UCLA Senate Guidelines Regarding AI Programs

Teaching Guidance for ChatGPT and Related AI Developments

March 27, 2023: Instruction

Academic Senate

Graduate and Undergraduate Councils

To: All Faculty

What you need to know: 

• ChatGPT and related AI tools are rapidly transforming higher education

• Instructors are encouraged to clarify and communicate expectations to students

• Consider incorporating academic integrity policies into your syllabus

Dear Colleagues:

Increasingly widespread availability of artificial intelligence tools such as Open AI’s ChatGPT poses challenges and opportunities for higher education. While the long-term impact of these tools on higher education is not yet clear, we nonetheless write to offer some short-term context, and to direct your attention to campus guidance(link is external) compiled collaboratively by CEILS, CAT, OTL, and the Bruin Learn Center of Excellence, and other campus partners. We recognize that the ideas below may be appropriate for some cases and less so for others. We hope that they are nonetheless helpful in guiding your thinking and judgment about how to best adapt your courses to a changing world.

Getting Up to Speed

ChatGPT was made publicly available in November 2022, immediately raising questions about its impact on higher learning. It can generate convincing and human-sounding responses to a wide variety of questions and prompts. While its responses may contain errors of fact or logic, they are clearly written and generally meet the standards of college and academic writing.

This capability raises the concern that students may submit ChatGPT output for course assignments without substantively engaging the material, putting students who do not use AI tools at an unfair disadvantage and raising academic integrity issues (see below). At the same time, AI tools offer significant opportunities to enhance learning by acting as a virtual tutor or prompt for thought; some instructors are incorporating them into coursework with the goal of preparing students to understand and use them appropriately.

There has been extensive media coverage of ChatGPT and its potential impact on higher education, for example in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. While ChatGPT is not the only generative AI-tool, it stands out for its rapid adoption and easy use. It is reasonable to assume that many of your students are already using it in various ways.

Instructors are encouraged to try ChatGPT out, for example by entering a paper prompt or a take-home exam question.

Clarifying Expectations

It’s important for instructors to clarify expectations with students and TAs. Let students know what are and are not acceptable ways to use AI tools for assignments in your course: indicate your expectations in your syllabus, and discuss them in class. Bear in mind that students are contending with different expectations from different instructors.

Campus guidance offers examples for clarifying expectations about acceptable uses and attribution. The guidance website also contains ideas for modifying assignments and course structure to promote academic integrity and to develop students’ ability to critically evaluate AI tools.

This is a time of change, when we cannot anticipate all of the ways students may use AI tools. Therefore, it is helpful for instructors to communicate principles and guidelines and ask students to apply them to new situations as they arise.

Academic Integrity

The UCLA Student Conduct Code(link is external) states, “Unless otherwise specified by the faculty member, all submissions, whether in draft or final form, to meet course requirements (including a paper, project, exam, computer program, oral presentation, or other work) must either be the Student’s own work, or must clearly acknowledge the source.” Unless an instructor indicates otherwise, the use of ChatGPT or other AI tools for course assignments is akin to receiving assistance from another person and raises the same concern that work is not the student’s own.

Please communicate this to your students, and consider incorporating this language into your syllabus.

Moving Forward

In the recent Town Hall about ChatGPT and its relationship to UCLA’s academic mission, EVCP Hunt noted that AI tools are not going away. Indeed, their capacity and availability continue to grow rapidly. Additional events and resources to support our instructional community are currently in the planning stages.

UCLA is fortunate to have in-house experts in the study of artificial intelligence, and is positioned to not only meet challenges that this technology raises, but also to prepare our students to be leaders in the understanding, use, and critique of artificial intelligence across disciplines — now and in the future. As we adapt, our choices should be guided by the goal of advancing our academic mission and, as part of that, of best preparing our students to succeed in and contribute to a dynamic world.

Sincerely,

Kathy Bawn

Chair, Undergraduate Council

---

James Bisley

Chair, Graduate Council

===

Source: https://senate.ucla.edu/news/teaching-guidance-chatgpt-and-related-ai-developments.

========================

Yours truly would add to the Senate's guidelines that anti-plagiarism programs such as TurnitIn will not determine whether or not a student has used an A.I. program for a submission. Probably, the best detector at this point is a submission with no spelling or grammatical errors, although clever students will soon learn to add some errors. Another warning sign is information that you know to be false, but is confidently asserted to be true in submissions.

