SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California has a new leader. The regents on Thursday confirmed the nomination of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to be the system’s 20th president.
The first woman to hold this post, she will earn a base salary of $570,000, slightly less than the base of her predecessor, Mark Yudof, and nearly three times as much as she earned as a Cabinet secretary.
She begins in late September.
“I think we have in front of us a remarkable person of character,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a regent. “She has been a leader in every position she’s held.”
Last week’s announcement of the nomination surprised many, as most system presidents come from campus administrations. Napolitano acknowledged her unusual path to the UC presidency in her remarks to the regents after the appointment.
“I have not spent a career in academia. But that said, I have spent 20 years in public service advocating for it,” she said.
But some critics of the 55-year-old nominee were more concerned with her record on immigration as chief of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Napolitano earned the ire of the right and the left in Washington: Republicans accused her of letting too many noncriminal immigrants off the hook, and liberal advocates were upset by the growing numbers of immigrants detained for minor violations.
Protesters against immigration policy temporarily shut down Thursday’s meeting at UC San Francisco, and campus police cited and released six people on misdemeanor charges after they refused to leave the room.
“Undocumented is not a crime. Napolitano, it’s not your time,” chanted the demonstrators
Student Regent Cinthia Flores voted against Napolitano’s appointment, the only dissent. After congratulating the secretary for being the first female president and predicting she would be an able administrator, Flores said the leader’s involvement in deportations “will cast a long shadow on her future endeavors” at UC.
Others have been more optimistic about the new president. They hope Napolitano will bring to California the political magic that got the Democrat elected — twice — in the red state of Arizona and the administrative skill she used in a new and unwieldy federal department, the nation’s third-largest.
The president needs to be able to convey the value of the system and its needs to lawmakers and to Californians, said Robert Powell, chairman of the system’s faculty senate, who was consulted about the pick. Her election and re-election in Arizona showed that “she has a clear ability to talk to the public,” he said.
UC Berkeley’s new chancellor said she would do a spectacular job, noting that a system president’s tasks are distinct from the more deeply academic duties of a campus leader.
“She did wonders with Homeland Security, which is a huge bureaucracy, she was a great attorney general with the state of Arizona, and I think she was a superb governor who was able to find ways to support higher education in Arizona,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said in an interview this week.
Napolitano promised to be “UC’s strongest possible advocate,” in Sacramento and in Washington. She also sought to allay students’ concerns about her history in law enforcement, stressing her support for immigration reform and a path to citizenship for many who were brought to the country illegally as children.
“I would say to those students, documented or undocumented: We welcome all students to the University of California,” she said.
Staff writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this story. Follow Katy Murphy at Twitter.com/katymurphy.
