. When Harvard was looking for a president in 2017, guess who was on the list. But big names don't sway him; he's not interested in leaving ASU. "I'm not the mindset for Harvard," he said.

And really, try to picture Michael Crow, the eternal disrupter, at Harvard, the epitome of the exclusivity he says he despises. Harvard doesn't need Michael Crow; it's already Harvard.

There's no indication Crow will leave anytime soon. Arizona is home now, and he’s not done with ASU yet, not until it's the "greatest public university known to man."

But realistically, he's 63. He may say he can't picture himself retired, but he's not going to be ASU's president forever.

Nobody is immortal, even those who constantly think about "Star Trek things" and throw spaghetti at walls to create change.

Rick Shangraw, chief executive officer of ASU Enterprise Partners I think what will characterize his success in the long term is what ASU is like three years after he leaves. Quote icon

And ASU doesn't need him forever, Crow said. People who work at the school believe in its mission now and are working to advance it, with or without him.

"I'm a mortal human being and I'll be returned to a different molecular state at some point," Crow said.

What happens next will define his true legacy, said Rick Shangraw, one of Crow's longtime colleagues. Shangraw has known him for almost 40 years and now works as the chief executive officer of ASU Enterprise Partners.

"I think what will characterize his success in the long term is what ASU is like three years after he leaves," Shangraw said.

Not slowing down

It's clear that ASU, its current iteration and its legacy are tied up with Crow as its leader. He's not a "back-at-headquarters general," he quipped. He's in the boat, rowing the oars. He's in the foxhole.

At an ASU football game against Stanford in October, Crow watched from a suite dubbed the "Crow's Nest" (he didn't name it). ASU alums, donors and a few members of the Board of Regents joined him. The First Lady of North Dakota was there (she's an ASU alum).

He flitted around the room, connecting people who should meet each other. He has an uncanny ability to remember details about people. But he also has a person in his office whose job entails building and advancing his relationships, so that's probably part of it.

After the third quarter, Crow high-tailed it to the field, where he watched the remainder of the game from behind the end zone with Ray Anderson, ASU's athletic director.

Ray Anderson, vice president for University Athletics (left), and ASU President Michael Crow talk during the ASU and Stanford PAC-12 college football game at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe on Oct. 18, 2018. David Wallace/The Republic

On the way down there, multiple people tried to stop Crow to shake his hand, say hello or snap a selfie, but he didn't slow down. Students pointed to him, saying "There's Crow!" and "Is he leaving early?"

This is Crow's end-of-game tradition, debriefing with Anderson on the field. ASU lost to Stanford.

Before leaving the stadium, he told me he planned to grab some gas-station taquitos, either at Circle K or QuikTrip. It has to be at one of the bigger Circle Ks, he says, because the smaller ones only have meat sticks.

After the game, Crow said he would go to the locker room with Anderson and the team. I wasn't allowed in, so I headed back to my car near Crow's office. I was exhausted — I had spent more than 13 hours with Crow that day, and it takes a low-key sprint to keep up with him.

As I walked up to my car, I saw Crow already in his, waiting to leave the parking garage. He somehow had made it to his car first, even with a locker-room stop.

I walked up to his car.

How'd you do that? I asked.

He shrugged.

"I walk fast."

Higher education reporter Rachel Leingang spent more than 26 hours in October through January with Arizona State University President Michael Crow. Leingang joined The Arizona Republic in 2018 to write about higher education. Her work focuses on watchdog coverage of public and private institutions, and the issues that affect the people who work and attend them. Leingang was named as a journalist of the year by the Arizona Newspaper Association in 2018. Her stories have won multiple awards and resulted in action from elected officials.

Have a Crow story to share? Reach out to Rachel Leingang at rachel.leingang@gannett.com or 602-444-8157. You also can follow her work on Twitter or Facebook.