You could ask for submissions of term papers in steps: first an outline, then a rough draft, and then the final product in a sequence during the quarter. Yours truly used that approach, not for A.I., but to help students learn how to construct an essay. That approach will mean more work for the instructor or whoever is doing the reading. And eventually students will figure out how to get A.I. programs to decompose submissions into those three steps.

Rain Leak

Wasn't the roof recently fixed as part of the general upgrade? Just asking... We did have a lot of rain:

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

It ain't necessarily so (at UC)

The Hechinger Report has an article indicating that nationwide, the percent increase in net college tuition (actual paid tuition, not sticker price) over the past decade has been greater for lower income students than higher income students.* Lower income students still pay less, but have experienced higher increases. The methodology used is shaky for recent years in estimating current net costs.

However, when UC campuses are separated from the averages - you can look up the individual schools - what is said to be an typical national trend doesn't generally hold here, as the table below shows:

Click on image to clarify.

====

*https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-raising-prices-faster-on-their-lower-income-than-their-higher-income-students/.

Y'all Come!

How many more can get in?

The legislature would like every Californian who applies to UC to get in, and to get into the UC of their choice. But the capacity isn't there. The LA Times has the latest wrinkle of this story:

The University of California on Tuesday unveiled its first-ever systemwide admission guarantee for qualified transfer student applicants — but access to particular campuses is not assured. To receive the guarantee, community college students would need to complete a newly unified set of general education courses required by both UC and California State University, complete specific coursework needed for UC majors, and earn a minimum GPA. 

Those who are not admitted to their campuses of choice would be offered a spot at UC Santa Cruz, UC Merced or UC Riverside, a UC admissions official told legislators at an Assembly budget hearing Tuesday. The intent is to simplify the transfer path so students clearly understand the requirements and don’t take more courses than needed, UC officials said...

Three-fourths of applicants from state community colleges are admitted to UC, more than half of those enrolled pay no tuition and 89% graduate — a rate slightly higher than those who start as first-year students and significantly higher than the 55% national average, according to UC data. One-third of UC undergraduates are transfer students...

But in the past few years of pandemic turmoil, UC and CSU have struggled with declining transfer applications as community college enrollments have plunged. UC transfer applications have fallen at every campus, declining systemwide to 39,363 for fall 2023 from 46,155 for fall 2021. Even UCLA, the nation’s most applied-to campus, saw a drop to 23,954 from 28,440 during that same period. Last year, UCLA increased the number of transfer applicants offered admission and was ultimately able to enroll more of them for fall 2022...

But not everyone embraced the UC proposal, favoring instead a single transfer pathway that community college students could complete for admission to either UC or CSU. Some have pushed UC to extend an admission guarantee to those who complete a community college associate degree for transfer...

It’s unclear how much difference a systemwide transfer admission guarantee would actually make. Six of the nine UC undergraduate campuses already offer transfer guarantee programs, and most omit certain majors from the program due to the high number of applicants for limited seats. UC Davis, for instance, excludes its new major in data science. UC Irvine omits art, business administration, dance, music, nursing science and all majors in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. The Irvine campus does offer the guarantee for other popular majors, such as biological sciences and psychological sciences...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-28/uc-proposes-first-time-systemwide-g-admission-to-all-qualified-transfer-students.

By the way, whatever happened to UCLA's $80 million recently-acquired Palos Verdes campus? So far, it is unclear how that campus, which had a few hundred students under its prior owner, is going to make a meaningful dent in UCLA's capacity problem. As we noted at the time of its purchase, it is geographically isolated from Westwood, essentially unreachable by public transit, and difficult to access even by car.

Botanical Damage

On a rainy Wednesday in southern California, consider what happened to the north a few days ago:

'Dramatically changed': Tuesday's storm leaves widespread damage at UC Botanical Garden in Berkeley

By Cornell Barnard, KGO 

Saturday, March 25, 2023 

BERKELEY - Storm damage from Tuesday's epic bomb cyclone is still being tallied. In the East Bay, a massive cleanup is planned after several beloved ancient trees and dozens of plants were destroyed at the UC Botanical Garden. Two historic trees were damaged after Tuesday's wind storm, according to officials. Officials say a Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and California Buckeye (Aesculus californica) were damaged. Botanical Garden officials say the damage occurred around 4:30 p.m. on March 21 when staff heard a loud crash during the high wind event. "People on this side of the garden heard a cracking sound," said Lew Feldman, director of the UC Botanical Garden.

