Shortly before leaving for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, University of California President Janet Napolitano told California radio station KQED that she would bring the University’s values of “openness and tolerance” with her to the Russian coast.
Napolitano led the high-profile U.S. delegation at the Feb. 7 opening ceremony, which notably included a number of openly gay athletes appointedby President Barack Obama – a move widely interpreted as a protest by the White House of Russia’s controversial anti-“gay propaganda” laws.
With several sensitive issues at play, including uncertainty surrounding the security preparations at the Winter Olympics and suggestions that President Obama’s absence from the games was a snub to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Napolitano’s post was met with a high level of public scrutiny.
While this board previously criticized Napolitano for failing to draw proper attention to her position at the UC while appearing on the national stage, the UC president’s handling of this especially politicized position was commendable, both as a representative of the nation and the University.
Napolitano is the first individual in more than a decade other than the U.S. president, vice president or a presidential family member to lead the U.S. delegation for an opening ceremony.
While Napolitano is the first UC president to lead an Olympic delegation, she is no stranger to the games. In 2010, she co-led the closing ceremony delegation at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In the United States, the run-up and beginning of the Sochi games were marked by press coverage that focused almost exclusively on security concerns and on detailing the hotel conditions of Olympic visitors. Prominently, the Twitter handle @SochiProblems, which highlights and pokes fun at Sochi’s accommodations for the game, went viral as foreign news media arrived in Russia and posted photos of the conditions in local hotels.
But in her comments to the news media, Napolitano repeatedly shifted focus from the narrative of pessimism that accompanied Sochi’s debut to the athletes and the spirit of harmony that should define the Olympics.
In so doing, she emphasized another key UC value: respect. Respect for the athletes, and despite clear disagreements with the discriminatory policies of the host country’s government, respect for the occasion and intent of the games.
Napolitano remains a figure of national and international importance, and as such is asked to weigh in with expert opinion and measured judgment on a range of issues that would stump many others.
Sochi demonstrated the difficulties that arise when an individual is asked to juggle multiple public roles. Napolitano did so skillfully, and as a representative that both the United States and the UC can be proud of.