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Public university administrators are not protected by limited liability when their actions serve only to graciously compensate themselves.
By Roman Rivilis
Students came back to administrative chambers to create a space of occupation once again. Embracing the legal privileges of being the chief executive of a public university, Linda Katehi batted an eye at the students occupying her front door, continuing to move to her next meeting. Later during the week, she sent out an email to the entire UC Davis community, plainly identifying herself with a strategic appeal to authority: “As a woman and a STEM scholar, my service has helped to correct the chronic lack of diversity on a number of boards.” Her restrictive overture in defining her identity as a woman in STEM breeds a more insidious form of sainthood, blending a paternalistic plea for diversity with nominally progressive language. As a result, Chancellor Linda Katehi’s vast litany of false virtues transcends word of mouth; it is now observable by every student without the context of her history.
Never mind this progressive posturing when in cases of sexual violence, Katehi prioritized the specter of lawsuit before the safety of survivors. In one such Title IX case, Katehi responded to an anonymous student in the presence of an attorney, “we have to be careful not to get sued.” The summer before in 2015, she penned an article in the Huffington Post, zealously pledging “not to rest until sexual violence disappears from our campuses and communities.” This dualistic continuity does not begin with her time at UC Davis.
Most notably, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign waded through a scandal in May 2009 involving what was known as a “clout list” – an admissions category of roughly 800 students connected to politicians or affluence that were admitted despite lower performance. Katehi’s involvement in this scandal, as the provost at the time, pegs her long track record of refusing accountability. Katehi was included in 14 of the 1,800 documents, continuing to plead that she had no involvement in the admissions process, and was not made aware of the emails that surfaced. This protocol of quiet complicity never fades away; instead of demanding a conscientious rebuke of her own participation as well as that of her colleagues in corrupt admissions practices, she insulates herself entirely from any wrongdoing in an effort to wipe the slate clean upon her new role as Chancellor.
2009. The Regents of the University of California heralded a tuition hike of 32%, prompting organizing spaces in University of California campuses to resist suffocating rises in costs of attendance. Students fought back. At UC Davis, students occupied Mrak Hall, a tower where the highest level of university administrators reside. 51 students and a faculty member that participated in the occupation were all arrested. 51 of those 52 saw charges dropped against them. Katehi’s term at UC Davis began.
In 2011, students filled the wide expanse of the Memorial Union quad in solidarity with the Occupy movement. Chained to one another as law enforcement approached, several students were viciously bear maced by Lt. John Pike. Shedding herself of any blame, Chancellor Katehi defaulted to misdirection rhetoric and claimed that Officer Pike went against her orders, a statement obscuring the burden on her authority to lead and manage all efforts to respond to protests. Prior to this incident, Katehi served on an advisory panel in December 2010 which terminated a longstanding asylum law in Greece that prevented police from intruding upon college campuses. The two events, however separate, inextricably connect to one another on contextualizing Katehi’s protocol with student movements. This blatant use of force may not have been by a weapon in her hand – but it was by her orchestrating the incident that we see the responsibility trickle up to her. That’s because her weapon was the utility of executive authority, and Lt. Pike was only one of the instruments at her disposal.
Then we see Chancellor’s service to the board of John Wiley and Sons from 2011-2014. John Wiley and Sons, known to cartelize the market with marked up sale prices for its textbooks, is also the vendor that the UC buys into the most for its textbooks. Wiley and Sons comprises 6.3% of the entire UC Davis market share for textbook publishers. In winter quarter 2016, 49 courses used textbooks from Wiley and Sons, and 3,497 students in total enrolled in courses using these textbooks. Over the span of her three years of service at Wiley and Sons, Katehi received $421,215 for her patronage. This amount includes return on stocks from the publisher.
A price-fixing scheme based on textbook purchases went directly to Katehi’s pocket; this blatant abuse of monopoly is one in which we define as rent-seeking, entirely dependent on the students feeding into her windfall. The mathematics cannot be twisted; if we are to reclassify Katehi’s role as a private executive, this would be considered profit, but as a public employee, this is nakedly disguised looting and fraud from thousands of students.
Her crime never ended there, either. In the campus-wide email Katehi sent out on March 17, she mentions the following:
“I will establish a $200,000 scholarship fund for California undergraduate students at UC Davis from my Wiley stock proceeds.” Never mind that she still profits from half of those proceeds, keeping them pocketed into her salary. Perhaps, most egregious, however, is the use of a private monopoly to compensate her highway robbery. Serving on the board in the first place is a clear conflict of interest by siding with private interests at the expense of students, but the Chancellor takes it further with a bribe with textbook sale funds, committing a total erasure of history and soothing her own private interests with a false revisionist narrative of charity.
To pour salt on the wounds, she audaciously proposes that, “my work on the board had no impact on UC textbook purchases.” Speaking strictly from looking at the market economics, being a part of the top 50% of the market share is a strong position for publishers to mark up prices; which is exactly the case of Wiley and Sons, rendering the Chancellor a quiet participant in legitimizing the price-fixing of the private sector. All at once, the twin crimes of bribery and deception are at play, all for the sake of marketing.
