UC-Davis Chancellor Says She’s Not Going Anywhere

An old controversy was made new last week, when records obtained by The Sacramento Bee showed that the University of California at Davis had paid a reputation-management firm at least $175,000 to scrub from the Internet postings about a 2011 incident in which a campus police officer pepper-sprayed a line of student protesters.

The revelation sent coverage of the incident to the top of Google’s suggested searches, and intensified long-simmering criticism of the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi. In March, Ms. Katehi resigned her seat on the for-profit DeVry Education Group’s Board of Directors after being criticized for her association with the company, which has been the subject of federal scrutiny.

And after the pepper-spray documents were made public, students and state lawmakers demanded that Ms. Katehi step down over the botched public-relations effort. For her part, the chancellor announced a series of public forums to address the issue.

Ms. Katehi spoke to The Chronicle about whether she can withstand the persistent controversies, and what’s ahead for her chancellorship. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity:

Q. After news of the university’s rebranding efforts emerged, do you think the planned public forums will help make amends on campus? How?

A. I think the issues the campus wants to discuss are more fundamental about how we manage our resources, what some faculty consider as the privatization of the institution, what has happened with state funds, and the increase in tuition and the ability of our students to have an affordable education.

This is what the campus wants to discuss. I believe that in those meetings, those public forums, we will take various of those topics and talk about what is happening on the campus, what our challenges are, and how we are going to move forward.

Q. Some lawmakers have called for you to step down. How will you convince them you should still lead the university?

A. I appreciate how the lawmakers worry about the management of the institution, but at the same time I think what is not very clear is how big our university is and the fact that we have a $4.3-billion budget. The amount of work that is happening on the campus, the amazing programs that have been accomplished, the fact that 55 percent of our students do not pay tuition because of the fund raising that we have been able to do very successfully.

What I’ve already started doing is meeting with legislators and trying to answer their questions and explain to them why, for example, I don’t want to call it a rebranding. We never wanted to erase anything, which is not even possible. The pepper spray was a very important incident or an event in our history. No one wants to forget it. What we want to do is learn from it. At the same time, what we want to do as an institution is highlight the amazing programs we have for our faculty, students, and staff.

Q. How would you respond to critics who say you haven’t been able to anticipate problems in the administrative decisions you make?

A. We are an institution of about 70,000 people. We are an institution that is trying to excel through many innovations, through very hard times, and I can tell you mistakes will happen. It’s impossible to run a university like this and try to move the university forward without any mistakes.

The most important thing is not trying to prevent mistakes from happening, of course, but increasing the accountability of the institution, the transparency, the ability to protect by trying to anticipate anything that could go wrong in an organization that is as big as this one, and so multifaceted. I think that cannot be done when at the same time we really want to move forward and make substantial change.

As a chancellor what I’m trying to do is learn from every event. For example, the pepper spray was a horrible incident in our history. But this time, after six weeks of occupation [of the chancellor’s office,] we were able to [reach a resolution] without any intervention of the police. It was a single result of what we’ve learned from the pepper spray. There are very few other places where occupations like this have been resolved without any other intervention.

Q. What do your advisers say? Are any saying you should step down?

A. No. In fact they are asking me to continue strong with the institution. They say the university has tremendous opportunities, and they are eager to move forward and do the amazing things that this university can do.

Q. Before the consulting-firm contracts came to light and were published by The Sacramento Bee, do you feel the university’s brand was repaired? Did you get your money’s worth?

A. First of all, that was a contract that came out of the communications department. I was not involved in it. We have 2,000 contracts that come out of this university every year.

What I knew at the time and what I know now is that we need to be better with social media, obviously, and we need to be better about our ability to talk about the wonderful things that we do.

It’s not about repairing the brand. The university has a brand, and it’s not identified by any particular event. Pepper spray was a horrible event. It’s part of our history, but it does not define UC-Davis. The only effort, and my interest, was to ensure that these wonderful things that we do become visible because this is how we recruit our faculty, our students, our parents. This is how we build the reputation of the university.

Q. Still, the language in the consulting contracts stated restoring the university’s brand as a goal.

A. The language of the contracts was so regrettable, and now that I have seen it — because I was not aware of these particular contracts — it really does not represent the intention of the institution. It’s ridiculous to believe that anyone could erase anything. I’m very disappointed in myself that those contracts were materialized.

Q. When university presidents step down, many decide it’s too difficult to separate the university’s goals from what has happened. Do you feel you’re at that point?

A. We are not at that point. I think the institution is very strong in what we do. We have tremendous work to go forward. Yes, there are times where we make mistakes. I make mistakes. The institution is trying very hard to do the right thing.

Q. What have you learned from the series of miscommunications?

A. There are different things to learn. About DeVry, I take responsibility. I accept the mistake I made. About the communications contract, we need to look at the communications department, that there is better oversight.

We will try to make sure that we put in the right checks and balances to accomplish that. One other thing is to have a better [communications] oversight that involves faculty, staff, and students.

Q. From a leadership standpoint, what have you personally learned?

A. I think that one area where we need to do better is communications and be proactive. As I said, the university is very large, and I cannot say that I can personally observe everything that is happening within every unit.

It is important that every individual at every level feels the same level of responsibility to make sure that things that have created issues and crises for us will not repeat again. And I, as a person, I will take it as my responsibility.

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is a web writer. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.