Heaps Again

From the LA Times: A former UCLA gynecologist pleaded guilty Tuesday to sexually abusing five of his patients during examinations, and the once-renowned cancer expert was sentenced to 11 years in state prison. James Heaps, 70, pleaded guilty to 13 felonies, including multiple counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person, and must register as a sex offender for life.

The plea came after a three-justice panel of the California 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned his conviction for sexual abuse of two patients with three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person. The court determined that the trial judge failed to inform his lawyers that some of the jurors raised questions about the English proficiency of one of the panel members and ordered a retrial...

[If there had been] a second trial, Heaps faced the prospect of more charges and a potential conviction with a longer sentence... Tuesday’s plea means Heaps will be eligible for parole in 2028 with time served...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-14/ex-ucla-doctor-admits-to-sexually-abusing-five-patients-after-previous-conviction-overturned.

As blog readers will know, UCLA paid out over $700 million to victims in a settlement. We have been separately posting from time to time about the university budget. Exactly where did that funding come from? Insurance? Someplace else? Even with insurance, premiums tend to rise after big payouts. Anybody asking? We'll be looking at the health enterprise budget in a future post.

Getting In - Part 6

 
In our last post in the Getting In series, we noted the issue of college admissions essays being written by AI and the difficulty in practice of detecting them.*  Here is another use of AI in admissions (to UC, among other universities):

From KGO-7-ABC: A Palo Alto father who has filed multiple lawsuits against major university systems over his son's college rejections says artificial intelligence has become the key to pursuing the cases after no law firm agreed to represent them. The legal fight stems from a 2023 ABC7 News story about Stanley Zhong, then an 18-year-old Gunn High School student with a 4.4 GPA and a near-perfect 1590 SAT score who was rejected by 16 out of the 18 colleges he applied to. Despite the rejections, he was later hired as a software engineer at Google. Two and a half years later, his father, Nan Zhong, says the family remains convinced racial discrimination played a role in those decisions... 

Zhong said Stanley, now 21, is happy and doing well in his job at Google. "In 2025, he received an outstanding impact performance rating, which is higher than majority of the Google engineers," he said. Zhong said the family spent a year in discussions with University of California officials after Stanley's rejections, but nothing changed. He said the turning point came when a UC admissions director emailed him, writing that his allegation of racial discrimination was unfounded because California law bans the practice.

"When I got that line, I kept scratching my head," Zhong said. "They're saying there cannot be any noncompliance if there's a law banning it, but we're exactly accusing them of breaking the law secretly. So that is the point where I realized there's nothing we can achieve by having a conversation with them." Zhong said conversations with state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom also went nowhere, prompting the family to sue the University of California, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan and Cornell University.

He said they struggled to find legal representation. "We've been talking to local law firms, national law firms. By my account, we probably talked to dozens of legal organizations and law firms. None of them took it," Zhong said. With statutes of limitation approaching, he said the family decided to represent themselves. "Of course, being somebody with no legal experience at all, we naturally turned to AI," he said. "It turned out to be a boon that we never anticipated to be so effective."

Zhong said they use multiple AI models simultaneously to analyze legal questions, compare answers and prevent errors. "It's like having a team of deep lawyers, top lawyers, all working for you," he said. He pointed to a recent ruling in the University of Washington case, where a judge rejected the university's motion to stay the case. Zhong said the decision underscored a challenge in bringing admissions lawsuits: students often lose legal standing once they reach their junior year of college. "Here, Stanley has a unique advantage. He's not going to college yet. He may go at any time," Zhong said. "So, in some ways, he has evergreen legal standing that allows us to bring the lawsuit." ...

Full story at https://abc7news.com/post/google-engineer-rejected-colleges-uses-ai-sue-ucs-other-universities-racial-discrimination/18849388/.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/getting-in-part-5.html.

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If only he had known about this:

Or this:

Straws in the Wind - Part 312

From Bloomberg: President Donald Trump’s administration has opened a new front in its campaign to reshape US colleges, homing in on racial diversity at some of the top medical schools in the country. The Department of Justice has launched investigations into medical programs at Stanford, the University of California San Diego and Ohio State University, accusing them of giving a leg up to minority applicants. The administration has made similar claims about a swath of universities. But for medical schools, those accusations — and the accompanying risk to their federal funding — are an especially potent weapon.

Medical programs already took a hit last year when the president slashed billions in research grants, which disproportionately affects biomedical fields. The National Institutes of Health alone terminated nearly $2 billion in payments to medical schools as of last June. But even bigger sums could be at stake if the DOJ investigations widen beyond the initial slate of schools.