Feldman showed us what Tuesday's bomb cyclone storm left behind inside the garden in the Berkeley Hills. The scope of the damage is extensive. "It's really massive, it dramatically changed this portion of the garden," said Feldman. Fierce winds toppled a beloved giant redwood tree inside the Asian plant section of the garden. It took out a picnic table and portions of the bamboo grove. "When it snapped off, it took out that section over there bamboo grove," Feldman said.

In a statement to ABC7 News, it wrote in part: "...decades of care and nurturing of some of the Garden's treasures had been destroyed. Not only had one entire leader sheared off the tree, but the top of one of the others had blown out, landing a considerable distance away, towards Strawberry Creek, knocking the timber bamboo askew." Feldman says more than 50 rare plants were also destroyed. One of the biggest losses was a rare California Buckeye tree planted 150 years ago, crushed by the redwood and nearly impossible to replace...

Full story at https://abc7news.com/botanical-garden-tree-damage-wind-storm-university-of-california-at-berkeley/13013962/.

It wasn't just Hernandez: A Bruin Columnist Also Asked the Right Question on March 16th

Sorry to confess that yours truly missed the Daily Bruin opinion piece of March 16th below dealing with the Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust (BREIT) investment/bailout by UC of $4.5 billion in return for a "guaranteed" 11.25% return. 

As we have been noting, only Regent Hernandez at the meeting of March 16th questioned the financial wisdom of the transaction.* Maybe someone alerted him to the Bruin piece that day. (??) But it is incredible that no one else on the Regents' Investment Committee - despite the fiduciary duty of the Regents to university pension and endowment funds - raised any issues about the story told by chief investment officer Jagdeep Bachhar about how he decided on the investment. No one besides Hernandez raised any issues about the risk-return involved. From the Bruin's columnist Jalyn Wu: [excerpts]

Any financial decisions made by our institution that have the ability to create a huge economic impact should be very carefully considered. On Jan. 3, UC Investments and Blackstone Inc. signed a deal agreeing to invest $4 billion in the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust. Later that month, an additional $500 million was added under the same terms...

From their investment in BREIT, which owns and finances income-producing real estate, UC Investments has been promised an 11.25% minimum return over a period of six years, with a commitment of up to $1.125 billion of their own holdings in BREIT to pay to the UC to make up the difference if the minimum return rate is not reached. According to an emailed statement from UC Investments, one of its top priorities in investing with Blackstone is ensuring that the UC pension fund, which is around $81 billion, can pay out retirement benefits to faculty and staff.

It seems too good to be true.

UC Investments and Blackstone may want the world to believe that there is little risk and guaranteed high returns associated with their partnership. Unfortunately, high expectations can indicate high risk, which is dangerous for pension holders, current employees and the entire UC community who all count on UC Investment’s ability to handle their money with care. UC Investments and Blackstone owe members of the UC community transparency when it comes to where our money is going and what it is being used for.

Mark Karlan, a continuing lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and former CEO of Imperial Credit Commercial Mortgage Investment Corp., a publicly traded REIT, said UC Investments cannot withdraw its investment for six years, which increases risk because the UC cannot cash out on their investment at any point even if the REIT performs poorly. Since November last year, Blackstone has blocked investors from withdrawing their investments from BREIT amid growing concerns about the trust’s financial state. More investors cashing out indicates weaker returns in the long run, putting the UC’s investment in jeopardy...

Full op ed at https://dailybruin.com/2023/03/16/opinion-uc-should-put-its-mouth-where-its-money-is-with-investment-transparency.