Her charity does not add up to her history. Katehi recently accepted an appointment to the board of directors on the DeVry Education Group, providing her with an additional salary of $70,000, in addition to $100,000 in stock options. DeVry recently fell to an enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission, which investigated the for-profit education board’s use of advertising to boldly deceive its consumers about their earnings and job security after enrolling in its programs. After eight days of appointment, Katehi stepped down as a result of public pressures, later suggesting in email that her directorship “did not comply with UC policy,” a statement dubiously grounded when given the fact that UCOP approves all appointments to governing boards external to the UC. By this token, we can argue that if it did go against UC policy, it’s a count of malfeasance in office. If it did not violate UC policy, and it served Katehi’s private interests, then the term on DeVry was a fraudulent one by virtue of her testimony.
Katehi continued to moonlight on the board of King Abdulaziz University from 2012-2013. KAU is most notorious for its recruitment practices, which include monthly compensations of $6,000-7,000 on top of free stays in five-star hotels in Saudi Arabia in order to inflate the rankings of the university. The purpose of its recruitment is to attract those in academia with the highest citations so that they may serve as adjunct faculty for the university. Katehi defended her role in this process by claiming that she was “unpaid” and “did not participate in any meetings.”
When no profit can be generated from service on governing boards, the other reward to digest is deeper connections, all similarly wealthy to one another. Some of the noteworthy colleagues on the same board include E. Gordon Gee, the former president of Ohio State University, who before retiring in 2013, was awarded nearly $6 million by the university on top of a $802,125 salary and a compensation package valued at $1.6 million.
Katehi’s narrative logically does not add up: she claims to not have attended any meetings, but her term on the board was still authorized and she even stated her purpose: “My goal was to increase student diversity.” In what capacity has she increased diversity on a board she never attended? Moreover, what does she define as diversity in the context of her appointment? The answer is this: She did not mention diversity until now. It was never her goal. Katehi casually skipped an instance of fraud on her record and gently enabled the university’s deceptive recruitment practices, reminiscent of her denialist perspective on the admissions practices of UIllinois. And just like UIllinois, she conveniently disengages from any ethical posturing; she just escapes when it serves her to do so.
When embarrassments happen, political gestures of politeness and compromise are de riguer. Instead of accepting responsibility, the Chancellor bloviated in order to distract anyone from reading between what she actually wanted everyone to know.
Methodical politesse and institutional failure are not mutually exclusive; they are two sides of the same coin. When downtrodden by visibly irresponsible behavior, Chancellor Katehi takes the familiar approach of satisfying the moral high ground with her personal achievements, in order to mask political obscurantism. Some may say that her attempts to bolster her marketing are an act of genuine dedication to the student interest, but these illusions invite more dangerous forms of complacency. To couch one’s rhetoric in embrace of the reality that the university administration is unassailable and instead must reprieve with better marketing and outreach is little else but a tacit endorsement for the crimes they committed.
Making matters worse, Katehi’s behavior is entirely sanctioned and civilized by the Regents – because it caters to the entire compensation scheme that keeps her salary competitive. Regents Policy 7707 enumerates that additional benefits are given to senior management positions in the university, such as the Chancellor, by associating “with external educational and research institutions, not-for-profit professional associations, federal, state and local government offices and private sector organizations.” When Katehi discusses UC policy, those “private sector organizations” she glosses over the consequences of are just a part of business in the UC. Instead of publicly denigrating any thinly veiled racketeering done in part to line the Chancellor’s income, UCOP can only respond as though this is “unfortunate,” not that this is a “crime.” That type of public consciousness has no place in service to corporate boards that, as the policy describes, “may provide a stimulus for economic development and enhanced economic competitiveness.”
This trail of wayward shadows follows the Chancellor at every step, revealing that her history of malfeasance started far before her tenure at UC Davis. If we are to understand the genus of the public university administrator, then one of its species – the corporate executive – must strive for extinction. The students, lined up in assembly line to pay tuition into the waste economy created by Chancellor Katehi’s attempts at rent-seeking, should be the ones to lead the vision of the Chancellor’s replacement. In this process, we must find the species forgotten in time: the leader of the public interest. If the public is to set the standard for what university leaders should be, then the decision to indict Linda Katehi in a court of law for her crimes must be seriously considered.
Roman Rivilis is a former ASUCD Senator
Good piece. Not sure “indict” is the right word, but her questionable judgment stands out.
Perfectly pointed out who is Katehi.
[moderator] edited. Please adhere to the Vanguard Comment Policy. https://davisvanguard.org/about-us/comment-policy/
I couldn’t be a more outspoken voice for the removal of Katehi since 2011.
However, what the F— does the above sentence mean?!?!?!
It means you need to go back to college and take liberal arts classes
Odd comment. There was nothing in my question that remotely requested the solicitation of advice from anonymous commenters regarding my future educational path.
You make her sound like Hillary Clinton.
Hmmmmm . . .
