The ouster of Carol Harter

By Christina Littlefield

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2006 | 7:49 a.m.

The tension between UNLV President Carol Harter and her boss, university system Chancellor Jim Rogers, had been building long before a lunch meeting Dec. 20 at the Stirling Club.

Rogers had invited representatives of Las Vegas' minority communities to discuss diversity issues. The mood quickly turned hostile, with one community member after another attacking Harter -- and Rogers saying little to mute the hostility, although it was mostly about issues beyond the control of a university president.

A month passed before Rogers made the move to end Harter's 11-year tenure at UNLV. But it was apparent to anyone present that December morning that their working relationship had derailed.

What few outsiders could know was that Rogers had been building a case against her. The tough, outspoken businessman, who has pledged more than $250 million to universities across the country, had found a lot to dislike about Harter in the two years he has been chancellor. He thought she alienated donors to UNLV by pressuring them to redirect their contributions to university needs she found most pressing.

He thought she was a micromanager, fiddling in the wrong areas while larger needs were unmet.

And Rogers, a man who genially brags that he is more than a trifle dictatorial, found his univesity president too headstrong and iron-fisted.

"I don't think it is any secret that there were two very strong personalities in the chancellor and the president that didn't see eye to eye on the way the university should run," said Ted Quirk, vice chairman of the UNLV Foundation, the university's fundraising arm.

To outsiders, it seemed like bad chemistry. Or maybe underneath the complaints, Rogers just wanted his own person in the office. Rogers had already publicly shoved away the state's other university president, John Lilley of UNR, who moved on to become Baylor University president in December.

Regent Chairman Bret Whipple tried to rescue Harter's relationship with Rogers last June by mediating a discussion between the two. As of two weeks ago, he thought the truce was holding, Whipple said.

Then on Jan. 19, Rogers called Whipple into his office. The chancellor had a manila envelope in hand. It contained portions of Harter's personnel file.

Rogers told Whipple that it included documentation of Harter's performance, specifically the things that Rogers found disappointing or lacking.

The two men confirmed their conversation in interviews Wednesday.

Whipple said that when he opened the file, he also found letters between lawyers for Rogers and Harter indicating that talks were under way about Harter stepping down.

* * * * *

From that point, events moved quickly. Quirk heard from a distressed Harter about mounting tensions with Rogers.

Quirk arranged a meeting for the following Monday, Jan. 23, at a Starbucks on Paradise Road, north of Flamingo Road. Joining him were foundation President Dan Van Epp and Don Snyder, chairman of the UNLV capital fundraising campaign.

The trio hatched an idea, Quirk said. By offering her a post at the foundation, they could avoid turmoil at the university, give Harter an easy exit as president and also preserve her valuable role in fundraising.

"We all had a sense that there was a train wreck coming," Snyder said in an interview Wednesday. If so, he thought, "you might want to head it off."

They took the idea to Harter the next day. She was receptive, foundation members say, but she made no commitment.

Harter was still considering the idea the next night when Snyder and Quirk presented it to Rogers in Room 78 of Thomas & Mack Center shortly before tipoff of a UNLV men's basketball game. Rogers said he embraced the idea immediately.

By the next morning -- last Thursday -- Rogers considered the deal nearly done. Whether Harter had made up her mind is unclear, however, because she has refused to speak publicly about her departure. She has scheduled a campus announcement at 2 p.m. today.

What is clear is that only a handful of the 13 regents knew about the negotiations between Harter and Rogers as the regents concluded the first of two days of meetings that Thursday.

Late Thursday night, Jon Ralston, host of "Face to Face With Jon Ralston," a cable news show, got a tip from a source about Harter. On Friday Ralston sent out a "Flash" e-mail to subscribers to his online political notebook saying that Harter was in negotiations to retire. Ralston will not say who gave him the tip, but he did say that it did not come from Rogers or Harter or anyone in their immediate circles.

Word spread among regents at a 9:45 a.m. meeting break Friday. Harter avoided questions and abruptly left, with her executive staff in tow, and did not return. Rogers said she signed the deal later in the day.

Many regents, however, were shocked by the events. Regents Linda Howard and Howard Rosenberg blamed Rogers for pushing Harter out and called for a special meeting to question the chancellor. But in interviews this week, 10 of the other 11 regents said they preferred to move ahead rather than review the matter.

"I don't know what happened between her and Jim and I don't think I need to know because they worked it out" by engineering her departure, Whipple said Wednesday. "I just want to say what a wonderful woman she is and I'm so sad that she is caught in the middle here. She deserves the very best."

