University of California President Janet Napolitano, who has championed immigrant students and sexual abuse victims but whose management of the UC system has sparked criticism, announced Wednesday she was resigning.
Napolitano, who has battled a recurrence ofbreast cancer, made the announcement at the UC regents meeting at UCLA.
) “It was a tough decision,” Napolitano said but added that “the university will benefit from some fresh blood.”
She said she was proud of increasing enrollment of California students by more than 17, 500 since 2015, supporting first-generation students and those in need of food, shelter and mental health services, and stabilizing undergraduate tuition. After her remarks, she received a standing ovation.
Napolitano became the first woman to lead the 10 – campus system in September 2013, Napolitano has enrolled historic numbers of California undergraduates. She has aimed to increase the number of qualified community college students who transfer to UC and expanded efforts to support California high school students from all backgrounds in their pursuit of a higher education.
Napolitano took particular interest in reforming UC’s sexual harassment and sexual assault policies.
In 2017,Napolitano led UC to file a lawsuitto stop the federal government rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Injunctions granted in the case have allowed more than 500, 000 DACA recipients – including members of the UC community – to renew their authorizations to live and work in the United States.
Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley noted that Napolitano was at first confronted with criticism by immigrant advocates when she joined UC because of her work as Homeland Security secretary overseeing then-record deportations. But in her role as university president she became a leader in immigration policies in higher education. “It was easy to follow you… you came into this … with a real moral authority,” he said.
Several regents praised her leadership. Regent Sherry Lansing, who headed the search committee that recruited Napolitano, said the president led the system with “great integrity, vision and fairness” and that it was far better off today then when she took the helm in 2013. “This is an extraordinary loss,” Lansing said.
During her tenure, Napolitano sparked a firestorm of criticism after a state audit found problems with her office’s financial management. She also was harshly criticized after her aides intervened in an audit’s effort to assess campus reaction to her office’s services.
Napolitano approved a plan instructing UC campuses tosubmit responses to confidential questionnaires for reviewby each college’s chancellor and her aides before returning them to the state auditor, according to a fact-finding report obtained by The Times. Those steps and others “constituted interference,” the investigation said.
Though Napolitano knew about the plan to review the survey responses, investigators said there was “insufficient evidence to conclude that she was aware of [the aides’] conduct in purposefully and systematically targeting unfavorable responses. ”
Prior to taking the UC helm, Napolitano served as Arizona governor from 2003 to 2009 andUS Homeland Security secretaryfrom 2009 to 2013 under President Obama.
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