Earlier this week, the University of Texas at Austin fired KUT Public Media’s General Manager Debbie Hiott, marking an extraordinary and unprecedented intervention in the governance of the public radio station that has been housed at UT for decades.
The move has reverberated across journalism and higher education circles, with many asking the same questions:
Was this really about a dispute over the planning of a KUT event on campus, as the university claims? Is Austin’s NPR station being deliberately targeted amid explicit attacks on public media and attempts to reshape higher education institutions across Texas?
Hiott’s termination letter simply cites her “oversight and management of planning for the KUT festival” as reason for her firing. The letter also appears to reference the fact that she publicly denied allegations by UT that the station had engaged in “insufficient planning” related to the event.
But in an interview with KUT, Hiott said her firing was a symptom of “pettiness” within the university and that its current leaders don’t “have any sense of accountability or concern” for the station’s audience. University leadership has changed in recent years as Texas Republicans exert more influence on the state’s flagship public school.
“I was just holding out hope that they would let it all die down, because the station never did anything wrong. I never did anything wrong,” Hiott said. “They’re just angry because they looked stupid through it all — the whole festival back-and-forth.”
In a text message on Monday, UT-Austin spokesman Mike Rosen said “the university does not comment on personnel matters.” University officials also did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
KUT and its sister music station, KUTX, are editorially independent from the university. While they are based at UT’s Moody College, they are funded by community and business donations, rather than tuition or state taxpayer dollars.
Last month, KUT requested records of communications between UT-Austin officials and KUT staff and festival planners in an attempt to square the two competing narratives. The university asked for $536 for the records but has yet to provide them.
But Hiott and festival planners provided hundreds of pages of documents and related meeting transcripts that shed light on the two entities’ communications leading up to the event. And on Tuesday, the university official who fired Hiott — Anita Vangelisti, interim dean of the Moody College of Communication — spoke to KUT staff for the first time.
Vangelisti says firing was in ‘best interest of KUT’ but declines to provide specifics
Vangelisti spoke to KUT and KUTX staff Tuesday, a day after she fired Hiott. While the purpose of the meeting was to introduce Hiott’s interim replacement, members of the station’s staff also asked Vangelisti directly if Hiott’s termination was the result of larger political forces. She repeatedly declined to answer.
Asked if she was the one who decided to fire Hiott, Vangelisti paused for a few seconds before answering.
“It’s my decision that it’s in the best interest of Moody and in the best interest of KUT moving forward to do that,” she said.
Several staffers pressed Vangelisti to explain her decision and to confirm that she had made it on her own, without being directed or influenced by other university officials. She repeatedly declined to answer before leaving the room and letting the interim general manager, Gerald Johnson, take the floor.
Johnson said he was not involved in the decision to fire Hiott and declined to comment on whether he agreed with it. After several meeting attendees continued to ask him questions about the matter, he eventually said: “I don’t know how things got to that head with the festival. I was surprised by that.”
When staffers asked him if he believed politics might have played a role, he appeared to have a slightly different take on matters than Vangelisti, though he also said he didn’t know for sure.
“My sense is we’re seeing how our worlds are changing so rapidly outside of KUT. And I think that we’re part of that — the state of Texas, the state of the university, the administration,” he said. “I think this is just the continuation of what’s been happening.”
Documents obtained by KUT News raise questions about the university’s allegations
Tensions first surfaced between UT-Austin and KUT leadership in April, when the university abruptly ordered the station to move its first-ever community festival off campus just days before it was set to take place. Vangelisti attributed the decision to “insufficient planning,” which Hiott denied. That prompted UT’s top lawyer to send Hiott a harshly worded letter alleging six specific failures related to festival planning.
The letter said KUT refused police patrols, failed to set up a plan to keep children safe at the event and didn’t plan properly for medical services, security and inclement weather.
Police presence
The letter from UT’s lawyer, Amanda Cochran-McCall, said the festival organizers “initially refused any police presence.”
But Agnes Varnum, a consultant KUT hired to help put together the event, shared a document she said was written in December 2025 outlining the scope of work for the festival. The document, written by Varnum and KUT assistant general manager Wade Lee, stated festival planners should develop a “security plan for sessions and public events in coordination with UT Police.”
That document was ultimately adopted by Austin-based Panacea Collective, which has worked on events such as Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival, after that company was selected to produce the KUT Festival.
According to other communications Varnum and Hiott shared, university officials brought up concerns about police presence in the weeks leading up to the event and festival planners appeared to address them.
For instance, after UT’s Events Program Coordinator Amy Davis requested more security screening in an April 17 email, festival planners responded to let her know that UT’s Police Department had already signed off on the matter.
