"UC Davis has a long tradition of promoting community, particularly our Principles of Community. We are a campus known for its civility and our commitment to respect, equality and freedom of expression runs deep."
Those are the words of UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P. B. Katehi, from less than a month ago. How those words relate to deeds (and budgets) is worth considering in light of what has happened on the Davis campus over the past several days.
Chancellor Katehi has had since the spring an occasionally updated blog entitled "Common Sense" highlighting events at the university. Many of these speak to the school as a center of progressive thought and values. One post lauds the UC Davis West Village as a "model for sustainability and innovation," and others tout the importance of meeting with students and providing able mentorship to future leaders.
As of November 21, the most recent post on Chancellor Katehi's "Common Sense" blog is about the school's Civility Project. I quote it in full:
The Civility Project
October 26th, 2011 @ 11:51 am by Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
UC Davis has a long tradition of promoting community, particularly our Principles of Community. We are a campus known for its civility and our commitment to respect, equality and freedom of expression runs deep. During the 2009-10 school year, UC Davis – as well as other UC campuses – experienced acts of intolerance and I vowed to take action to build an inclusive community. As we crafted our Vision of Excellence, we ensured that diversity and inclusivity were key components, and we took action to promote a hate- and bias-free campus.
We created a rapid response team to address hate and bias on both our Davis and Sacramento campuses; I led a delegation to the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance and Jim Leach, chair of the National Endowment for Humanities, brought his Civility Tour to UC Davis. As a result, we developed a far-reaching initiative now officially called Building a More Inclusive Community and the Civility Project was born.
The Civility Project was designed to use history and art to engage members of the UC Davis community in an examination of how incivility has been and continues to be manifested on campus and to explore alternative engagements in the future.
I encourage all members of our community to attend the public launch of the Civility Project – that will include an exhibition and theatre performance – on Thursday, Oct. 27 and continue to help build on UC Davis’ growth as an inclusive environment.
Read more about the Civility Project and register for the event.
These words seem easy to say when your power is not called into question; less than a month later, they drip with irony. This week Katehi stated that she: "deeply appreciates and defends robust and respectful dialogue as a fundamental tenet of our great academic institution and our Principles of Community," yet she has "a responsibility to our entire campus community, including the parents who have entrusted their students to us, to ensure that all can live, learn and work in a safe, secure environment without disruption. We take this responsibility seriously. We are accountable for what occurs on our campus. Campus policies generously support free speech, but do include limited time, place and manner regulations to protect health, safety and the ability of students, staff, and faculty to accomplish the University mission."
What is that University mission? In its Principles of Community, it states:
We affirm the inherent dignity in all of us, and we strive to maintain a climate of justice marked by respect for each other. We acknowledge that our society carries within it historical and deep-rooted misunderstandings and biases, and therefore we will endeavor to foster mutual understanding among the many parts of our whole.
We affirm the right of freedom of expression within our community and affirm our commitment to the highest standards of civility and decency towards all. We recognize the right of every individual to think and speak as dictated by personal belief, to express any idea, and to disagree with or counter another's point of view, limited only by university regulations governing time, place and manner. We promote open expression of our individuality and our diversity within the bounds of courtesy, sensitivity and respect.
We confront and reject all manifestations of discrimination, including those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, status within or outside the university, or any of the other differences among people which have been excuses for misunderstanding, dissension or hatred. We recognize and cherish the richness contributed to our lives by our diversity. We take pride in our various achievements, and we celebrate our differences.
We recognize that each of us has an obligation to the community of which we have chosen to be a part. We will strive to build a true community of spirit and purpose based on mutual respect and caring."
Are these just words, or do they have meaning? This morning, a couple days after having walked through a silent, peaceful refutation of her actions, she appeared on national television and said "I really feel confident at this point the university needs me."
Chancellor Katehi was trained as an electrical engineer in her native Greece. I confess that I am not an expert on the Greek educational system or what (if any) liberal arts requirements for history and philosophy were required for engineering students when she was a student. I am not sure whether she is aware that her blog shares a title with one of the most famous challenges to political illegitimacy in American history.
I speak of course of Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Paine railed against the illegitimate authority of the King of England over Americans, and his words were a rallying cry in the War of Independence. His words in their time and place most certainly disrupted business as usual. They led to action far more disruptive than a couple hundred students sitting peacefully in protest. It is not difficult to think that if Thomas Paine was alive and on the Davis campus in 2011, that he too would be pepper sprayed.
Perhaps Chancellor Katehi understands this better than I present here; the school's budget may belie its priorities. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the average salary of a tenure-track assistant professor at UC Davis is just under $79,000, or about $30,000 less than its police lieutenants. If a society's values are reflected in its budget, what does that say about the values in place at the University of California at Davis?
These are the times that try men's souls. Woe if Chancellor Katehi quotes that line to refer to herself in her version of Common Sense. We shall see how long she maintains that she has legitimacy to stay on as Chancellor of the University of California's Davis campus.