To repeat, there are financial and legal risks that are evident in this matter and that go beyond the landlord-tenant issues which the Regents did discuss (although largely taking the word of the PR team from BREIT that all was well). It might turn out in the end that putting $4.5 billion was a good deal, i.e., we got the 11.25% over an extended period with no problems, just as betting $4.5 billion on a horse that later came in first would be a good deal after the fact. The issue is whether the decision was wise before the fact. The key questions are a) whether the risk of investing $4.5 billion was low enough to justify the investment, and b) whether such large investments in an evidently risky situation should be decided by one person without extensive consultation.

Our congratulations to undergraduate Bruin columnist Jayln Wu for raising the issue the Regents should have been discussing.

====

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/hernandez-approaches-right-question-on.html.

College ranking tool

Click on image to clarify.

 

The New York Times has a customized college selection tool where you can weight your own preferences. This option is being unveiled as the US News and World Report ranking is increasingly being denounced. So, for example as shown above, if you equally want low net cost, academics, and diversity and to be in California, UCLA comes in third.

The tool is at:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/27/opinion/build-your-own-college-rankings.html.

Of course, what you might want doesn't mean you will get into the college with those attributes:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfYcQ_r_x8.

No Panic

In the week ending March 18, our tracking of new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance shows that - ta ta! - nothing happened. That's the week after the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed after a run on the bank, an event you might have thought would panic some employers into layoffs. Apparently, it didn't.

As always, the latest claims data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

Closed Door Meeting of the Regents

 
The Regents are holding a special closed-door meeting of March 30 by teleconference for discussion of "Retention of a Certain Level One Senior Management Group Member." No indication of who the individual is or what kind of position is involved. Since this is a discussion item, not an action item, it is possible that it will be on the open agenda of the May Regents meetings. (Or not, if the individual leaves.)

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/mar23/board3.30.pdf.

Lawsuit against the Internet Archive: Important - Part 3 (Effects on Other Libraries)

Yesterday, we posted about the lawsuit challenging the Internet Archive's practice of digital library lending. The judge in that case decided against the practice.* (What the Archive did was to buy physical copies of books and then emulate what a traditional library does: lend them - digitally in this case - to a single user, one-by-one, for a fixed duration.) The case will be appealed according the the Internet Archive.

Inside Higher Ed has a lengthy article about the lawsuit. Of interest is the fact that some university libraries are doing what the Internet Archive does, a practice that may now be forbidden: 

...Controlled Digital Lending in Higher Ed

When librarians in higher education want to know whether an application of controlled digital lending is legal, many consult the Association of Research Librarians’ position statement, which attempts to offer a “good faith interpretation” of U.S. copyright law. Even so, the association recommends that librarians wishing to implement controlled digital lending consult a “competent” lawyer. What constitutes fair use may depend on the book, according to Alan Inouye, interim associate executive director of the American Library Association. For example, scanning and lending a digitized version of a decades-old book that has no publisher-issued ebook differs from doing the same with a recent New York Times best seller whose publisher offers an ebook option.

“When you’re in a lawsuit, there’re only two sides. It is inherently adversarial,” Inouye said. “For those of us who are not involved in a lawsuit, the issue is … incredibly nuanced. Usually, some things are more OK, and some things are less OK … There are no fair-use police or an authoritative guidebook saying exactly how it works. It is a judgment.” Some higher ed librarians on the ground agree.

“There’s always that fuzziness of whether or not this constitutes fair use,” said Yasmine Abou-El-Kheir, director of the Lapp Learning Commons at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where students attend predominantly online. “There’s a question of equity … Online students pay tuition like face-to-face students, and yet their access to materials might be hindered due to the fact that the material is just not available digitally.”

Many theological books needed by learners or professors at the seminary, for example, are out of print, Abou-El-Kheir added. When a student or scholar makes a direct request for a book in the collection for which no ebook exists, a seminary librarian may engage in controlled digital lending by digitizing part or all of the book, removing the print book from circulation and making the digitized version available for the same duration as is allowed for a print book. Still, Abou-El-Kheir wonders whether some instances would be considered “a bit more than fair use.”

Also, having the technology to honor the spirit of controlled digital lending is a “thorny issue,” Abou-El-Kheir said. The seminary’s library has found some workarounds to ensure that a link to a digitized book cannot be used by multiple students. For example, students are required to log in to access books that library staff digitized from physical copies. Nonetheless, the library seeks to migrate to another library catalog with built-in controlled digital lending functionalities.