“I am not sure when you spoke with UTPD, but we met with them late last week and aligned on this,” Kyle Kennedy, a staff member at Panacea Collective, wrote back to Davis later that day.
Youth protection measures
Cochran-McCall’s letter to Hiott claims “there were no youth protection measures incorporated.”
But email exchanges show that before the festival, organizers had adopted a plan for lost kids based on the protocols at KUTX’s Rock the Park, a long-running concert series hosted by KUT’s sister music station at Mueller Lake Park.
Varnum wrote to festival planners on April 22 that the protocol would be posted online at UTPD’s request and that she would brief the venue operators.
“This is a detailed and very helpful protocol, so we won’t have to invent it,” Varnum wrote.
It’s unclear whether UT officials OK’d the plan ahead of their April 28 announcement that the festival would have to move off campus.
Emergency medical response
Cochran-McCall’s letter alleged the KUT Festival didn’t have an “adequate emergency medical response plan,” which she added “is always required by the University.”
Documents show that UT’s director of emergency management, Derek Trabon, asked several questions about the plan in advance of the festival and appeared satisfied with the responses.
“Autumn, you mentioned a medical plan. Can you walk us through that one more time?” Trabon asked Panacea Collective founder Autumn Rich during an April 20 video call between university officials and festival organizers, a transcript shows. “I just want to have an understanding with the crowd size anticipated what the medical response plan is for on-site.”
“I’ll get that right to you,” Rich answered. (The transcript of the call, which Varnum shared with KUT News, was generated automatically by the video conferencing software that the attendees used.)
A few days later, emails show she sent him confirmation that the company providing EMS services was in good standing with state regulators.
“This is very helpful — thank you, Autumn,” Trabon wrote back.
There’s no indication that UT officials raised concerns about the plan afterward, according to the documents KUT News reviewed.
Crowd control
Cochran-McCall’s letter also said recommendations from UT’s fire marshal about crowd control “were not addressed.”
Josh Lambert, the university’s fire marshal, brought up the matter during the April 20 video call. According to the transcript, he said, “I saw some security stuff but I didn’t see detailed crowd management numbers and staffing.”
Documents show that the festival organizers then moved to address his concerns. Three days later, according to an invoice they shared, they hired a company called Stadium People, which UT regularly uses for Longhorn football games. That included more than 39 security personnel to check bags and screen people ahead of the festival’s scheduled indoor events on campus.
Inclement weather plan
UT’s letter also said the festival’s organizers had “no plan that identified facilities” for severe weather.
Festival producers, KUT staff and UT officials talked extensively about a sheltering plan at least three times over the course of several weeks, according to transcripts and notes from meetings.
“We’ll be watching the weather, we’ll be watching lightning,” Rich said during the April 20 video call, adding that if necessary, “we’ll be evacuating into the garages as well as into any of the buildings that they are close to.”
Trabon responded, “We generally do not encourage anyone to shelter in place in garages for weather.” But the emergency plan that organizers shared with him and other UT officials that same day identified several indoor sites as venues for sheltering in place in the event of inclement weather.
Drones
Finally, Cochran-McCall’s letter alleges that KUT Festival planners “rejected UTPD’s advice to include unmanned aerial vehicle overwatch.”
UT-Austin has not provided any evidence of such a recommendation by UTPD, nor is it reflected in any of the documents shared by Hiott and festival organizers.
Lambert, the university’s fire marshal, brought up the matter during the April 20 video call.
“Will there be any UAVs for this event?” he asked, later clarifying that he was referring to drones.
Rich answered, “No,” the transcript of the call shows. The fire marshal responded, “Thank you,” and the discussion moved on to other matters.
In an interview Wednesday, Varnum, one of the festival planning consultants, reiterated that she was unaware of any request or directive to use drones for security purposes during the event. She said she and other producers thought the mention of drones was for photography, not security, and called it a “misunderstanding.”
“They didn’t respond and say, ‘you need to be using them,’” she said. “I’ve done tons of events with more people than [this] and have not had to use drones for crowd safety. But even if it was a requirement, it was not communicated as such.”
Vangelisti told KUT staff there’s no plan to intervene further with KUT operations
During the meeting with staffers on Tuesday, Vangelisti emphasized that she’s gotten no indication university leadership plans to impose more oversight on KUT News or interfere with editorial decisions.
“The university values you all and your work. That’s a serious statement,” Vangelisti said. She added that UT-Austin Provost William Inboden had authorized her to begin the process for selecting a new permanent general manager “right away” which “demonstrates a commitment to KUT.”
Editor’s note: This story was not reviewed or edited by the station’s executive leadership or any university official before publication.
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. KUT News, the LBJ Presidential Library, Panacea Collective, the 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.
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