Pepperdine President Speaks Out

David Davenport, 42, president of Pepperdine University.

Claim to fame: A law professor and Churches of Christ minister, he was among the nation’s youngest university presidents upon being named in 1985 to head Pepperdine at 34. Teaches course titled: “Strategy and Rhetoric of Modern Presidential Campaigns.” Immediate past president of American Assn. of Presidents of Independent Colleges and Universities. Chairs the Merchants and Manufacturers Assn. of Los Angeles and serves on the boards of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Background: Davenport was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Kansas, where his family owned a bakery. As an international relations student at Stanford, he interned on the staff of Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kans.) and the White House executive office staff during the Nixon Administration. After obtaining a law degree from the University of Kansas, he practiced law and was minister at several churches in the Los Angeles area and San Diego. He began teaching at Pepperdine in 1980, becoming general counsel in 1981 and executive vice president in 1983. He and his wife, Sally, have three children.

Interviewer: Times staff writer Ron Russell.

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Q Pepperdine has about 3,500 students on its Malibu campus. Under the long-range development plan approved by the California Coastal Commission, the university could, if it wishes, double its enrollment. Do you foresee that happening?

A No, I really don’t. The strategic plan for Seaver College, (the university’s liberal arts school), is for (its 2,600-student) enrollment basically to remain steady. Looking 10 to 15 years out, I can’t see Seaver being more than 10% or 20% different than it is today.

I think the law boom will cycle through and that our (700-student) law school in 10 years will actually be smaller than it is today.

The only growth that I anticipate is in our MBA program. We presently have about 250 (MBA) students (on the Malibu campus), and when we develop the (upper campus) and put a new building up there, we plan for it to accommodate about 500 students.

There has been talk of an engineering program. I don’t think we would do a full-blown (one). I’m interested in developing a public policy component, but we’re talking about a school for maybe 50 or 100 graduate students there.

Q So how do you see the Malibu campus changing over the next 10 years?

A Basically, our plan is to provide infrastructure for existing students.

For example, our two biggest (liberal arts) divisions--business and communications--don’t have permanent facilities. Communications students are in trailers. The business students are in the basement of the library, and someday we’re going to need that space for books.

So I believe we will build a permanent building for business and communications. We plan to further develop our student recreation village. More students want to live on campus, which is a good sign, so we’re going to build another dorm and try to expand the law school student apartments. We’re also going to have to do some off-street parking.

Q It’s no secret that there is widespread community distrust of the university’s expansion plans. How do you account for that?

A The problem stems from the Coastal Commission’s having told us about 10 years ago that general plans were going to be drawn to resolve Malibu growth issues for a long time. It was therefore incumbent on us to draw up a long-range development plan of our own for the campus.

(Looking at it over the long run), we felt like we could have twice as many students as we have here today. I basically oppose growth at Pepperdine, so it’s not going to happen on my watch. But who knows who will be president in 50 or 100 years? Looking that far out, we did not want our hands tied.

The difficulty is that Malibu people perceive that we’re getting ready to massively (expand) the campus, which we’re not.

Q Do you feel the university has made progress in patching up relations with the community?

A We’ve made some. We had a very useful session last year where we invited the Malibu Planning Task Force to campus for one of their regular meetings. We had students, administrators and others come and speak, and that opened a dialogue.

We’re probably going to have to bring groups into the campus, almost one at a time, to show them what we are about. People tend to develop a monolithic view of things they don’t know. We’re a lot more complex, and not nearly as political and business-oriented as some people think.

Q A big part of the town-gown problem stems from the university’s having aligned itself with Los Angeles County government’s past efforts to build a big sewer in Malibu. How did that alliance come about?

A As you know, there are no sewage plants in Malibu. When Pepperdine was built in the early ‘70s, we built our own plant. In the early ‘80s, we went to the county with a request to expand our plant, and they said no because they had on the books this major (sewer) plan and felt we were a major player to help them get (it).

Basically, we were required by Deane Dana and the others on the Board of Supervisors to play ball.

They said: “We’re not going to approve the expansion of your plant. You’re going to have to go (our) route.” From the beginning we would have preferred to expand our own plant. We had less expensive options than what the county wanted.

We felt used by the county in the process, but on the other hand, we weren’t really free to make a lot of speeches on the subject.

Q Won’t the university need the cooperation of Malibu to expand the waste-water facilities it needs in order to expand?

A Probably not. The plant is on campus, and, indeed, (city officials) have not expressed any concern about our expanding (the plant). So I guess we’re not unhappy that the county thing has fallen apart because we have other solutions that are cheaper and more low-key than what the county had in mind.

Our feeling is that we got caught in a political battle between the county and Malibu, and so once the lines got drawn, we sort of got dragged into it.

Q The university, through its entities Wave Property Inc. and Wave Enterprises Inc., invested heavily in commercial real estate in Malibu at the same time it was allied with the county to promote the sewer and delay incorporation. In hindsight, was that a mistake?

A In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done it.

The notion was that here were two good parcels of property that we knew something about and that would give us a normal rate of investment return. If the projects had gone forward we would have realized a few units of faculty housing (on one of the parcels), which is one of our biggest needs.

That’s why we did it in the first place. We’re not developers. We don’t want to develop those tracts. We wish we didn’t have them. We want to get rid of them. But we’re not in the kind of market where you can sell very easily.

Q Your critics have asked why, if faculty housing was the main goal, you didn’t just spend $4 million to build housing instead of investing the money in a condominium project that, as it turned out, fell through because the developer went bankrupt.

A Well, first of all, we didn’t think we were losing the $4 million. When you look at a university’s budget you don’t have many pots of $4 million you can just go spend. But do you have $4 million you could loan if it were reasonably secured? Sure, and that’s really how that came about.

