I Never Promised You a Rose Bowl? - Part 20 (Vibe Shift)

When last we looked at the litigation regarding UCLA's desire to shift from the Rose Bowl to Sofi Stadium for football on August 1, it appeared there would be some kind of court activity in early September. Yours truly couldn't find any news sources about that activity occurring, but there seems to be a vibe shift with the advent of new personnel at UCLA: a new interim CFO, a new AD, and a new coach. The new AD, Tim Harris, bought 300 Rose Bowl tickets and distributed them for free (for one game):

https://nypost.com/2026/09/07/sports/how-uclas-new-ad-is-personally-invested-in-big-rose-bowl-crowd/.

The Rose Bowl unveiled a new Field Club facility for premium seat holders (revenue from which will benefit UCLA):

...New UCLA AD Tim Harris, noting that as a Lakers executive he had spent the last few decades around two of the most iconic arenas in sports in the Forum and Cryto.com Arena, said he “pinched myself” that he now got to be associated with the most iconic college football stadium in the country...

https://nypost.com/2026/09/10/sports/rose-bowl-unveils-impressive-field-club-ahead-of-ucla-home-opener/.

In short, maybe a deal can be reached involving continued use of the Rose Bowl.

Straws in the Wind - Part 469

From Wellesley College: Wellesley College today announced that it will guarantee a tuition-free education to U.S. students whose families have a total annual income of $200,000 or less with typical assets. Wellesley is the first women’s college—and only the second liberal arts college in the nation—to guarantee free tuition at the $200,000 level. The Wellesley Tuition Promise will apply automatically to all first-year and transfer students who are admitted to Wellesley, as well as returning students, beginning in fall 2027...

Nationally, 85% of all families in the U.S. earn less than $200,000 per year. Today, approximately 80% of Wellesley’s financial aid program is supported by the College’s endowment. Recent changes to college endowment tax rules are contributing to increased funding for financial aid, including the Wellesley Tuition Promise...

Full news release at https://www.wellesley.edu/news/wellesley-free-tuition-income-200k-or-less-fall-2027.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 198

From the Harvard Crimson: Almost four years after the public release of ChatGPT, nearly two-thirds of professors who responded to The Crimson’s annual Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey said they believe the prevalence of artificial intelligence has had a negative effect on their courses. Sixty-four percent of faculty respondents said AI had a “somewhat negative” or “very negative” effect on their courses this year — a sharp uptick from last year’s survey, when 42 percent said the same. The figures point to growing concerns about tools that allow students to complete assignments without fully absorbing content, even as professors adjust their courses to keep up with the technology.

Course-level policies are now commonplace: Only 3.5 percent of respondents said they have no explicit policy on AI tools in their courses, down from 10 percent last year. The percentage of respondents who said they “entirely permit” the use of AI tools in their courses was also roughly halved, from 8 percent to 4 percent. The faculty concerns come as Harvard coordinates broader curricular responses to AI. Harvard College added a required AI module to the first-year Expository Writing course this spring and phased in an AI chatbot to advise incoming students on course planning. The FAS also announced plans this spring to offer access to Anthropic’s Claude, while ending its institution-wide ChatGPT Edu pilot...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/14/fas-2026-survey-AI/.

Letter from Academic Senate to Chancellor / Letter from Chancellor to Senate

September 16, 2026

Dear Chancellor Frenk,

We are writing to express our concerns and reservations about the press release you issued on September 11, 2026, titled “Chancellor Julio Frenk comment regarding media coverage on Sept. 10.” The document contained several statements that have been interpreted as criticizing the law school event “25 Years After 9/11: Reimaging Freedom, Justice, and Security” and its organizers.

The University of California’s (UC) policy (APM 010) on academic freedom is clear and unequivocal:

The principles of academic freedom protect freedom of inquiry and research, freedom of teaching, and freedom of expression and publication. These freedoms enable the University to advance knowledge and to transmit it effectively to its students and to the public.

Academic freedom requires that teaching and scholarship be assessed by reference to the professional standards that sustain the University’s pursuit and achievement of knowledge. The substance and nature of these standards properly lie within the expertise and authority of the faculty as a body. [emphasis added]

The AAUP has long affirmed “its belief that the freedom to hear is an essential condition of a university community and an inseparable part of academic freedom” and that “the right to examine issues and seek truth is prejudiced to the extent that the university is open to some but not to others whom members of the university also judge desirable to hear.”

The UCLA Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) laid out guidelines last year for dealing with challenging material in the classroom, which also apply to other academic endeavors:

Classroom materials dealing with sensitive topics such as religion, nationality, ethnicity, or deeply held political views may sometimes be taken as disrespectful and hurtful. Those materials dealing with violent, even horrific, events may be emotionally disturbing and their sudden introduction may retraumatize survivors.

In a November 2025 response to CAF’s May 2025 statement “In Defense of Academic Freedom and the University,” you and EVCP Hunt wrote:

We fully agree that academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and shared governance are essential to the University's mission of discovery, learning, and public service. These values have long enabled UCLA to advance knowledge across disciplines and foster open, rigorous, and respectful debate in the pursuit of truth.

