Chancellor Linda Katehi and two other UC chancellors are due to address the UC Board of Regents tomorrow (Wednesday, March 24) about recent acts of intolerance on their campuses.

The UC Office of the President announced that it will present a live video webcast of the regents’ morning session, starting with public comment at 8:30 a.m.

Then, perhaps as early as 9:10 a.m., UC President Mark G. Yudof, regents Chairman Russell Gould, Interim Provost Lawrence Pitts and Katehi and the other chancellors are due to begin a discussion of the hate crimes and other acts of intolerance on the Davis, Irvine and San Diego campuses.

Also due to participate is Christopher Edley, dean of the School of Law at UC Berkeley and a widely respected authority on civil rights issues, who is acting as a special adviser to UC President Mark G. Yudof and UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. One of Edley’s duties is to assist UC San Diego in implementing a campus climate action plan outlined in a March 4 agreement between students and the administration.

The regents’ webcast link: ustream.tv/regentsmeeting. The session will be archived at the same site, for later viewing.

The discussion is set for Day 2 of a regular three-day regents meeting, today (March 23) through March 25 at UCSF’s Mission Bay Community Center, 1675 Owens St. Audio of the entire regents meeting is due to be carried live online.

Gould has asked Chancellors Katehi of Davis, Fox of San Diego and Michael Drake of Irvine to report on the recent incidents on their campuses and what actions are being taken to ensure that these types of incidents do not occur in the future.

Swastikas and anti-gay graffiti

The UC Davis problems, committed or discovered since around mid-February: swastikas in residence halls, with one of the symbols carved into the door of a Jewish student’s room and another etched onto a bulletin board; four spray-painted swastikas around campus; and a graffiti attack on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, leaving it defaced with such words as “homos,” “fags” and “queers.”

A UC San Diego fraternity threw a “Compton Cookout” party in mid-February to mock Black History Month, and someone hung a noose from a light fixture in Geisel Library later in the month.

On Feb. 9, UC Irvine police arrested 11 students on charges of disturbing a public event: a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Katehi joined all of the UC chancellors, Yudof and Gould, and the Academic Sednate leadership in a Feb. 26 letter condemning “all acts of racism, intolerance and incivility.” She has issued two letters of her own, one on Feb. 24 in the wake of the carving of the swastika into the dorm room door, and another on March 1 after the graffiti attack at the LGBTRC.

“We must be constant and vigilant in our efforts to confront and reject all manifestations of the historical and deep-rooted prejudices and biases that remain in our society,” Katehi said in her March 1 letter. Later that day, at a town hall meeting, she again expressed her outrage over the anti-gay spray-painting and (at that time) the single swastika.

Since then, with the discovery of five more swastikas, Katehi is calling on the Campus Council on Community and Diversity to consider developing a plan of action to help lead UC Davis toward becoming a “hate-free campus.”

In addition, she has turned the second installment of her new Chancellor’s Colloquium series into a program on civility, featuring as speaker the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The talk by former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach is scheduled for 11 a.m. April 8 in Freeborn Hall, with the entire campus community invited.

Leach’s announced topic is “Civility in a Fractured Society,” consistent with the theme of a 50-state “civility tour” that he launched last November. “The increasing use today of the vocabulary of cultural wars and secession is deeply troubling,” he said. “We have a unique national culture with a mosaic of subcultures. A critical question is whether we treat our many cultural differences with dignity and respect and as opportunities to grow and learn, or as divisive traumas worthy of warring over.”

Katehi said Leach’s talk will be the first in a series of special programs celebrating the 20th anniversary of the UC Davis Principles of Community. The campus plans a resigning ceremony on April 13, during the annual Soaring to New Heights diversity celebration. Tickets must be purchased by March 31; more information.

In her presentation to the regents, Katehi plans to invite them to explore the campus’s new online, interactive Principals of Community tutorial, introduced earlier this year. The tutorial, Katehi said, shows “how helpful these principles are in our daily lives—and in creating a community where all members feel respected and valued for both their similarities and their differences.”

Katehi said the campus is exploring how to integrate the tutorial into the curriculum, and how best to get faculty and staff involved as well.

‘Hate-free campus’

On another front, Katehi would like to see UC Davis declare itself a “hate-free campus.” In announcing the proposal last week, Katehi said: “It is time for our university and campus community to come together to confront head-on this sort of regrettable and reprehensible behavior, not only with words but with a coordinated set of actions.

She said “this is the right time to focus the ongoing dialogue on a long-term plan for making our campus a safe, welcoming and supportive community.”

The Campus Council on Community and Diversity will take up Katehi’s proposal at a meeting on April 1, said Rahim Reed, the council’s co-chair and associate executive vice chancellor for Campus Community Relations.

At the April 1 meeting, Reed said, the council will continue a discussion that began at an emergency session on March 11, about developing an action plan to deal with the recent incidents of hate and bias “and to work toward making our campus more safe and welcoming for all campus members.”

Toward that end, Reed said, he aims to expand the council, with additional members of the faculty and student community, along with representatives from Hillel House (a campus organization for Jewish students) and Blacks for Effective Community Action.

Reed said the council will break into two committees to deal with the following subjects:

• Academic issues and concerns, such as general education requirements; curricular changes to promote cultural competency; recruitment of more faculty from underrepresented minorities; and increased recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented minorities, particularly African American.

• Student life (for example, campus climate, and issues related to students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or Jewish, or African American, or who are in any other marginalized group); and diversity training and professional development for faculty, staff and students.

Reed said the council also will review the issue of staffing and additional resources to support the recommendations made by Lesbian, Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center interns and the Black Student Union.

On the Net

More about Dean Edley's appointment as a special adviser.