Less than meets the eye - Part 2

Undoubtedly, there will be public comment on AB 713 now on the governor's desk for signature or veto at the September Regents meeting (unless he vetoes it before the meeting). As we have noted previously (see Aug. 13 on this blog), the bill actually leaves the decision on whether UC can hire undocumented students to the Regents. It is a mandate for CSU and the community colleges but permissive for UC. 

From CalMatters: Is this the year that Gov. Gavin Newsom allows students without legal status to legally work at California’s public colleges and universities? A state bill with wide support from Democrats but opposed by Republicans seeks to do just that by adopting an untested legal theory that argues a 1980s federal law banning employment for people without legal status doesn’t apply to state agencies. But university leaders and Newsom worry that acting on the theory could put the state on another collision course with the Trump administration.

The bill easily cleared the Legislature Friday, including a yes vote from one Republican. The bill now heads to Newsom’s desk. Assembly Bill 713 by Assemblymember José Luis Solache, a Democrat from Lakewood, is seemingly straightforward: The University of California, California State University and community colleges cannot disqualify students without legal status from campus employment. If it becomes law, it would kick in Jan. 6...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2026/08/students-without-legal-status-california/.

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Bill at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB713/id/3191073. "This article shall apply to the University of California, unless it is found to be inapplicable to the university, then, consistent with Section 67400, this article shall apply to the university only to the extent that the Regents of the University of California, by appropriate resolution, make it applicable."

Straws in the Wind - Part 456

From the Columbia Daily Spectator: Barnard quietly paused approvals this month for Curricular Practical Training, a program many international students rely on for internship eligibility... The pause comes after the federal government sent a pair of memos to Barnard and other colleges and universities on Aug. 12 and 24 threatening to cut off international student enrollment if the schools do not adopt stricter rules for approving international students’ work authorizations. The pause, which other institutions have adopted amid the federal government’s threat, raises concerns of international students losing work opportunities in an increasingly difficult job market.

All pending and new CPT approvals are on hold as Barnard reviews and updates its institutional protocols, Joanna Kang, associate director of Barnard’s International Student Services office wrote in the email to [an] international student. The student shared a portion of the email but declined to share its full text. A Barnard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pause...

Full story at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/08/29/barnard-quietly-pauses-international-student-internship-approvals-following-federal-memos/.

Yale Deal - Part 12

 From the Yale Daily News: For the first time, first-year students were mandated to attend an orientation event that asked them to consider the interplay between higher education and democracy. The conversation — led by Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis and History professor Beverly Gage ’94 — took place in two sessions... The conversations, which centered on the relationship between higher education and American democracy, touched on topics including campus protests and free speech — which were also discussed at a teach-in marketed as an alternative to the panels themselves...

Hours before the first session began, over 300 alumni, students, professors and local union members gathered on Cross Campus in a teach-in, headlined “Democratize Yale,” to demand the protection of student free speech and assembly, the democratization of the University board of trustees, the codification of academic freedom and that Yale not settle in negotiations with the Trump administration.

...Lewis said during the later session that protest regulations were necessary to “ensure the ability of each student to get an education, the ability to back them, and to teach.” He noted Yale has “rules regarding the time and place and manner, not content related rules,” and that protesters can protest an issue from both sides...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/articles/first-years-attend-panel-on-protests-and-yale-s-place-in-democracy.

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From the Chronicle of Higher Education: ...There were... indications that at least one national organization is interested in the fight. Indivisible, an anti-Trump advocacy group founded during President Trump’s first term, previously bought billboards on Interstate 95 to urge Yale not to settle. It provided signs and T-shirts for this rally. The event seemed to go off without a hitch, although [Alex Chen, Yale’s undergraduate student-body president] said later that “free expression facilitators,” staff members trained in Yale’s free-expression policies, had approached him to ask what was going on. “It’s a little bit chilling,” he said, “to have them watching your every move.”