We recognize the challenges currently facing higher education, both nationally and globally, and share the committee's concern for preserving an environment in which faculty, students, and researchers can pursue their scholarly work free from undue interference. UCLA remains committed to these core values and to working collaboratively with the Academic Senate to ensure that they continue to guide our community.

As elected leaders of the Los Angeles Division of the UC Academic Senate, we reiterate and reinforce these foundational policies and values related to academic freedom. Particularly during times of grief, stress, political division and pressure, it is of the utmost importance for the UCLA Administration and Senate faculty to work collaboratively to uphold our deeply held principles and protect academic freedom. As you observed, “When we face difficult challenges and tough decisions, we find strength in staying connected.”

Sincerely,

Tim Groeling, Chair

Catherine Sugar, Vice Chair

Megan McEvoy. Immediate Past Chair

===========================

September 17, 2026

Dear Chair Groeling, Vice Chair Sugar, and Immediate Past Chair McEvoy,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I take the concerns you raise seriously, particularly because they touch upon one of the most fundamental principles of a university: academic freedom.

Let me begin unequivocally: UCLA is committed to academic freedom. It is a core tenet of our mission and a bedrock of higher education. My September 11 statement does not change that fundamental commitment or the protections it affords faculty, symposia organizers, speakers and participants.

Faculty must remain free to pursue difficult questions, organize academic programs, select speakers and engage ideas that may be controversial or deeply contested. Those protections are essential to the work of a great university, including the role of the School of Law in examining consequential questions of law, justice and policy.

The School of Law symposium operated within the protections of academic freedom and proceeded as planned, with its program, speakers and academic content unchanged.

The statement expressed my support for Professor Judea Pearl and others in our community who carry their own lived experiences of September 11 and its aftermath. It also reaffirmed UCLA’s opposition to antisemitism and terrorism.

I chose the words of my statement carefully and deliberately. Some subsequent accounts have characterized it as a condemnation, rebuke or repudiation of the symposium. A careful read of my statement will fail to find any of those words. Furthermore, the statement did not criticize the School of Law or question the validity of legal representation, including for individuals accused of horrific acts.

My statement underscores that UCLA’s protection of academic freedom does not constitute institutional endorsement of every speaker’s viewpoint or program presented under those protections. That principle applies broadly to events across our campus, and we will make that distinction clear in our communications.

The key point of my statement is that we can uphold academic freedom while also expressing support for members of our community who are hurting. A university is more than a collection of individual rights and freedoms. It is a community, and community carries with it obligations of reciprocity.

What do we owe one another, particularly when we profoundly disagree? For me, the answer begins with mutual respect, empathy and recognition of one another’s humanity. Academic freedom protects our ability to engage the most difficult ideas. It does not require indifference to one another or to the impact felt by members of our community. We must safeguard the freedom to pursue scholarship, invite speakers, test assumptions and express views that others may find deeply objectionable. At the same time, we must foster a culture of reciprocity in which those freedoms coexist with respect for the dignity and humanity of others.

At this moment of extraordinary polarization, reciprocity is essential to what holds a university community together. I am committed to safeguarding academic freedom and preserving free expression. I am equally committed to sustaining the mutual respect, care and reciprocity that allow those freedoms — and our community — to flourish.

Sincerely,

Julio Frenk

Chancellor

---

Source: https://dms.senate.ucla.edu/issues/issue/?11554.Academic.Senate.Leadership.Letter.on.Academic.Freedom.

Remember what they used to say?

They don't say that anymore:

University of California leverages systemwide expertise to advance purposeful, human-centered uses for AI

UC Office of the President, September 16, 2026

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/university-california-leverages-systemwide-expertise-advance-purposeful-human-centered

Under President Milliken’s direction and leadership, the University of California launched the AI Steering Committee to highlight and focus UC research on harnessing AI for the public good.

At the September UC Board of Regents meeting, the UC AI Steering Committee provided its first report to the Board, detailing the progress of its working groups and announcing showcase events involving each UC campus over the next year that will highlight campus AI initiatives and research in the fields identified by those working groups.

Formed by President Milliken in May of 2026, the University of California’s AI steering committee was established to leverage the university’s extraordinary scale of 10 campuses, six academic health centers, and three national labs in navigating AI’s increasingly broad impacts on everyday life and the university’s mission of education, research, patient care, and public service. The Steering Committee created five working groups focused on AI applications and their impact across the following areas: health and longevity; learning and work; discovery and innovation; protecting humans and humanity; and AI for the public good.

“AI is transforming the way we learn, work, and live,” said UC President James B. Milliken. “We hear every day about the increasing potential and the risk of AI. The task force is sharpening our focus on how UC can advance human potential, not diminish it. As a public university with a commitment to California and the nation in its DNA, UC is also ideally positioned to contribute to the broader public discussion on managing the benefits and risks of AI.”

Amid calls for a slowdown of AI development, the University of California's AI Steering Committee informed the Board of Regents today of its work in establishing a different path for AI, one of responsible public adoption for the public good. 

