Change in Title

From the Daily Cal: Cal Athletics is replacing its Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice with the Athletics Thriving Collaborative; in doing so, it dropped diversity, belonging and justice from the office’s title and eliminated two staff positions. The new Athletics Thriving Collaborative is an extension of UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion’s Thriving Initiatives, which promote “equity-based, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive values and approaches,” according to its online page. According to Cal Athletics spokesperson Jonathan Okanes in an email, two professional DEIBJ staff members will be “transitioning out” as a result of the restructuring: Ty-Ron Douglas, the office’s first associate athletics director, and Ladislao Rodriguez, director of DEIBJ operations and engagement...

Okanes said the program’s restructuring was not related to federal directives or external pressure...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/administration/cal-athletics-dismantles-dei-program-replaces-with-athletics-thriving-collaborative/article_47a8f697-c802-4bd5-994f-a601b1fb1598.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 525

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Cornell Sorority and Fraternity Life has released a policy clarifying that Cornell Interfraternity Council fraternity parties and social events are permitted in third-party spaces, which includes off-campus annexes, according to the SFL website. Social events and parties held at on-campus fraternity houses remain barred for the duration of the academic year, the SFL guidance, which is also available on the SFL website under “Social Event Policy” clarified. This comes after a SFL representative told Greek Life leadership that IFC fraternities could not host parties or social events at their off-campus annexes on Oct. 16, the Friday before Homecoming weekend. The representative did not specify the duration of the guidance at the time and it is unclear how long it lasted. 

An “annex” describes an off-campus house associated with a fraternity, but typically not owned directly by the fraternity... Fraternities are still allowed to conduct “normal chapter operations” at their houses, provided they are substance-free...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/11/university-lifts-ban-on-cornell-fraternity-parties-at-off-campus-annexes.

Things Fall Apart

 Is there a theme here?

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/.