Letters: Napolitano’s challenges at UC

Re “Napolitano picked to lead UC,” and “Years of steering an unwieldy ship,” July 13

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is qualified for many top-level positions, but president of the University of California system is probably not one of them.

Napolitano is not an experienced academic. In an entrenched academic environment like UC’s, this amounts to a fatal flaw.

Further complicating her task is the fact that she is a partisan political personality, which cannot help but hamstring her in the president’s office. Even if she were somehow able to divorce herself from her previous political background, the perception of her as a political creature will persist while she is UC’s president.

Edward A. Shaw

Laguna Beach

Napolitano is a great choice to head UC. However, what jumped out at me in the article is the university system’s sheer numbers of faculty and staff.

UC has 230,000 students and 191,000 faculty and staff. How can such a large number of employees be justified? There’s almost one for every student.

To save taxpayers money, UC’s faculty and staff levels could be significantly and easily reduced.

Ray Uhler

Rancho Santa Margarita

President Obama praised Napolitano for “making our immigration system fairer and more consistent with our values.” I couldn’t disagree enough.

Really, separating families who wish to be together is consistent with the values of this country? Under Napolitano’s tenure, many hardworking undocumented immigrants, who had no criminal records, were ruthlessly deported, destroying their families in the process.

This kind of enforcement showed no pity or compassion for immigrants who just wanted to make their communities better with their labor. Frankly, these inhumane actions mock American values.

This is not the fair America that I know. Let’s have comprehensive immigration reform that can stitch these immigrants into the fabric of this country.

Chamba Sanchez

Silver Lake

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