In addition, two people identifying themselves as staffers from the Office of Public Affairs told reporters that they could not be on Yale’s grounds. Instead, journalists had to stand on a public sidewalk, about 250 feet away from the protest. “It’s to protect the privacy of the students and faculty,” one of the staff members said.

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/yale-activists-defy-rules-to-warn-against-deal-with-trump.

Regents at UCLA: Sept. 14-16, 2026

The Regents will be meeting at UCLA Sept. 14-16, 2026. Below is the preliminary agenda.

Regents: September 14-16, 2026 at UCLA Luskin Conference Center - Agenda

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Monday, September 14, 2026

3:00 pm Investments Committee (open session- includes public comment session) 

Public Comment Period (30 minutes)

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of May 5, 2026

I1 Discussion: Review of Investment Performance for Fiscal Year 2025–26

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Tuesday, September 15, 2026

8:30 am Board (open session - includes public comment session) 

Public Comment Period (30 minutes)

Remarks of the Chair of the Board

Remarks of the President of the University

Remarks of the Chair of the Academic Senate

B1 Discussion: UC Inspires: Pulitzer Prize Winners – Chasing Truth and Knowledge

B2 Discussion: Annual UC Accountability Report

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10:15 am Joint: Health Services Committee and Finance and Capital Strategies Committee (open session) 

J1 Action: La Jolla Outpatient Pavilion, San Diego Campus: Budget, Scope, External Financing, and Design following Consideration of an Addendum to the La Jolla Campus Long Range Development Plan and Subsequent Environmental Impact Report Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act

J2 Discussion: Update on Integration of the UCLA West Valley Medical Center, Los Angeles Campus

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10:55 am Health Services Committee (open session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 14, 2026

H1 Discussion: Public Payor Policy Updates Amid Federal and State Disinvestment

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11:35 am Governance Committee (closed session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of May 5, 2026

G1(X) Discussion: Collective Bargaining Matters I

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1:00 pm Compliance and Audit Committee (closed session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 14, 2026

C1(X) Discussion: Updates on Health-Related Litigation Matters

C2(X) Discussion: Methodology and Valuation of Settlements in Professional Liability Cases

C3(X) Action: Recommended Settlement for Board Action:

Early Care and Education Pre-Litigation Claims (Child A and Child B) – Proposed Settlement – Sexual Misconduct – Los Angeles

C4(X) Discussion: Appellate, Trial Court Developments and Updates, Many Cases Including:

CALMATTERS v. REGENTS – Complaint Filed – California Public Records Act – Los Angeles

CITY OF PASADENA, et al. v. REGENTS, et al. (Rose Bowl Litigation) – Proceedings Informally Stayed – Breach of Contract – Los Angeles

DEFENDING EDUCATION v. ANGUIANO (Viewpoint/free speech issues regarding transgender individuals)

DO NO HARM, et al. v. REGENTS, et al.; STUDENTS AGAINST RACIAL DISCRIMINATION v. REGENTS, et al.; ZHONG, et al. v. REGENTS, et al. (Admissions Litigation) – Various Activity – Racial Discrimination – All Campuses

FEDERAL FUNDING LITIGATION – Various Activity – Contracts and Grants – Systemwide

OSAKO v. REGENTS, et al. – Temporary Restraining Order Issued – California Public Records Act – Los Angeles (Withholding of a report on a UCLA administrator)

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY PRA COLLECTIVE v. REGENTS – Order to Show Cause Issued re Petition for Writ of Mandate – Office of the President

PROTEST-RELATED CASES – Various Activity – Multiple Campuses

GENERAL COUNSEL’S UPDATE ON LITIGATION

C5(X) Information: Settlements and Separation Agreements under Delegated Authority Reported from June 1, 2026 to July 31, 2026

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2:30 pm Board (closed session) 

B3(X) Discussion: External Funding Litigation and Legal Issues

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3:15 pm Governance Committee (closed session) 