We don’t have money to spend on faculty housing. Even with what we’ve built on our own campus, we pass that cost through to the faculty.

Q You’ve spoken about the university’s efforts to increase diversity on campus and to combat the one-dimensional perception of Pepperdine as a “Christian school.” Is there a similar sensitivity to the refrain that Pepperdine is a “Republican university”?

A That’s a moniker that bothers me more than theChristian. I embrace the Christian one, but I don’t embrace the Republican one, because I don’t think it’s appropriate for the university to have a distinct political orientation.

At our last homecoming dinner, we had a comedian who chided me about the (presidential) election, the joke being that we all kind of know that Dr. Davenport doesn’t necessarily share the politics of Pepperdine.

Although I’m a Christian and a member of the Church of Christ, and I came to Pepperdine to combine my interests in law, education and religion, I’m not a conservative Republican. I don’t really think it’s appropriate for a school to have in its educational program that kind of strong flavor.

Q What are your politics?

A I’m basically a moderate. I’m registered as a Republican, but in presidential elections I’ve voted for one Democrat, two Independents and three Republicans, so it’s kind of eclectic.

Q And the last election?

A I finally voted for George Bush, but I supported no one. I actively campaigned for no one.

Q I should think Pepperdine’s Republican Party connections would be the envy of administrators at any number of private institutions. You’ve had a former Republican President and a former chairwoman of the party’s national finance committee on your board of regents, and a steady stream of party luminaries have been involved in fund-raisers. How does that square with your desire for political independence in the classroom?

A Here’s the way I view it. I don’t really have a problem if we end up having more Republicans than Democrats speak to our fund-raising dinners, and maybe this is wrong, but I don’t really feel it’s my mission in life to educate donors broadly--I mean, they have their views, and there’s no need to offend them.

On the other hand, what we do on campus is somewhat different. Our purpose is to expose students to a broad educational program.

I’ve had (state Sen.) Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) on campus to speak maybe five times. I think students need to hear him, or (Rep.) Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) or Senate Majority Leader (George J.) Mitchell (D-Me.), who spoke on campus last year.

The (Republican) perception is bound to be reinforced when you have the kind of home-run speakers we can book because a Margaret Brock (a Pepperdine booster and former chairwoman of the GOP finance committee) is gracious enough to call Barbara Bush and ask her to come and speak.

We don’t have that entree with Hillary Clinton.

Q Speaking of Republican luminaries, do you hear from former President (and ex-Pepperdine Regent) Ford often?

A He’s had a couple of knee surgeries that have slowed him down. It got to the point where he couldn’t get to L.A. as often as he wanted, and he called and said: “I love Pepperdine and want to help, but I’m not making the meetings. What should I do?” We have elected him an (honorary) life regent, and he has agreed to be involved as circumstances permit.

Q And Ronald Reagan?

A We have a standing invitation for him to come and speak, and he has taken us up on that once already.

Q Is it true that Pepperdine was considered as a site for the Reagan Presidential Library?

A There was a feeler. I think it came from (the late former Atty. Gen.) William French Smith. I said the only place we could put you is up on the mountain, and with one ring road, you’re not going to be happy, and our students and others aren’t going to be happy having all your visitors.

They had essentially just gone through being kicked off the Stanford campus and weren’t interested in another round of campus politics, so the idea was dismissed very quickly.

Q Pepperdine has been a pioneer in providing MBA degrees for mid-career professionals through its several centers away from the Malibu campus. Now that aerospace and defense companies are scaling back, how are those programs likely to be affected?

A At the moment we’re feeling pretty challenged. Obviously the economy is tough in our area. Many of our students in the business programs have their tuition reimbursed by corporations, and that sort of help is declining. At the same time we know the Southern California economy is restructuring. We think small and medium-size businesses are going to be a larger part of L.A.’s future, and there needs to be ways to prepare people for that role, as opposed to just the large corporate role.

We’re experimenting with specialized degrees that go beyond the more general MBA. For example, we now offer a master’s in science and technology management through our business school for people with engineering or technical backgrounds but who are now managing businesses. We’ve also started a master’s in international business.

Q How do you rate the Clinton Administration’s education proposals so far?

A Most college presidents, including me, are generally encouraged that the Administration seems to have a real focus on education. We can only look at the early signs, but in terms of rhetoric and programs, it is encouraging.

I’m supportive of the initiative for a National Service Program to allow students to pay back government loans in the form of public service.

Q Do you think such a program would have much impact on expensive private schools such as Pepperdine?

A I really do. Kids today easily graduate with $30, $40, $50,000 worth of debt. In a school like Pepperdine, it costs $20,000 a year basically for an education. If you can get significant help on even half of your educational debt, I think that would be an incentive.

Q Your sports programs have been phenomenally successful, including national championships last year in baseball and men’s volleyball. The men’s basketball team plays in a facility that accommodates about 2,500 people. Are there plans to push the basketball program to a higher level?

A People tempt us with that. But I’m not for it.

We already have good visibility because we play the UCLAs and Stanfords. The only thing you could do would be to have a big facility and go after more television exposure. Our view is that Malibu is not a good place for a big facility because of its geography and accessibility.

If we wanted to go big-time in basketball, the only way to do it would be to go somewhere else and build an arena, such as Thousand Oaks or Ventura. And then you’ve diminished one of the big pluses of an athletic program: school spirit. You don’t want to take a sport such as basketball and transplant it 20 miles away.

Q What about football?

A I’m always asked that by alumni whenever I travel around the country, and I’m very clearly on the record. We’re not going to have a football team, and we’re not going to have a medical school. There are just certain things we don’t do.