Linda Katehi

Photo courtesy Purdue University

Linda Katehi is the UC Davis chancellor. She took office on August 17, 2009, succeeding Larry Vanderhoef, making her the sixth person to hold the office. UC President Mark Yudof appointed Katehi on May 1, 2009, and the UC Regents confirmed the appointment at their May 7 meeting. Katehi has presided over the university at a time of dramatic conflict and change over budget and policy issues. She has often been the target of intense criticism for her decisions.

An international furor brought Katehi to the brink of resignation in November 2011 after she ordered campus police to remove tents that students had peacefully set up in protest on the Quad. Images of unprovoked UCDPD officers casually pepper-spraying nonviolent protesters went viral online and quickly spread to regional, national and international news media. The news led to an uproar that culminated in one of the largest demonstrations in UC Davis history, as well as a petition with over 100,000 signatures demanding her resignation. Katehi apologized but refused to resign, instead putting the police chief and two officers on paid administrative leave and promising to assemble a task force to investigate the incident. Then on November 23, in an interview with the Sacramento Bee, Katehi said that she only told the campus police "to remove the tents or the equipment", that she told them "very specifically to do it peacefully, and if there were too many of them, not to do it, if the students were aggressive, not to do it. And then we told them we also do not want to have another Berkeley" (referring to the UC Berkeley protesters who were jabbed with nightsticks the week before, spurring the Occupy UC Davis movement).

In a number of forums after the pepper-spraying incident, Katehi stated that she had tried to meet with the students who were sprayed but was rebuffed. However, one of the pepper-sprayed students, Jerika Heinze, had a different story to tell. A Huffington Post blog entry by Professor Bob Ostertag describes how her repeated phone calls to the Chancellor's office (answered by a woman named Allison) yielded no reply. So, when Jerika heard that the Chancellor was set to testify at a hearing at the state Capitol on December 14, 2011, Jerika confronted the Chancellor in the corridor as she was leaving the hearing, a confrontation that was all over the local news. Finally, she got an appointment with Katehi; however, Katehi cut the meeting short, saying that it was like an "interrogation" and that she would meet with Jerika again on some unspecified future date. The Chancellor's office maintains that Jerika did not contact her office, even though she has the phone records and even though Bob Ostertag's call to the same number yielded a woman named Allison who answered, "Chancellor's Office."

Katehi's first exposure to student activism was in Greece, where she was born on the island of Salamis in 1954. The Athens Polytechnic uprising took place while she was attending the National Technical University of Athens, an experience she mentioned in her brief address at the Nov. 21, 2011 rally on the Quad. She graduated from NTUA in 1977 and made her way to the U.S. (though she retained a distinct Greek accent), where she received a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1984. She then became faculty at the University of Michigan and rose through the ranks to become associate dean for academic affairs. In 2002 she became dean of engineering at Purdue. In 2006 she became provost at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2009 she came to UC Davis. At Davis she has a joint faculty appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering and in the department of Women and Gender Studies.

In her engineering research, Katehi worked on MEMS devices — "Microelectromechanical systems" — on silicon chips. Some of her papers are about microscopic, mechanical versions of devices similar to old-fashioned radio dials (variable capacitors and tunable filters) and on-off switches (isolation switches). Her lab at Michigan produced hundreds of papers and a number of patents. While some have been surprised (there aren't that many female electrical engineers, especially those with experience needed to assume such a prestigious office), former Chancellor Denise Denton of UC Santa Cruz (who died in 2006) was also an EE.

She has commented on the California Master Plan in the Sac Bee, and written about her perspective on education and the federal government for The Huffington Post.

On April 15th 2010, Katehi eliminated four sports from UC Davis Athletics, cutting women's crew, men's swimming, men's indoor track, and men's wrestling. In June 2010, 100 students filed grievances with Student Judicial Affairs over the cuts. On June 24th, Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) wrote an open letter to Katehi calling into question the position of UC Davis and Title IX given the cutting of the women's crew team, saying "Certainly, some could argue that this action calls into question the sincerity of UC Davis’ commitment to gender equity during the 2009 settlement agreement negotiations." Florez plans to take the matter up in hearing in Sacramento on July 12th.

