By Juan Gomez-Quiñones and Reynal Guillen
The naming of Janet Napolitano as University of California president must be rescinded. We object to the result and its very process. We object more to the possible consequences for what may follow for the University as an institution and for the University community.
We have asked ourselves and would ask others to appraise not only these deeds but also the consequences to the governance of the country’s university systems. We can start our questioning – our profession as professors – by considering where and to what extent the present University is beyond the mega-university of the 1960s and that in the judgment of a “master regent” you have a president’s favorite, Janet Napolitano, a cop and warden. Napolitano’s selection certainly marginalizes student schooling, faculty research and staff services programming.
Furthermore, the choice was decided by hands-on senior corporate and investment executives acting as authoritarian policymakers and administrative executors. The University is so large that mere curriculum and scholarship matters are sidelined, given the autonomy that the UC system possesses based on state constitutional grounds.
To be sure, lucrative hotels and sovereign corporate policy centers as well as entirely private professional schools are here or around the corner.Cardinal John Henry Newman’s esteemed essay on the virtues of the university in the 19th century reads like a script of unpracticed beatitudes of another time and place. Of course, in Newman’s day, colleges were staffed from within, and they were so small everyone probably knew all the gossip there was to know.
Today, there are practical reasons for keeping students and the rank and file away from these publicly funded proceedings within our public university in the naming of our publicly funded headmaster. The practices of confidentiality are a facade; the players know who their favored candidates are, their immediate staff knows and the candidates themselves know.Those who do not know are the chief stakeholders most affected by the decisions – faculty and students. Confidential protocols allow electors not to discuss any significant issue publicly.
No candidate is selected who does not resonate with those who actually choose; in fact, they are the very ones who are recruited. One advantage to naming someone with lesser experience is that he or she receives less scrutiny. There is less to talk about. Neither Napolitano’s record in Arizona or the beltway qualify her; in fact, they disqualify her.When Napolitano said she thinks education and faculty are “important” – besides being oxymoronic – it lets you know that cheekiness gets you a great salary.
Gomez-Quiñones is a history professor at UCLA and Guillen is a visiting scholar.