Ex-Western Digital Chief Endowing New Chair at UCI

Roger W. Johnson, the former CEO of Western Digital Corp. who also ran the federal General Services Administration under President Clinton, has donated $500,000 to endow a chair in social ecology at UC Irvine.

The endowment, announced to coincide with a town hall meeting March 20 that will include an address by Vice President Al Gore, is to support an appointment to pursue unspecified research and lectures on the interactions between people, society and the environment, said Karen J. Salz, director of external relations for UCI’s School of Social Ecology.

The endowment carries the name, the Roger W. and Janice M. Johnson Chair in Civic Governance and the Social Ecology of Public Management. Salz said the search for the chair’s first appointment will begin immediately.

“We anticipate that the chair-holder is going to be selected during the 1998-99 academic year,” Salz said. “I would think it would be someone that has public policy experience, management experience, a very strong academic background.”

Neither Roger nor Janice Johnson could be reached for comment, but Roger Johnson has an established interest in applying private sector business practices to government.

“I am optimistic that the government inefficiency I observed during my years in Washington can be overcome, and I believe that a university environment--far removed from the politics and bureaucratic obstacles that interfere with problem-solving in Washington--is the best place to begin the process of change,” he wrote in a paper explaining the endowment.

“I am particularly excited about the questions that will be raised as people begin to closely examine what’s wrong with management in government and consider the ways it needs to be reformed,” he wrote.

Johnson left Irvine-based Western Digital to go to Washington in 1993 as part of Clinton’s program to “reinvent government.” Johnson earlier had angered fellow Orange County Republicans by backing Clinton, and as head of the GSA was the highest-ranking Republican in the Clinton administration before switching to the Democratic Party.

He left the GSA in March 1996 amid accusations that he had used his position for personal gain. He was cleared after an investigation but the experience left an impact.

“The way the system works, it allows a very small minority to cause a great deal of trouble,” Johnson said last May when he was cleared of wrongdoing. “They are immune from being held responsible for what they say or do. It’s a system that destroys people’s lives by innuendo. It’s a bipartisan disease.”

Mark Baldassare, a professor in the School of Social Ecology, said Johnson’s ideas for the new chair “are really at the heart of what’s wrong with government today. . . . People have lost faith in their government because it’s poorly managed at so many different levels.”

Baldassare, who was involved in the discussions that led to the endowment, said Johnson chose UCI rather than a traditional school of policy because of its reputation for innovative research.

The town hall meeting scheduled for later this month, called Restoring Confidence in Government Through Professional Management, involves two panels of academics, policy experts and private and public administrators discussing issues of management and accountability.

It will feature a keynote address by Gore, who spearheaded the Clinton administration’s program for shrinking the federal government.

The Johnsons’ endowment is the second for the School of Social Ecology, which has about 2,000 undergraduate and 130 graduate students. As a discipline, social ecology explores the relationships between people and their everyday environments, Salz said.

The other endowment, the Drew Chace and Erin Warmington Chair in the Social Ecology of Peace and International Cooperation, began last year, and is held by Helen Ingram.

UCI’s School of Social Ecology began as an academic program 27 years ago and became a formal department in 1992. Graduates enter a variety of public policy positions in both the public and private sectors.