The report began by addressing the risks of unconsidered AI adoption, including security breaches, fragmented regulation, and increased energy and utility consumption. It established that UC was among the first in the country to adopt a formal set of AI Principles, and the first university to address artificial intelligence explicitly in a Digital Risk Appetite statement, a formal declaration of how much technology risk the institution will accept, and where.

AI Steering Committee Co-Chair Van Williams highlighted the need to responsibly govern AI capacity for UC and detailed existing initiatives to broaden access to AI tools for researchers, employees, and students while promoting ethical and responsible use. These include research awards and computing credits from Amazon and Google, the latter of which has granted more than $32.7 million across 61 funded projects, spanning AI safety and trust research, frontier research, workforce development, and public impact applications at the campuses. 

The Steering Committee is seeking coordinated, systemwide approaches with AI developers and cloud providers to ensure UC is not reliant on a single vendor. The committee is also exploring the creation of a systemwide learning platform to support the responsible adoption of AI tools and use of resources. 

Sharing perspectives in cybersecurity and in education were two of the steering committee’s working group leaders who presented alongside Williams: Giovanni Vigna, distinguished professor in the Department of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara, head of the working group on protecting humans and humanity, and Rita Raley, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, who leads the working group on AI for learning and work.

Professor Vigna, who also directs the UC Santa Barbara-based, National Science Foundation-funded Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION), described the sophistication of AI agents in exploiting security flaws, a source of increasing concern. “There is hope,” he said. “We need to make an investment in educating people in AI tools and create coordination between all the stakeholders so that threat intelligence between different parts of critical infrastructure can be shared at a scale and pace that is required to make progress in protecting our networks.”

Professor Raley, co-director of the new Center for the Humanities and Machine Learning (HUML) at UC Santa Barbara, described a course she developed, “Critical Artificial Intelligence,” and the scope of her working group, which will provide systemwide recommendations on what each student needs to know about AI. “The University will continue to certify students on the basis of disciplinary knowledge attained. But, no less important, we must now give students the critical judgment to ask what this technology is, who needs to be accountable for it, how to use it, when to refuse it — and what it could be instead.”

Among the examples highlighted by co-chair Williams of AI’s potential for public good was the work done at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco to restore speech back to a patient named Ann, who had lost her speech to a brainstem stroke nearly two decades ago. A joint UC team built a brain-computer interface to convert her attempted speech into audible, natural-sounding words in approximately a second. 

“The technology will keep getting more capable whether or not any of us are ready for it,” Steering Committee Co-Chair Van Williams said. “How it gets used is still a choice. The university that helped give Ann her voice back intends to keep making that choice deliberately, in public, and for the public.”

Bond. Prop 38

From the Sacramento Bee: Three former employees of the California Legislative Analyst’s Office came out in strong opposition against Proposition 38 Thursday, arguing that the ballot measure that seeks to support medical research lacked appropriate provisions for transparency and accountability. Instead, they said, it seemed to “steer public funds” to its billionaire backer’s “philanthropic project” and then “hide its tracks.” The proposition will ask voters in the November election to allow the state to borrow $8.4 billion to support medical research in immunology and immunotherapy conducted by California research institutes and universities.

...CalMatters reported only one research institute in California appeared to meet the criteria included in the measure for the nonprofit that would be awarded half the bond proceeds. That institute is the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy [CIII], an independent medical research organization affiliated with UCLA. Gary Michelson, a billionaire philanthropist and medical inventor, is both the co-founder of that institute and the chief backer of Proposition 38...

First announced in 2024, the CIII is currently under construction and scheduled to open soon...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article317199654.html.

Reminder - From the UCLA Newsroom (2024):

Key takeaways

The UCLA Research Park will occupy the former mall site, a 700,000-square-foot property 2 miles from the Westwood campus.

The research park will house the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy at UCLA and the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, as well as programs across the disciplines.

This acquisition was made possible in part by an intended $500 million investment from the state of California, with $200 million already allocated.

The California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy is also supported by a group of founding donors led by Meyer Luskin, Dr. Gary Michelson, Dr. Eric Esrailian, Dr. Arie Belldegrun, Sean Parker and Michael Milken...

Full news release at https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-to-transform-empty-mall-into-research-park.

Straws in the Wind - Part 468

From Inside Higher Ed: The U.S. Military Academy at West Point cannot restrict what civilian faculty write or say publicly, a federal court judge ruled... The ruling permanently overturns a sweeping policy that required faculty members speaking in their professional capacity to seek prior approval for any external speech, including journal publications, media interviews and blog and social media posts. U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Seibel, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with Tim Bakken, the West Point law professor who sued the academy in September 2025, arguing the new policy was unconstitutional. In [her] ruling, Seibel agreed the policy violates the First Amendment. She also ruled that West Point may not prevent Bakken from “expressing or offering” his opinions or beliefs about the subject matter under discussion during his classes.

West Point could appeal the decision...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/09/10/judge-declares-west-point-faculty-gag-order-unconstitutional.