The NIH awarded over $19 billion to medical programs last year, and students rely on federal aid and loans to afford famously expensive medical degrees. If schools are found to be in violation of anti-discrimination law, they risk getting cut off from all this funding...

Full story at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/trump-targets-top-medical-schools-as-next-higher-ed-battleground.

Another One

The Regents are having another closed-door meeting about the conflict with the feds. The last such meeting was only a week ago. Is something up? Some new development?

TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Because the membership of the Advisory Group on Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (“Advisory Group”) includes five members of the Regents’ Governance Committee, there exists the potential for having present a quorum of a Regents’ Committee when the advisory committee meets.

This notice of meeting is served in order to comply fully with pertinent open meeting laws.

On Tuesday, April 14, 2026, there will be a Closed Session, Special Meeting of the Regents’ Governance Committee concurrent with the Advisory Group to discuss Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (Closed Session Statute Citation: Litigation [Education Code section 92032(b)(5)].)

The meeting will convene at 4:00 p.m. at 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland and adjourn at approximately 4:30 p.m.

(Advisory Group members: Regents Anguiano, Cohen, Hernandez, Matosantos, Milliken, Reilly, Robinson, Sarris, and Sures)

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/april26/meeting-notice_federal-april-14-2026.pdf.

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NOTE: Although UC maintains a website entitled "Federal Developments," the last posting there that directly dealt with the conflict with the feds was from October 2025. See:

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/federal-updates.

Agostini's Every Ship on Its Own Bottom - Part 2

In an earlier post, we noted - based on former UCLA VC & CFO Agostini's budget book - who were the Bad Guys, i.e., those running a deficit of at least 5% of expenditures for the current fiscal year, as projected in Sept. 2025.* We again emphasize the caveat that revenue at the unit level is often in whole or in part an allocation so a deficit could mean an insufficient allocation as opposed to improper overspending.

Agostini found a projected overall deficit in the units he identified. But some units ran surpluses (revenues > expenditures. So, who were the Good Guys in his calculation? We again use the arbitrary 5% figure and define Good Guys as those with projected surpluses of 5% or greater of expenditures. 

The list of Good Guys is below. It might not surprise you to know that the CFO's office is one of the Good Guys:

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/04/agostinis-every-ship-on-its-own-bottom.html. At this link you will also find links to past budget postings and sources.

 

Straws in the Wind - Part 311

From Inside Higher Ed: Republicans are fuming over the decision to oust the system president. One Democrat countered that “we need to stop partisan finger-pointing.” Republicans in Wisconsin want answers and are vowing to retaliate after the Universities of Wisconsin system Board of Regents fired President Jay Rothman [last] Tuesday night with no public explanation.

Accusing the regents of blatant partisanship, Republicans in the State Legislature are planning to hold a hearing on the firing and to vote against 10 board appointees who have been nominated and are already serving on the board but haven’t been confirmed. The Senate’s GOP-controlled Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges, which is holding the hearing, can’t stop the nominations on its own, but the mounting threats may set up a showdown over who serves on the board if the full Republican-majority Legislature takes up the fight.

Rothman, who has led the 25-campus system for almost four years, has said he doesn’t know why he was fired and defended his tenure. In a series of letters made public last week, he accused the board of trying to push him out without explanation...

“I think that the notion that he is unaware of the problems and challenges and people’s concerns is bullshit. He absolutely is aware. He absolutely has been informed by the regents in many different conversations,” [a] source said. “And it’s not just the regents who are the ones who have concerns. They are responsible for managing over a dozen campuses, and many of the chancellors on those campuses also had concerns and complaints about his leadership, and he is very much aware of that.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/governance/executive-leadership/2026/04/08/rothman-firing-divides-wisconsin-lawmakers.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 141

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard’s graduate student union said Friday afternoon that it would begin a strike on April 21 if the University does not meet its demands by then, escalating a labor dispute that has stretched on for more than a year. In an email to members, the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers accused Harvard’s negotiators of refusing to engage on key issues, including wages, protections for non-citizen workers, and access to third-party arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.

Union leaders pointed to the results of a strike authorization vote last month — in which nearly 96 percent of participating members voted in favor — as evidence of a broad support for a walkout... Even as they set a deadline, union leaders said they remained open to reaching an agreement. “We hope that between now and our strike deadline, Harvard makes a good faith effort to come to the table, meet with us and bargain over our articles,” said Linsdey Adams, a member of the bargaining committee. Absent an agreement, she added, “on the morning of the 21st [of April], we are on strike until we have a fair contract.” ...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/11/hgsu-set-strike-date/.