Partly because Katehi was hired at the beginning of the budget crisis, several newspapers reports and some state legislators drew attention to her starting total compensation (salary plus benefits) of $400,000, a 27% increase over Vanderhoef's compensation (WSWS, KTVU). For comparison, the two highest-paid UC employees are Cal football coach Jeff Tedford and UCLA basketball coach Ben Howland, each of whom has guaranteed compensation of $1,900,000 plus bonuses. Various UC doctors, and several other coaches and athletic directors, had compensation of $500,000 or more in 2000/10. The two highest administrative salaries at UC Davis are those of Ann Rice ($887,663), the CEO of the Medical Center, and Claire Pomeroy ($803,247), the vice chancellor of Human Health Services and CEO of the Health System. Along with other UC's top administrators, Katehi has taken at least a 10% pay reduction in the years following her appointment.

• Linda Katehi's blog at the Huffington Post.
  

• Home page of the UC Davis Chancellor.

• Master plan for higher education is alive and well, by Brice Harris and Linda Katehi
  

• UC Board of Regents names two new chancellors — UCLA Today
  

• New Chicago Tribune Report Appears to Directly Link Katehi to Scandal, published in the Vanguard by David Greenwald, was a failed attempt to connect Linda Katehi to to an admissions scandal at the University of Illinois. The final report of the Illinois Admissions Review Commission did not mention Katehi even once.

Comments:

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2009-08-28 03:23:44   Linda K. needs to revitalize this struggling campus. None of the new buildings being built look architecturally nice. WiFi is slow. The homepage is ugly. The financial aid people are b*tches. I have many more suggestions! —OscarWao

2009-12-23 16:54:14   her accent is THICK! —StevenDaubert

2010-07-10 14:41:37   Katehi has made decisions that have hurt many students in her first year. She should no longer have a job. She hurts more students than she helps. She has no idea what is best for student/athletes at UC Davis or the people who pay her salary. She is paid more than our President of the United States.... does anyone really think she is worth it ?? especially in a budget crisis? This is what is wrong with California... when under qualified people like Katehi make salaries that could pay three people generously. When will they start running State entities like a business that could actually be successful??? Katehi has a shady past from her former University and she is no good for California.

—B.West

2011-11-21 16:44:29   It just really disturbs me how she keeps trying to say that she cares about student safety, as if that doesn't contradict what actually happened.. She never seems to show compassion for the students who have been victimized by the point-blank shots of pepper spray. She just says stock phrases like "it's terrible" when questioned directly about it. I feel both simultaneously sorry and angry for her disillusionment. I don't blame her directly for the incident, but it's sad to see someone who is so cold and calculating in the face of it. She is paid a massive amount of money to represent the school. I would expect more; at least a heartfelt moment of sympathy, but she seems more concerned about her own safety. Unfortunately, she embodies the overall cold and impersonal experience I had at UC Davis. I enjoyed several of the professors, but the administration was as heartless as a robot. —ScottMeehleib

2011-11-21 17:33:06   Linda, this is going to sound inappropriate, but I just beat Mega Man 7 for the 3rd time in my life. I couldn't complete UC Davis but I could kick Dr. Wily's ass. UC Davis requires bags of money to attend and Mega Man requires passion, nerves of steel, and good hand-eye coordination. You should try it Linda. You are in my prayers, dear. —ScottMeehleib

2011-11-21 20:37:34   Regardless of how one might feel about the pepper spraying, I must say that Ms Katehi did a truly inspired job of throwing Chief Spicuzza under the bus for the incident. —JimStewart

2011-11-22 09:33:23   Yudof & Texas Gov.Perry & hyper-inflation

Gov. Perry brought in a fellow named Yudof to be chancellor of the UT system;
Yudof and Republican state senator Shapiro launched a campaign to amend the Texas constitution to repeal the regulation which prevented the state schools from increasing tuition by more than 3% per annum;
the constitution was changed and tuition at UT Austin went up > 100% within 2 years, as predicted in the business section of the Dallas Morning News.
Thanx Perry…it’s called hyper-inflation…you see Perry & Yudof wanted to turn UT Austin into a state operated concierge school, a Texas taxpayer funded Yale University...didn't tuitions surge in California after the arrival of Yudof
…and tuition's still surging at ALL PUBLIC Texas colleges thanks to YUDOF.

Kaheti is Yudof's creature.

Is Yudof an AH-nold appointee?

—Nativo