Levering Construction

The Way It Was

From the Daily Bruin: As UCLA expands university-owned housing in Westwood, students said construction has caused disturbances and safety concerns for residents living nearby. UCLA is constructing a 19-story apartment complex for undergraduate students at 901 Levering Ave., which will offer 1,134 beds across 146 apartment units. The project, which was approved by the UC Board of Regents in March, is set to be completed in January 2029. The project is part of the university’s efforts to provide four consecutive years of guaranteed housing for incoming first-year students and two consecutive years for transfer students, a UCLA Housing spokesperson said in an emailed statement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/11/08/residents-express-concerns-as-ucla-begins-work-on-new-19-story-apartment-complex.

The main take-away for those who don't live in the area but who drive around UCLA is that the intersection near the construction is likely to be a problem for an extended period.

Straws in the Wind - Part 524

From the Daily Pennsylvanian: As generative artificial intelligence threatens to compromise the academic integrity of take-home writing assignments, some Penn professors are finding new ways to keep up with ever-changing demands in teaching. Rumi is a writing platform that enables instructors “to set guardrails around student AI use and provide students a way to make their writing and thinking process visible.” This semester, 17 instructors teaching nearly 20 classes across Penn’s four undergraduate schools piloted the program, according to Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Bruce Lenthall. The workspace, which offers similar functions to Google Docs, gives instructors greater access to student writing and revision history. Though not an AI detection service, students can collaborate on documents, peer review work, and post on discussion boards through the software. Various AI models — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude — can be integrated with the program at an instructor’s discretion. 

At Penn, new technology can be adopted on a school-specific or University-wide basis, according to Lenthall. Because many professors identified a need for increased student transparency on take-home assignments, Lenthall said Rumi was offered as a “cross-school pilot.” ...“We have a lot of instructors on campus that think their students learn an incredible amount from take-home assignments,” Lenthall said in an interview. “In this moment of AI, those kinds of assignments are really stressed.” Lenthall outlined various ways instructors have responded to student AI use, including “by pushing more assignments into the classroom,” and “by creating other kinds of mechanisms to ensure that students are doing their own work.” 

“Rumi is a technology that is designed to support those kinds of out-of-class assignments,” he said...

Full story at https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/11/penn-rumi-artifical-intelligence-academic-dishonesty-prevention.

True Beliefs

A Columbia undergraduate who came to question his political beliefs wrote an interesting essay in the Columbia Daily Spectator. I have excerpted it below:

...Columbia students argue to persuade, impress, or defeat the people on the other side. Part of this comes from how polarized campus politics are. When every issue is framed as a binary contest, the goal becomes winning, leaving little room to pause and ask whether you genuinely hold the view you’re defending. That makes every argument a performance, which plays to the person giving it, too. Defend a position and you hold it harder, whether you believe in it or not—like a teenager who keeps arguing with a parent long after realizing they’re wrong.

...My psychology professor taught us the protege effect: You learn an idea more firmly once you have had to teach it, because explaining it forces you to organize and rehearse it. I realized the same is true for arguing...

The solution to campus polarization is not a stronger argument. It is the private, uncomfortable work of checking the position you would defend to death. Are the facts under it accurate? Are the values behind it actually mine? Nothing is harder, because you already know which answer you are hoping for.

...So find your answer. This semester, take the person you are sure is wrong out for coffee. Leave the rebuttal at home and bring a question: “How did you come to see it this way?” Listen until you could retell their story and they would confirm, “Yes, that’s it.” Then ask yourself the same question, and notice how long the honest answer takes. It will be uncomfortable. Good. That is what it feels like to stop reciting and start actually believing...

Full article at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2026/11/07/at-columbia-uncertainty-is-not-failure-pretending-to-be-certain-is/.

====

I asked AI (Gemini Song Composer) to turn the essay's excerpts into a song. Ultimately, I got two versions. (Note that AI is better at songwriting than spelling "Coffee" in the image above.)

Version 1: "Where The Truest Answers Grow"

Or direct to https://ia903206.us.archive.org/10/items/True_Beliefs/1-Where%20the%20Truest%20Answers%20Grow.mp4.

Version 2: "Coffee With the Wrong One."

Or direct to https://ia903206.us.archive.org/10/items/True_Beliefs/2-Coffee%20With%20the%20Wrong%20One.mp4.

Verse 1

I paced the halls with answers I was ready to defend

To argue every point until I made the session end

I spoke with all the fervor that a young man could provide

Just trying to convince the world I had the proper side

We stood across the binary and fought to win the day

A grand performance acted out with clever things to say

The louder that I shouted and the more I pressed my case

The more I was a stranger to the person in that place

Chorus

It takes an inner quiet to find where you truly stand

To leave the noisy battle and to let go of your hand

You have to stop reciting every line you came to know

And step into the silence where the truest answers grow

Verse 2

My teacher spoke of learning and a strange effect he knew

The more you teach an idea then the more it feels like true

I realized that the arguments I framed to make a stand

Were locking down the fences and were cordoning my land

Like some rebellious teenager who argues with his folks

Long after he has realized his grievance is a hoax

I held on to the positions that I shouted in the crowd

Defending them so fiercely just because I was so proud

Chorus

It takes an inner quiet to find where you truly stand

To leave the noisy battle and to let go of your hand

You have to stop reciting every line you came to know

And step into the silence where the truest answers grow

Verse 3

So do the harder work of checking all the facts you swear

Are those real values that you hold or did you find them there?