He also said he regretted that her departure was not handled in the "classiest or most professional way."

* * * *

Rogers is an action guy in the classic sense of a strong business executive. He likes setting policy and telling his employees how he wants things done, as he does as owner of 15 television stations in five Western states.

University presidents are consensus builders. They preside over a workforce -- a faculty -- that by academic tradition is given a voice in the operation of the university. The presidents report to boards of regents who also want a large say in the running of the institutions in their charge. University presidents who rule by decree rather than consensus do so at their peril.

Rogers recognizes the differences between his world and theirs -- and takes pride in doing it his way because he sees it as the fastest way to improve the Nevada System of Higher Education. As he told the Sun in August 2004 about his transition from business executive to chancellor: "Going from a dictatorship to a democracy: It's tough on me. It's tough on them."

Rogers had three major complaints about Harter.

First, he said, she micromanaged, getting so involved in details that she slowed progress and surrounded herself with weak people. "It tends to attract yes people rather than people who are really creative and innovative."

By contrast, Rogers said he is a decentralized manager - that's how he can find time to volunteer as chancellor and keep his businesses running.

Rogers also took issue with her management of diversity issues. Minorities felt the university did not pay enough attention to diversity when hiring employees and recruiting students.

Rogers wanted UNLV to open a separate diversity office to address those concerns. Harter resisted for months, arguing that the entire university should be responsible for diversity issues.

The most sustained complaint Rogers had about Harter was that donors were unhappy because she tried to micromanage them in ways that included trying to direct their contributions to certain areas of the university.

Shortly into his tenure as interim chancellor, Rogers and his wife temporarily pulled a $25 million pledge to UNLV because of concerns about the university system in general.

The Sun interviewed many donors this week about their relationship with Harter. All said they were pleased with the way she treated them.

Van Epp, however, acknowledged that, "in general we are all aware that there are some donors who are not pleased with Dr. Harter. But on the other hand, we are aware of hundreds more who are very pleased."

In 2001, long before Rogers became chancellor, Stan Fulton, founder of Anchor Gaming, told regents that Harter was driving millions of dollars away by irking donors. Fulton had given $7 million to UNLV for the International Gaming Institute, but refused to give any more and he cut UNLV out of his will.

His complaint resulted in a closed-door meeting between Harter and regents, but the regents took no action.

No other dissatisfaction has risen to the level of a formal complaint, John Gallagher, vice president for development, said. "I've never seen that -- her trying to push a donor in one direction or another," he said. "She is a pretty savvy fundraiser and all of us in this business know that that just doesn't work.

"So many donors respect and even love this woman than have ever had any problems with her," he said. "Her record as a fundraiser has just been exceptional."

The foundation has raised $688 million since it started keeping records in 1982, and Harter is responsible for more than 80 percent of that, Gallagher said.

Snyder said that Rogers himself made some donors unhappy.

"Jim Rogers is wonderful fundraiser and has tremendous respect from a lot of people, but there are other people out there who would not give a dime to something just because he is involved," Snyder said. "Just because he has those strong leadership qualities that can endear people to him or enrage them."

* * * *

Harter will retire from the university June 30, according to the terms of the agreement signed Friday. She'll begin work at the foundation in an as-yet undetermined position the next day.

She also will serve as executive director of the Black Mountain Institute, a new think tank funded by gaming executive Glenn Schaeffer to review issues of global concern, such as the Middle East peace process.

She will keep her salary and perks, with the foundation paying for her housing and car allowance, as well as its current $90,000 supplement to her salary. The state will continue to pay her base salary of just over $234,000.

Harter is also still eligible for the $250,000 bonus the foundation promised if she makes good on the $500 million fundraising goal in the capital campaign. She keeps her tenure and will have the option of serving on the faculty when her contract expires June 30, 2008.

In the end, only Harter and Rogers know if there was a final straw that broke the relationship.

Rogers is "clearly motivated to do things his way," Van Epp said. "Undoubtedly that is part of his thinking -- he wants a leader who fits his own set of criteria."

At the end of a series of telephone interviews over the last two days in which Rogers detailed his differences with Harter, he concluded that most of their differences were stylistic, over whether "red cars or blue cars" were better.

"I view a lot of it just that way," he said. "And I'm intense about red cars. She may be more passive about blue cars." Sun reporter Mary Manning contributed to this report.

Christina Littlefield can be reached at 259-8813 or at clittle@ lasvegassun.com.