Former University of Colorado president Betsy Hoffman said Thursday it became increasingly difficult to make ethical, principled decisions while a “perfect storm” of media fired upon her.
Hoffman said the spread of rumors on Internet blogs creates an instantaneous “trial and conviction” before both sides are heard. She announced her resignation in March amid scandals involving the school’s football recruiting program and professor Ward Churchill’s essay comparing some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to a Nazi official.
“Decisions are made in an instant, when real thoughtful change takes time,” said Hoffman, speaking to the Denver Forum in her first public appearance since she stepped down Sunday.
“One of the criticisms of me was, ‘Well, she can’t make a tough decision,”‘ Hoffman said. “No, that’s not a problem. The real problem was I had a lot of really tough decisions that had to be made in this perfect storm.”
Hoffman said that if she could do it over again, she would listen less to lawyers and more to public-relations staff.
She also addressed a widely reported gaffe that appeared in a deposition taken while three women were suing the university over their alleged sexual assaults. In it, Hoffman played down a CU football player’s calling a female player what is sometimes described as “the C-word,” saying that in the 14th-century period of poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the derisive word was a term of endearment.
“I said it, and it was a really very dumb thing to say,” Hoffman told about 60 people after a luncheon at the Oxford Hotel. “There’s no question about it. I allowed myself to get rattled, and I allowed myself to get angry. I’m an academic, and I used an academic example, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
Hoffman said she would “never again agree to do a second day of a deposition on a Saturday morning when I’m exhausted, where the sole purpose was to get me to say something dumb.”
She also said she wished she would have assigned one of her staffers to read political blogs every day, as she does now.
One of the first mentions of Churchill’s essay appeared on a blog called “little green footballs” after the professor was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Within 10 minutes, people were calling Gov. Bill Owens and asking him to tell Hoffman to fire Churchill, she said.
“Ten minutes – that’s how fast things happen today,” she said. “There was a period there when I was measuring my e-mail in boxes and pounds. You cannot manage and lead by the number of e-mails you get. You really have to think about what is best for the institution.”
Hoffman said she hopes leaders will be able to stick to their principles in the current media environment, which will rush even faster as people rely more on the Internet.
Hoffman left CU because sticking to what she believed was becoming nearly impossible, she said.
“I felt that I was called upon to sacrifice my principles,” she said. “When the story is constantly about the individual and not about the institution, it’s time for the individual to step aside.”
Hoffman, who has accepted a teaching position at CU-Denver’s Graduate School of Public Affairs, said she hasn’t ruled out another university presidency.
The Denver Forum, which originally billed Hoffman’s speech as a candid talk about why she left CU, said Wednesday she would talk about ethics in leadership.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