Go sit and have a coffee with the person who is wrong

And listen to their story till you know where they belong

Outro [Omitted from "Coffee With the Wrong One"]

Notice how long an honest answer takes

It will be uncomfortable at first, and that is good

That is what it feels like to stop reciting words.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 212

From the Harvard Crimson: More than 18 months after ousting the leaders of its embattled Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard has yet to name a new permanent director — and at least two professors have turned down the job. Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler ’87 dismissed the center’s director, Turkish Studies professor Cemal Kafadar, and its associate director, History professor Rosie Bsheer, in March 2025. Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors alleged at the time that Cutler made the decision because he felt the center’s programming on Palestine was insufficiently balanced, a characterization Cutler disputed...

CMES became a flashpoint last year in Harvard’s clash with the Trump administration. In March 2025, former University President Lawrence H. Summers said a panel at CMES was “very likely” antisemitic, and other Harvard affiliates had accused the center of platforming antisemitism. Those concerns were amplified in the federal government’s April 11, 2025, letter demanding Harvard make sweeping reforms to keep its federal funding... Though the threats to Harvard’s federal funding have largely subsided, faculty concerns about academic freedom have not...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/11/10/harvard-cmes-director-update/.

Getting In

From the San Francisco Chronicle: The University of California is facing a pivotal moment in its high-profile deliberation over whether to reinstate the SAT and ACT admissions requirement in response to students’ declining math preparedness. UC’s Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools [is planning] to review reports that more deeply explore the spike in the number of students failing introductory math courses at the prestigious public university system.

Meanwhile, UC campuses and math departments are searching for their own answers to help students catch up in math. They are redesigning courses, expanding counseling services and encouraging students to take summer classes if they are underprepared, especially if they did not take precalculus in high school. Some campuses are also reconsidering whether students in certain science programs need to take calculus. UCLA, for example, has found success with a first-year math course tailored to students in biology programs. The reports to the admissions board could chart how UC responds to calls for reinstating high-stakes testing for freshman admissions.

One report will provide more information on enrollment patterns and performance in introductory math classes, such as calculus and precalculus. UC recently revealed that, last school year, 18% of students in those classes failed or struggled greatly. (That figure doesn’t account for students who started in a higher math class or didn’t take math at all.) BOARS will also review a report on how student outcomes, such as grades and graduation rates, have changed since UC eliminated standardized testing in 2020.  The admissions board is expected to make a recommendation by February on whether to bring back the SAT and ACT for first-year admissions. The UC Board of Regents will make the final decision, likely in the summer...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-sat-act-math-preparation-22515835.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 523

From Inside Higher Ed: A University of Kentucky employee has received a religious exemption from having to use artificial intelligence tools to do his job. David Durman, a research administrator and avowed humanist, pursued the exemption after the university began asking employees to integrate AI into their workflows... But Durman saw UK’s requirement to use AI as a violation of humanist doctrine, which lists critical thinking and moral responsibility as two of its core values.

...With support from the American Humanist Association, he pursued an AI use exemption under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for an applicant or employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement.” The university granted the exemption in September... 

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/11/02/u-kentucky-says-humanist-admin-exempt-ai.

ICE Jail - Part 4

We have been following the travails of UC-Berkeley student Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez who was jailed by ICE and then ordered released by a judge on Monday, according to various news sources. For the record, although court orders aren't always quickly followed, she was in fact released Monday night. From SFGATE:

...Paula Valentina Albornoz Hernandez, a 23-year-old business administration student from Colombia, was arrested Oct. 30 while preparing to board a flight to Oregon with her boyfriend. Her attorney, Nikolas De Bremaeker, told SFGATE that Hernandez has a pending asylum application and valid work authorization. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the arrest to SFGATE, saying her legal permission to remain in the United States expired in March 2023. U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins ruled Monday that ICE violated Hernandez’s constitutional right to due process by detaining her without prior notice or a hearing and ordered her immediate release from the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert. Coggins also barred ICE from imposing electronic monitoring without first demonstrating to the court why it would be necessary...

Hernandez was released Monday night, De Bremaeker confirmed...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/berkeley-ice-sfo-freed-22523372.php. 

As we said in our previous post on this matter, I wouldn't count on the midterm elections producing a mellowing on immigration or other issues. For now, you know who is focused on election grumbles but that may pass and prior issues come back in play:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlvZMfOrT3s.

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo7Q2TuoVdE.