Katia Passerini has been on the job for two months. She moved to Spokane during the quiet of summer. On the day Gonzaga's students began to return to campus with their belongings and their parents, Passerini was out greeting them. She's glad to have them back on campus.
"It feels like a university. It has to feel like, with all the students going back and forth from class to class, especially in College Hall, where we have our offices. It's great to hear students running from one room to the next. I love it," she said.
With students back on campus and classes in session, it's time for Gonzaga to turn its attention to the ritual of formally installing Passerini as its 27th president. There are several events scattered throughout the next week leading up to an inauguration mass and installment ceremony on Friday.
Passerini says, between the deluge of meetings in her College Hall suite, she tries to get out of her office as often as she can to be around the people who live and work on campus. One of her first challenges is how to lead Gonzaga through the debates that have been sparked by the Charlie Kirk killing and the war in Gaza, among other things.
This interview lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Katia Passerini: It seems that we have arrived at a place where we're not able to talk about issues anymore. They are immediately politicized and polarized in one way or the next. And it's really important for us to be able to engage in conversations again. And violence is never the solution.
I was blessed just about a year ago to meet a Nobel Peace Prize for Liberia. She ended basically single-handedly with other women, the civil war in Liberia. She was always asked, what side are you on? And her answer was beautiful. And I will always remember, I am on the side of humanity. And violence is never the solution.
So I think as the conversation changed, not yet, but it needs to change. It needs to be civil dialogue and opportunity to talk together and understand that sometimes we can disagree on issues. But we have to have this ability to talk to each other without going too extreme on any side.
DN: But that's easy to say.
KP: It's easy, yes.
DN: Spencer Cox in Utah is trying his best to lower the temperature. But you've got the folks who are Charlie Kirk acolytes on one side. Then you've got people who are complaining about anti-Semitism. You've got people who are Palestinian (and those advocating for them). You've got people from all sides. What's your approach to try to deal with all of that and make this civil?
KP: Yeah, so we need to always remember that we need to be always well-informed. Because some of the issues we're dealing here with today have historical roots. And we need to understand where they are and why are we so separated. It's years of misunderstandings that we need to be aware of. So what can we do practically, though? As an educational institution, we need to continue to educate the students on all sides of the issues.
We are working. If you look at our strategic plan, there are a couple of actions around the humanistic thought and emanation dialogue. And just last July, our board voted to merge two of those actions. And we are going to be working on a center or institute to be defined for civil dialogue and humanistic thought. And if you think about it, merging those two is very important. Because it's through thinking about humanity, historical perspective, literature, political perspective, and engaging in the dialogue like Ignatius has told us that we can arrive to an understanding. So is that enough? No, but it's a first step of bringing people together in the same room to start thinking both intellectually and practically about issues.
DN: Do you have students come to you and say, I don't feel safe on this campus?
KP: Not just students. Everyone might be at times not feeling safe. And it is our responsibility that if they do not, we take action to make sure that they do feel safe. So it hasn't happened yet, but I'm not naive. It's going to happen. It's bound to happen for many different reasons. So some might not be feeling safe because of the political debate. Some might not be feeling safe because they have left home and they feel alone.
And so one thing that I'm really proud of, and I've been looking at the way we do it, and I think we are very well positioned, we have a lot of student support services and interventions and opportunities. So we have opportunities for students to come together and get help where they need. And the same can be said also for our staff and employees.
We have a lot of work that the human resources is doing around the same line to be prepared for anything that can come at us.
DN: Has the university upgraded its security?
KP: I think the security has always been a strong security team. I'm delighted to actually see them. They have done recently a campaign on them, on the bicycle, going all over the campus. And there are some funny videos that you can look at.
It's a very strong team. I shared exactly in this room, actually, a couple of weeks ago, I met with the HR team and our securities within human resources. And I shared the story of when I was interviewing for the position, I was incognito, just walking back from here to downtown Spokane. And I was through the Centennial Trail. And there was a little agitation on the road. And I realized that there was a campus security just behind me. And they didn't know who I was. I was just somebody walking down the Centennial Trail. But they were there monitoring that I, a passerby, was safe.
So I have to say I'm really impressed with what they do. And hopefully we will continue to see that level of excellence as anything that comes at us.
DN: The university has also taken a strong stance in terms of climate. Has the university kind of put itself out on a limb here? Do you feel in this current climate that that's not a good place to be?
KP: I think that's, again, as I mentioned before, dialogue and understanding.
We need to look at the science and see what it is that we can be doing to alleviate a problem that we see in our scientific research. And there are multiple ways of doing this. You can also say it's not a problem and let it happen. Or you can continue to study and see what can we actually affect. And I think we have an institute for our climate change that is doing terrific work. We have to continue to be there and see what else should we be doing.
For example, energy consumption is a big unknown, especially considering the energy pressure that we have from the use of technology like artificial intelligence. And so there are a couple of ways of looking at this. You can say, well, no, we should stop AI, which is very difficult to do and impossible.
Or we should continue, for example, with our School of Engineering to identify a way and do new research that can help us affect energy consumption. And for example, one of our partner companies that we work with and our students, and support some of our students' undergraduate research is working on cooling system for big data centers. As we get there, more energy efficiencies, new discoveries, new behaviors, I think it's important for us to continue to be involved in that, to try to find a possible solution. We will not have the only solution, but it's our duty to continue to work towards that.
DN: With the current administration, are you putting funding, say research funding, teaching funding, at risk because of being out there in terms of climate and the university's position?
KP: I don't know that we're more at risk for climate or anything else. The reality is that there are serious budget constraints, especially connected to research. So what we're trying to do is, first of all, see which research that was funded before is not funded anymore and identify alternative ways if it's not through the federal system. Maybe there is corporate or philanthropic support that we can find to be able to continue this research. So we have been affected some. We have been even more affected from other cuts, and those are not just at the federal level, but also at the state level for funding for students.
For example, the state need grants has been halved, and now as a university, we're looking at how can we make sure that the students who are already here that have half of the money that they were receiving before can continue and graduate and then find a job and become self-actualized here at Gonzaga University. So we're looking at every possible way to continue to support them.
DN: Have you had immigration agents come on campus?
KP: No, we haven't had, not to my knowledge. I know that last year, some of the visas, as it happened throughout the country, were at risk and revoked. I know that we had worked very closely with CVs and the local officials to make sure that the students had an opportunity to be reinstated if that was possible. From what I know, we were able to do so. We are more aware that when our international students travel or international faculty travel abroad, we always prepare. There is a Center for Global Engagement downstairs that prepares them with the possibilities of delays or risks. And so far, we have been consistently able to bring everyone back, but it's something that we continue to monitor.
