Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin has fired KUT Public Media General Manager Debbie Hiott, following a back-and-forth fight with UT over the station’s inaugural festival.
Hiott, who joined the organization in January 2019, and who has served on the NPR board of directors since 2024, said in an interview this April that she was surprised when the university ordered changes to the festival days before it began on May 1. UT, claiming it had security and security concerns, forced KUT to move a large part of the event off-campus.
Anita L. Vangelisti, the interim dean of the Moody College of Communication at UT, sent an email on Monday afternoon to staff at KUT and KUTX, which includes the Texas Standard. In the letter, Vangelisti said Hiott’s dismissal was effective immediately.
Vangelisti said an interim general manager would be named as soon as Tuesday “and will reach out [to the station] promptly to ensure continuity and ongoing support” for its work.
“I want to thank Debbie for the service she has provided in this role since 2019,” the dean said. “She has been a dedicated proponent of providing news, content and music to the Central Texas community and beyond.”
In a phone interview, Hiott said she was fired without any advanced notice, though she began to suspect something was amiss after no one from Moody College reached out to her late last month to begin the scheduled annual performance review process.
Hiott also said she hadn’t been in contact with top university officials since April, when UT’s general counsel sent her a harshly worded letter accusing her of making “false” statements. She responded publicly by strongly denying the allegations.
Then, Monday morning, Hiott received an email from Vangelisti’s assistant asking her to attend a meeting for which there was no calendar invite. She arrived in a meeting room on the fifth floor of the Moody College building to find Vangelisti, an official from the university’s legal affairs department, and UT’s human resources director Karen Shawner.
Hiott didn’t know what the agenda would be, but she recalled that Vangelisti quickly presented her with two documents: a resignation letter and a termination letter.
“I said, you know, well, you’ll have to fire me,” Hiott recalled. She also told Vangelisti that “UT is going to have to be known for firing me in the media.”
Hiott said Vangelisti then left the meeting and she was left to speak with Shawner, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to resign before instructing her to leave the premises immediately without returning to her office. Shawner clarified that Hiott wasn’t banned from campus, but that she shouldn’t go to KUT, Hiott said.
“There’s no reason for you to go to KUT,” Hiott recalled Shawner saying. So she exited through the back of the building and the university sent other staff to retrieve her personal items.
This is a developing story.
Editor’s note: This story was not reviewed or edited by the station’s executive leadership or any university official before publication.