G2(X) Discussion: Collective Bargaining Matters II

G3(X) Discussion: Incentive Compensation for Fiscal Year 2025-26 for Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President – Investments, Office of the President

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3:55 pm Governance Committee (open session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

G3 Action: Incentive Compensation for Fiscal Year 2025-26 for Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President – Investments, Office of the President as Discussed in Closed Session

G4 Action: Amendment of Bylaw 40.2 and Regents Policies 2304 And 2306; Adoption of New Regents Policies on Equivalent Ranks, Academic Senate Membership, and Academic Units and Functions; and Rescission of Related Standing Orders

Note: Matters relating to Academic Senate are always worth tracking.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2026

8:30 am Board (open session - includes public comment session) 

Public Comment Period (30 minutes)

Approval of the Minutes of the Meetings of July 14 and 15, 2026

Remarks from Student Associations

B4 Discussion: Update on Artificial Intelligence

B5 Discussion: History and Background of Standardized Testing at UC

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10:45 am Academic and Student Affairs Committee (open session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

A1 Discussion: UC STEM Outcomes and Math Innovation

A2 Discussion: What Future is UC Preparing Students For?

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1:00 pm Special Committee on Nominations (closed session) 

S1(X) Action: Appointment of a Regent and Regent-designate to Standing Committees and Resignation of a Regent from a Standing Committee for 2026-27

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1:05 pm Finance and Capital Strategies (closed session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

F1(X) Action: Authorization to Form a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation Utilizing Recently Acquired Assets from a Commercial Party to Create a cGMP Facility to be Located at 777 Mariposa Street, San Francisco Campus

NOTE: cGMP stands for Current Good Manufacturing Practice, a system of regulations enforced by agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure the safety, purity, and quality of products like pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and food.

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1:35 pm Board (closed session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

Committee Reports Including Approval of Recommendations from Committees:

-Compliance and Audit Committee

-Finance and Capital Strategies Committee

-Governance Committee

Officers’ and President’s Reports:

-Personnel Matters

-Report of Interim Actions

-Report of Materials Mailed Between Meetings

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Upon end of closed session:

Finance and Capital Strategies (open session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

F2 Action: Berkeley Air & Space Center, Berkeley Campus: Certification of an Environmental Impact Report Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act and Authorization for Submittal of the Project to the National Aeronautics And Space Administration

F3 Action: UCLA Research Park East Core and Shell Improvements, Los Angeles Campus: Working Drawings Funding, Scope, and Design Following Adoption of a Mitigated Negative Declaration Pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act, and Advanced Work Phase Construction Funding

F4 Discussion: Preliminary Discussion of the University’s 2027-28 Operating Budget

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3:35 pm National Laboratories Committee (open session) 

Action: Approval of the Minutes of the Meeting of July 15, 2026

N1 Discussion: State of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

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4:05 pm Board (open session) 

Agenda – Open Session

Committee Reports Including Approvals of Recommendations from Committees:

-Academic and Student Affairs Committee

-Finance and Capital Strategies Committee

-Health Services Committee

-Governance Committee

-Investments Committee

-Joint Meeting: Health Services Committee and Finance and Capital Strategies Committee

-National Laboratories Committee

-Special Committee on Nominations

Resolution

Officers’ and President’s Reports:

-Report of Interim, Concurrence, and Committee Action:s

-Report of Materials Mailed Between Meetings 

Missing

From the Sacramento Bee: Two professors at the University of California, Davis are among the thousands still missing after catastrophic flash floods swept through parts of Nepal on Aug. 26. Nearly 1,300 people have been killed in the disaster and more than 5,000 remain missing, according to Nepal’s disaster management agency. Rao and Vasu Unnava, both professors at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, were staying in a hotel in Timure, Nepal, when the flash floods occurred, according to a message from the university’s chancellor and provost. Only a few kilometers from the border of Nepal and Tibet, they have not been located or heard from since then...

