40 days that sealed Mark Schlissel's fate: How University of Michigan fired its president

University of Michigan Regents Jordan Acker and Paul Brown used a Dec. 21 phone call to deliver a stern message to President Mark Schlissel: the board was moving to hire an outside law firm to investigate allegations he was involved in a romantic relationship with a subordinate.

Schlissel denied the allegation for the second time in 15 days, according to four sources familiar with the situation. Schlissel’s protest failed to avert a formal inquiry by Chicago-based Jenner & Block, whose discovery of emails and text messages spanning more than two years culminated in his firing last weekend as president of one of the nation’s pre-eminent public universities.