University of Texas at Austin leaders fired KUT General Manager Debbie Hiott on Monday, a little more than a month after she publicly challenged safety as the reason why much of the public radio station’s inaugural festival was forced off campus.
Hiott’s firing was announced by Anita Vangelisti, interim dean of UT-Austin’s Moody College of Communication, in an email to KUT staff on Monday. A UT-Austin spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about why Hiott was terminated.
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Hiott is a longtime Texas journalist who worked at the Austin American Statesman for 28 years, rising to editor-in-chief, before joining KUT in 2019.
In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Hiott said she was called into a meeting at 3 p.m. with Vangelisti and two other staff members from the university. She described being presented with two letters to choose from. One was a letter of resignation written for her, and the other was a letter of termination stating Vangelisti had “lost confidence” in Hiott after the KUT Festival. Hiott chose the termination letter.
“I had no intention of quitting on the station, or its audience or the Austin community,” Hiott said.
Hiott said no one had communicated any disciplinary concerns to her before Monday as a result of the festival’s handling.
The dispute between leaders at the state’s flagship university and the radio station became public April 28 when major changes to the KUT Festival were announced. The two-day event, which was planned for months, was May 1-2.
The festival still went forward but with a smaller campus footprint.
U.S. Sen. Corey Booker, a New Jersey Democrat and former presidential candidate, delivered the keynote at LBJ Presidential Library Auditorium, while Saturday events were moved to Central Machine Works and East End Ballroom. Other speakers included Republican U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, part of a broader lineup that also included musicians, authors and Austin cultural figures.
Vangelisti emailed festival speakers saying that because “KUT provided insufficient planning for safety,” the station would reduce the festival’s footprint and move portions off campus to avoid disrupting end-of-semester academic activities.
Minutes later, Hiott sent her own email to speakers, saying top university officials ordered KUT to cancel the outdoor portions of the festival, citing a safety analysis she said the school had not provided.
“In our months of planning, we have agreed to every health, security and safety request that has been made of us and our production company,” Hiott wrote.
Hiott said she believed her public response to the university’s statements about the festival resulted in her termination.
In an interview with The Tribune earlier this spring, Hiott said she did not know why UT-Austin officials acted when they did and did not have any evidence that speakers, politics or KUT’s journalism played a role. However, she said she believes KUT’s festival was being treated differently than other campus events, pointing to Longhorn City Limits.
That music and tailgating event is held on the LBJ Lawn during home football games. Hiott said that event typically draws much larger crowds than what the festival was expected to attract in a similar footprint and includes live music, food trucks, carnival activities, tents and alcohol.
Hiott said KUT’s reporting and content have been independent during her seven years time at the station and that UT-Austin had previously been a strong partner.
“Obviously, this is some sort of sea change,” she said.
The dispute comes at a politically fraught moment for both public media and higher education.
Congress rescinded federal funding for public media last year, and the Trump administration has used federal funding to push universities, including UT-Austin, to adopt policies aimed at correcting what government officials described as an ideological imbalance on campuses. In Texas, Republican lawmakers gave governor-appointed regents more authority to restrict college protests and outside speakers.
The festival dispute raised questions about how UT-Austin applies security standards to major campus events and its relationship with KUT. The university holds the station’s broadcast license, KUT employees are university staff and the newsroom is housed in the Moody College of Communication. But the station says it operates with editorial independence and relies almost exclusively on donations rather than university funding.
On April 15, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a lecture at Hogg Memorial Auditorium that was open to thousands of invited students, faculty, supporters and donors, according to records obtained through a public information request by The Texas Tribune. Thomas also attended a breakfast with university leaders, lunch with students and senior administrators and a dinner with guests from the legal and university communities.
Public records do not show whether the Thomas event required the same kind of safety planning as the KUT Festival, which had been scheduled for multiple on-campus locations near Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, including outdoor programming along the LBJ Library lawn.
UT System police policy requires each campus police department to assess events that could be high risk, including concerns, political events, conferences and sporting events.
Events score more points for a larger crowd size, media presence, high-profile attendees, anticipated protests, credible threats and whether the event involves a polarizing issue on a risk-assessment form. Events with more than 15 points are considered high risk.
For high-risk events, campus police officials are supposed to help develop an incident action plan covering issues such as medical planning, staffing, traffic control, physical security and contingency plans. The police chief or a designee is supposed to review and approve those plans at least 48 hours before the event.
UT-Austin officials have not released the safety analysis cited when ordering KUT to make changes nor answered questions about whether festival speakers, programming or Hiott’s public response played any role in requiring KUT to reduce the festival and move Saturday programming off campus.
The Tribune requested final or summary safety-planning records for the KUT Festival and other spring campus events, including events of a similar size and those featuring speakers across the political spectrum. Those requests are pending.
The disagreement between KUT and school officials escalated when UT-Austin General Counsel Amanda Cochran-McCall accused Hiott of making “false” statements about the university’s handling of the festival, according to copies of the letters posted publicly by Neena Satija, an investigative reporter for NPR’s The Texas Newsroom.
In her letter to Hiott, Cochran-McCall wrote that KUT was short 10 police officers, lacked sufficient youth protection measures and did not include adequate planning for emergency medical response, crowd control or severe weather. She wrote that event planners rejected university police’s recommendation to use drone overwatch.
Hiott countered in a written response sent later that KUT had previously addressed many of the concerns raised. For example, the station agreed to more officers or private security and already added 15 crowd management staffers and provided licensing information for the emergency medical provider after UT-Austin had questions about it.
Additionally, she noted that university officials’ request overestimated the expected crowd at 7,000 when fewer than 2,000 attendees had RSVP’d.
Hiott wrote that KUT already had a child reunification plan in place and that no one from the university raised concerns about not planning drone flights. She added that UT-Austin had not given the station shelter-in-place locations it requested.
Hiott has served twice as a Pulitzer juror, sits on the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and previously served on the board of the Texas Managing Editors, then known as Texas Associated Press Managing Editors.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Disclosure: KUT News and The Texas Tribune have been partners on public events. KUT News is also a media partner with Austin Current, a member of The Texas Tribune’s network of editorially independent local newsrooms. LBJ Presidential Library, University of Texas System and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.