Rao Unnava stepped down as dean of the Graduate School of Management on July 1 after serving in that position for a decade... Vasu Unnava is an adjunct associate professor at the same school, where she teaches marketing and studies consumer behavior...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article317131341.html. 

Will a Retreat Solve the Budget Problem?

From time to time on this blog, we have taken note of UCLA's budget travails and the absence of up-to-date budget documentation. We have noted that while UCLA at one time published annual budgets on a regular basis, that practice seemed to stop. A new CFO, under pressure from the Academic Senate, finally published a budget book which we subsequently analyzed. But then he said Very Bad Things about the older budget documents which got him fired. We now have a new interim CFO and a pledge by the administration to be "transparent" about budgetary matters:

https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/Budget%20Transparency%20Protocol%204-21-2026.pdf.

The pledge includes a schedule of budgetary reveals, starting with a "retreat" that will take place this month. (We already noted this retreat in our Sept. 1 post about the new Athletics Director.)

Sitting in the background is ongoing concern about a deficit in the Athletics Department which is not supposed to be a cost to the university:

https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Athletics%20Department%20Deficit%206-10-2026.pdf.

In her final report to the Academic Senate and community, outgoing Senate Chair McAvoy included this message about budgetary matters:

Budget: Over the course of the academic year, Administration shared more budgetary information with the Council on Planning and Budget (CPB). This information has included both written documents (overall budget pictures, unit level budgetary information, etc.) and productive conversations with interim VC/CFO Reem Hanna-Harwell and others. Senate Leadership and EVCP Hunt developed a Budget Transparency Protocol that describes expectations for sharing budget information to support Senate consultation. An inaugural annual budget retreat with Senior Administrators and CPB/Senate leadership is scheduled for September that will allow a retrospective of the past year and to plan for a productive year ahead. In these times of fiscal strain, it is imperative that the CPB is engaged in these difficult deliberations to fulfill its advisory role, which we will continue to emphasize.

Full report at https://senate.ucla.edu/news/august-2026-ucla-academic-senate-updates.

While we await the retreat, we note that there is no actual budget information in the statement above or the earlier documents. As blog readers will know, we have been retaining budget information in a page on the Internet Archive so that nothing gets lost or disappears:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026.

Yours truly is aware of a longstanding Public Documents request for budgetary information from UCLA that keeps being met with apologies for delay, but no documents. This could be the result of stalling, or it could be that Murphy Hall really can't readily produce the numbers. So there remains the question of just how much information Murphy Hall has about the budget, a large portion of which is in the health enterprise. (The Health Enterprise seems to have its own CFO and more command of its own information.) In this age of computerization and AI, one might think that a simple command would produce estimated income statements and balance sheets, historical, present, and projections of the future. However, there is the possibility that although one might reasonably think that is the case, one might be wrong.

At the retreat, Senate representatives might want to look at the accounting system as well as whatever accounting numbers are presented. If the system can't produce timely estimates on command, being transparent about unavailable information won't be helpful.

Maybe the ultimate question is whether we have a retreat or an advance.

Straws in the Wind - Part 455

From the NY Times: After 17 years of teaching science at West Point, Dr. Adam Kalkstein says he was suddenly ordered last year to cut from his curriculum information about the human causes of climate change, according to a new lawsuit filed against the U.S. Military Academy. The change was immoral and potentially illegal, Dr. Kalkstein says he told Brig. Gen. Shane R. Reeves, who at the time was dean of West Point. Instead of upholding Army values, Dr. Kalkstein said he felt like a liar and a fraud. General Reeves stormed out of the room when Dr. Kalkstein declined a suggestion that he resign, according to the lawsuit. Six months later, the tenured professor was told his contract would not be renewed.

Filed in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit accuses West Point of breaking the law by violating Dr. Kalkstein’s First Amendment rights by forbidding him from teaching about human-driven climate change, an order that required him “to omit a massive, fundamental, essential component of the court and to defy science,” according to the suit...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/us/politics/west-point-climate-professor-lawsuit.html.