Flag on the field
Is it a socialist flag?
nah… not a “red” flag, just a yellow… unless it’s a “green”…
Katehi’s problems here reminds me of the problem that law enforcement is dealing with.
Call it the “Made Friends with Crazy People” problem.
All state college administrators protect their inflated numbers and high compensation by maintaining their close political relationship with the political forces of the left… a political side that has grown more crazy every year. Pay teachers a lot and a lot more, and it is easier to justify those mega administrator salaries and millionaire benefits.
Police too follow this model to some degree. They have traditionally kept close relationships with left-leaning politicos that vote to keep their pay and benefits as rich as possible.
Unfortunately the crazy left has exploded on both and they are both paying the price.
Frankly
“Call it the “Made Friends with Crazy People” problem.”
I would call it something else entirely. Given that I do not believe that KAU is a bastion of liberal craziness, can we not ever call anything just plain greed. I have no idea what the Chancellor’s personal politics are. But it is not difficult to see that ,as part of a couple making an aggregate income of well over $500,000 yearly from their UCD jobs, she probably is not in actual need of additional income. The “probably” was included because I do not know how many dependents they have or how much they give to charitable causes. And yet, the Chancellor chose to keep the proceeds from her outside affiliations until this practice was made public. Yes, it is true that policy encourages them to participate in these outside activities, but there is absolutely nothing that says that they must keep the proceeds themselves. As the very well compensated head of a university, she threw away such an opportunity to teach and lead by example. The proceeds could have gone to any number of projects or funds that could have benefitted her constituency, namely the students.
This is almost certainly pure greed which knows no political boundaries. There are greedy individuals on the political right just as surely as there on the political left.
The article says “John Wiley and Sons… is also the vendor that the UC buys into the most for its textbooks”, yet the article linked directly after says Wiley is the third largest vendor (23.7% vs. 6.3%). That same link also says Wiley is 4th cheapest (out of the 5 largest vendors), which doesn’t exactly convince me of a “price-fixing scheme based on” “marked up sale prices for its textbooks”.
“Most notably, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign waded through a scandal in May 2009 involving what was known as a “clout list” – an admissions category of roughly 800 students connected to politicians or affluence that were admitted despite lower performance.”
The Left routinely pushes for campuses to admit students who have lower performance, as long as it meets their ideological goals. But campuses don’t have the same rights?
TBD
“The Left routinely pushes for campuses to admit students who have lower performance, as long as it meets their ideological goals. But campuses don’t have the same rights?”
I don’t know what “Left” you are referring to here but I do know that this is not a matter of “rights”. Nor was it a matter of policy. I have no problem with matters of policy that are open for all to see whether involving some form of affirmative action, or adjustment of entry requirements designed for a specific diversity goal as long as the policy is transparent. That was not what this list was. It was a list of exemptions for children of the rich, privileged and/or otherwise well connected. I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of rewarding those who already have the greatest privilege and then attempting to hide the fact.
Tia (who reads the Vanguard talking about right and left wing issues every day) wrote:
> I don’t know what “Left” you are referring to here
Will you respond that you “really had no idea what “left” TBD was referring to?
> I have no problem with matters of policy that are open for all to see whether
> involving some form of affirmative action
Can you name a single school in America that has (or ever had) an “open” diversity or affirmative action policy that actually lists a minimum GPA or SAT score for the “people of color” (or athletes) they admit to the schools?
Are we playing word games here? “Left” can include Democrat / Progressive / Anarchist / Socialist Democrat (i.e. Bernie Sanders) / Socialist / Communist / Big Government advocate.
You seem to interchange “policy” with “exemptions” to meet your goals.
Diversity goals are clear as mud. The supposed policies also make no sense, because if we are really going to recruit the under-represented, then we need to start recruiting the under-represented white students to UCD. Further, I’m not sure why we are giving affirmative action to many individuals when they or their families never went through slavery. Affirmative action is another supposed tool to pass out goodies for the Left in the dream of a utopian society.
BTW, isn’t a black high school student with a 3.6 GPA who knows an administrator in Mrak Hall “well connected”? Yet we will give them an exemption, even when their parents may be rich, over asian or white students who come from poor families. Makes no sense.
Should we really offer affirmative action to the children of black or brown millionaires? To the children of Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, or Dr. Ben Carson? That makes zero sense.
Some of what Chancellor Katehi has done has poor optics, some of this is rehash and fluff, and then I also have the feeling that we’re now dealing with this entitled youth madness that has again been unleashed by the BlackLivesMatter / George Soros / transgendered / ethnic studies / iPhone / me-me-me / Socialist Bernie Sanders utopian mantra.
Which is why the Mrak Hall “demonstration” morphed into stalking innocent Mrak Hall employees while they cobble in the transgendered restroom signage issue.
They’re angry, they’re entitled, many act like spoiled little brats, and they have iPhones and about 2 inches of knowledge. And now they can tape it, snapchat it, twitter it, and endlessly feed their egos.
Well stated. It no way represents most of the campus students.