What's Military?

The Regents in their current set of meetings will hear a review of the activities of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, run by UC:

https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept26/n1.pdf.

Edward Teller, the "father of the H-Bomb," was a co-founder of LLNL. And, of course, UC also has a management role in Los Alamos. Both units are outgrowths of the WW2 Manhattan Project. Although there have been calls to divest from "military" enterprises, yours truly hasn't heard any recent calls to shed either or both of these UC involvements.* One might think that nuclear weapons are inherently "military." Just an observation...

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/03/watch-regents-meeting-of-march-17-2026.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 465

From the Cincinnati Enquirer: Miami University's faculty union says administrators are preventing it from participating in a demonstration planned for Sept. 2. University officials, however, argue the event violates university policy and state law. The Faculty Alliance of Miami, which represents full-time continuing faculty and librarians, invited professors to teach their classes outside on the university quad for the day. Two days before the planned "Labor Day Teach-Out," Miami University's Office of the Provost sent an email to faculty, stating that all classes must meet at their scheduled times and locations unless a department chair approves a change. The email, which directly references the teach-out, said that the university and union's collective bargaining agreement and Ohio law mandate faculty "fulfill their assigned University responsibilities."

...Seth Bauguess, Miami University's senior director of communications, said the university's concern is not outdoor instruction but using "instructional time or activities to subject students to a concerted Union-organized labor action." ...Bauguess said that the teach-out violates Miami's Statement of Essential Teaching Practices and professional code of ethics, which "require faculty to maintain an effective learning environment, treat students with courtesy and respect and avoid exploiting students for private advantage." ...The university also cited Senate Bill 1, the sweeping and controversial Ohio higher education law enacted in 2025, in its opposition to the faculty union event...

Full story at https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2026/09/02/miami-university-faculty-union-cancel-labor-day-event/91577709007/.

Does UC want something from the governor?

Two things are clear:

1) Gov. Newsom is termed out.

2) Gov. Newsom is running for president. See:

https://ia902809.us.archive.org/1/items/newsom-7-1-2026-savings-accounts-for-kids/newsom%209-8-2026%20PBS%20segment.mp4

He says maybe he will/maybe he won't. But if it campaigns like a duck...

https://ia902809.us.archive.org/1/items/newsom-7-1-2026-savings-accounts-for-kids/newsom%209-8-2026%20full%20PBS%20interview.mp4

The next state budget will be proposed by the next governor, presumably Xavier Becerra. So Newsom can't deliver anything dramatic there (although his Dept. of Finance - given the timing - will put together at least the skeleton of the January proposal the next governor will present). But to the extent there is anything the governor can do for UC, the question is whether UC has something it can do for him that would help his campaign? 

Court decision plays ball with UCLA

The latest on the Westside VA litigation seems to favor UCLA's continued use of its baseball stadium:

From the LA Times: ...The 2022 lawsuit alleged that the VA discriminates against disabled veterans by not providing housing on campus near the medical services they need to access. It also challenged the VA’s leases of portions of the 388-acre campus to non-veteran interests, including UCLA and the private Brentwood School for athletic facilities. 

In his October 2024 final judgment, Carter ruled those leases invalid. He ordered the VA to create up to 750 units of temporary housing in 18 months and an additional 1,800 permanent units over six years, all in addition to 1,200 units ordered in the settlement of a previous lawsuit. Later that month, hoping to get some housing built before the rainy season, he ordered the VA to secure a contract within three weeks to install at least 100 modular units, some on the parking lot of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Baseball Stadium.

The VA appealed, and the 9th Circuit panel stayed the order. After oral arguments in the spring, the three judges issued a complex decision affirming Carter’s finding of discrimination but overruling his order invalidating UCLA’s lease for its baseball stadium. In the Friday order, the three-judge panel unanimously rejected the VA request for an en banc hearing. A judge requested a vote on that decision, and it failed to receive a majority, the order said. Three judges who were not on the panel all appointees of President Trump, dissented in 57 pages of argument characterizing Carter’s ruling as whimsical and judicially flawed. “We have no business ordering the VA to build thousands of housing units on a whim,” they concluded. “This is not the Ninth Circuit Court of Appropriations.” ...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-11/order-to-build-thousands-of-housing-units-on-vas-west-la-campus-stands-on-appeal. 

More on Admissions

As the Regents prepare to discuss A-G admissions requirements, this summary of the requirements from the San Francisco Chronicle may be helpful:

....UC requires a more rigorous set of specific classes in history and science than the California State University system does to satisfy these requirements. UC also has slightly stricter rules than CSU, including fewer ways to fix course failures or omissions, and requiring more of those earlier poor grades to be submitted. UC also lets students submit more honors points.

...Two groups of Californians are automatically eligible for admission — though not necessarily to the UC campus of their choice:

• Students who score in the top 9% at their high school in UC-approved courses during junior and senior year.   
• Students who score in the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates.

...Most freshman applicants complete far more than the minimum of 15 A to G courses required to qualify for UC admission. Here is a look at the share of applicants admitted in 2025 compared with how many A to G classes they took: 

• 15 to 19: 5% of applicants. Admitted: 3%
• 20 to 24: 38% of applicants. Admitted: 27%
• At least 25: 58% of applicants. Admitted: 43%

...UC has not offered specifics about what changes, if any, could come from the [A-G] review. Among the possibilities are:

• Changes to the subject areas themselves.
• Changes to the number of required courses in each subject.
• Recommendations for going beyond the minimum requirements.

...The earliest the regents could consider any recommended changes would be in the second half of 2027. Even if they agreed to make changes, the new rules could take time to kick in...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-a-g-requirements-review-22368092.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 464

From the NY Times: Teresios Bundi once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided. Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundi moved to the capital, Nairobi, in 2011 to be the first in his family to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job: writing essays for cheating overseas college students... Mr. Bundi estimates he wrote more than 2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments.

...Then A.I arrived, and the good times ended. In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT. At colleges worldwide, students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today: Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job? Essay work began to thin. Rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. “I never would have expected A.I. could do this,” Mr. Bundi said...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/technology/kenya-college-essays-ai.html.

Retract

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The journal Psychological Science... retracted a 2002 research paper co-authored by Dan Ariely, the influential but increasingly scrutinized Duke University professor, after the blog Data Colada reported earlier this week that the study contains fabricated data. The paper, on which Ariely shared authorship with Klaus Wertenbroch, found that subjects responded better to externally imposed deadlines than self-imposed ones, and has been cited over 2,000 times on Google Scholar. The retraction is the latest in a series of scandals that have dogged Ariely. Earlier reporting by Data Colada led to the 2021 retraction of another study he had co-authored, and data sleuths have cast doubt on more of his past research...

...The three professors who run Data Colada detailed several points of evidence showing that the 2002 deadlines study contains doctored data. Many participants’ results in the dataset were identical, suggesting data points had been duplicated or faked. Results that should be highly correlated — for instance, participants who said they liked the task would be expected to also report finding it interesting — showed no signs of correlation.

...In 2021, Data Colada documented evidence of fraud in a 2012 study Ariely had co-authored that also failed to replicate. Another author on the study was Francesca Gino, whose tenure was revoked by Harvard Business School after the data sleuths found a pattern of data fraud across several of her studies.* ...Duke announced [in January] it was closing Ariely’s lab, alongside several other centers, a decision the university said was made the previous December...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/data-sleuths-found-evidence-of-fraud-in-another-dan-ariely-study-now-its-being-retracted.

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*The Harvard Crimson reports pre-trial maneuvering in the Gino case is ongoing as a December 7 trial date approaches:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/9/9/harvard-gino-trial-near/.