Slightly more than two years after taking over as the University of California's 18th president, in October 2003, responsible for a $19 billion operation with 121,000 faculty and staff and 208,000 students on ten campuses, Robert C. Dynes, a renowned physicist and former UC San Diego chancellor, found himself squarely in the eye of a tempest. Public records revealed that for years, UC administrators had awarded millions in compensation packages and perks for incoming and outgoing faculty and administrators that contradicted guidelines agreed upon by the Office of the President and the Board of Regents in 1992, when similar revelations forced a crackdown. Although these practices were long in play before Dynes took the helm of UC, he was vilified in the press and in Sacramento, with several legislators demanding that he be terminated. A tragic subtext occurred on June 24, when UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton, one of the subjects of the controversy, apparently committed suicide. Dynes has admitted that the public clamor over the compensation issues has been difficult for the university and hard on him as well. California magazine interviewed him in his Oakland office on July 14. Warned that he would be tense and evasive, we found just the contrary. He seemed collected, straightforward, and eager to talk both about the past and his future tenure.

How is the University of California like and not like a publicly held corporation with regard to accountability to its share- and stakeholders?
For the most part, we are like a publicly held company. But our mission is not to turn a profit and return money to the shareholders. Our mission is to serve the society that we are responsible for serving, i.e., California. Our job is to continue to keep California the most competitive state in the nation and the most competitive state in the world. And it's huge. [Between $4 and $7 is created, campus for campus, and for the communities they serve, for every dollar invested in the university.] I've done a lot of traveling around the state over the last two and a half years and I would allege that I haven't seen anybody yet in the state of California where UC hasn't had an impact in his or her [life] -- in health, in the quality of life, in their jobs, in their recreational behavior. The slightly frustrating part of all of this is most people don't even realize that UC has had an impact on their lives. We have more of a responsibility than publicly held companies because the stakeholders are everybody. It's why I am in a public institution today. It's much more stimulating, much more fun.

On February 8, you appeared before the Senate Education Budget Committees and accepted personal responsibility for the fact that UC had not consistently met its obligations to publicly account for matters of compensation to the Board of Regents, as required by the 1992 agreement.
That's correct.

Clarify your sense of personal responsibility.
Well, I'm the president of the institution, and as such, there are a whole lot of people inside the university who dropped the ball, but I'm the president. And so I have to-and did willingly-take the responsibility because I have to fix it.

Did you personally, did you knowingly bypass the university's Board of Regents?
Not knowingly.

Or decide to take exception to those policies?
Not knowingly. Did I? Yes. Did I knowingly? No. But because I did not know, I'm responsible.

At April's Charter Gala, you mentioned how difficult this period had been for you personally.
Having to face what started out as an attack on the university and ended up being a personal attack, without the support of a life partner, was doubly difficult. And I made a decision in January that this institution was worth the fight. But it was difficult to go home to what has been referred to in the press as a mansion, but truly is a lonely, rickety, old, falling-down house. Every night, going to nothing. And getting up in the morning and going about it again.

Did you consider resigning?
I did in January because I knew it was going to get tougher. But I made the decision not to. I took this job on knowing that it was a challenge, and I don't quit. I believed and I believe that I have the tools to lead this university through this tough time. I thought I was tough enough and now I know I'm tough enough.

In the meantime, three state senators, at last count, called for your head.
Well, I've sat down with a lot of them. I have to say that one of the silver linings -- if there are silver linings -- was that we discovered where we are deficient. So now we know where to go to fix it. One of the other silver linings in all of this is that a lot of people who were silent -- business leaders, agricultural leaders, alumni -- stopped being silent. They started to speak up, and started to reflect on the fact that, while we had not revealed everything in our practices, there was nothing seriously untoward about our hiring practices. The motivation was noble. The motivation was to go out and get the best people in the nation and the world. They all recognized that and came to the support of the university. And I found that very heartening.

The governor's been supportive, too?
The governor has been supportive. The Speaker of the House has been supportive. The Senate president pro tem has been supportive. And I've sat down with a lot of these folks and explained what we did, what we didn't do, what I've put in place so that it won't happen again. For the most part, they're okay. And I have a high-tech -- a science and technology -- advisory board, and they all dove in. And the entire agriculture community just came in with their boots on. I think most legislators have come to realize that we're playing with serious fire here.

How about the fence mending with your constituents here on campus, or even your colleagues? You had been suggesting that they might have lost their moral compass because many of these transgressions happened on their watch.
I said that my moral compass was really upset. And my sense of what our responsibilities are for revealing things [has] been honed. But I don't think I accused people of losing their moral compass.

Have you been approached or reproached by people on campuses to whom you need to do some fence mending?
I don't think in any serious way.

Sub rosa? Privately?
No, I don't think so. I think everybody felt pretty nervous. I would suggest that, in fact, while this is a discussion of compensation and public responsibilities of the university, there's an underlying discussion going on about control of the university throughout this. And that discussion is going on nationwide about the control of public universities. It's going on in Colorado. It's going on in Wisconsin. It's going on in Minnesota. It's going on in Ohio. And it shows up in different ways. Sometimes it shows up in freedom of speech and public discourse. It showed up here because of these practices. But a lot of my friends and colleagues have expressed their concern about inappropriate people dictating the agenda of the university.

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