But some institutions, including Iowa State University, steer clear of offering books through controlled digital lending. “From a library’s perspective, there’s legal risk,” Dawn Mick, head of the university library, said of the range of interpretations of controlled digital lending. “But also, where do you put this stuff?” referring to the books that must be held back when a digitized copy circulates.

Some institutions, such as the University of Hawai‘i, publish guidelines that seek to offer clarity, even if those guidelines raise other questions. For example, at Hawai‘i, a professor’s personal copy of a book that is not available at a reasonable price, is hard to find or is out of print is considered within bounds if the personal copy of the book is sequestered in the library when the digitized copy is made available. But the university does not elaborate on what constitutes a “reasonable” price. Course textbooks for which the publisher offers an ebook, regardless of price, are not candidates for controlled digital lending at the institution. In between the colleges that engage in controlled digital lending and those that do not lies a messy middle. Numerous college librarians declined to speak on the record about controlled digital lending, out of concern that the topic is a lightning rod...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/03/27/legal-blow-internet-archive-controlled-digital-lending.

====

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/lawsuit-against-internet-archive_26.html.

Lawsuit against the Internet Archive: Important - Part 2

We earlier described a lawsuit over copyrights.* The drama continues. From the Verge:

The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a library

A federal judge has ruled against the Internet Archive in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a lawsuit brought against it by four book publishers, deciding that the website does not have the right to scan books and lend them out like a library. Judge John G. Koeltl decided that the Internet Archive had done nothing more than create “derivative works,” and so would have needed authorization from the books’ copyright holders — the publishers — before lending them out through its National Emergency Library program.

The Internet Archive says it will appeal. “Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve,” Chris Freeland, the director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, writes in a blog post. “This decision impacts libraries across the US who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online. It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.” ...

The Internet Archive says it will continue acting as a library in other ways, despite the decision. “This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books,” writes Freeland...

Full story at https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/24/23655804/internet-archive-hatchette-publisher-ebook-library-lawsuit.

Internet Archive response at http://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/.

Note: The Internet Archive is where this blog stores files such as Regents meetings and read-as-a-book files for this blog on a quarterly basis.

====

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/lawsuit-against-internet-archive.html.

Fox

Yours truly guesses that this Cold War-era sign next to the Fox Theater stood in Westwood. There were several Fox Theaters in southern California but not necessarily in LA City, and Mayor Poulson was mayor of LA. For more on what happened to Poulson:

https://archive.org/details/YortyCPO2018.

Watch the Regents Sessions of March 16, 2023

We have already discussed part of what went on at the Regents on March 16: The Investment Committee and particularly the Blackstone-REIT matter.* However, apart from Investments (and closed sessioins), there were two open sessions of the full board, a brief open session of Compliance and Audit, and a meeting of Public Engagement and Development. Please refer to our earlier post on the Investments Committee for discussion of that session.*

The March 16th meetings began at the full board with public comments. Topics included caste discrimination, disabled students, trans students, potential closing of the anthropology library at Berkeley, penalties for students who stifle speech, rape treatment, affordable medicine, climate change, labor relations, CUCSA, and use of the LSAT. Student leaders (undergraduate and graduate) followed with discussions centered on affordability. Compliance and audit approved the audit plan for the current year. Public Engagement and Development reviewed community work related to the pandemic, disabled veterans, and other concerns by UC-San Francisco. UC lobbying in Washington, DC for such purposes as obtaining funding for the humanities was also reviewed. The community college transfer issue was discussed by President Drake who said that a uniform process would result in admissions mainly from those community colleges that were the major feeders to UC and the UC wanted a broader representation. Finally, the full board met again to approve recommendations by the various committees.

Links to the videos of the Regents meetings of March 16, 2023:

--

General link to March 16 Regents:

https://archive.org/details/public-engagement-and-development-committee_202303

--

Opening Board, Compliance and Audit, Investment:

https://ia601608.us.archive.org/5/items/public-engagement-and-development-committee_202303/Board%2C%20Investments%20Committee%2C%20Compliance%20and%20Audit%20Committee.mp4

--

Public Engagement and Development:

https://ia801608.us.archive.org/5/items/public-engagement-and-development-committee_202303/Public%20Engagement%20and%20Development%20Committee.mp4

Ending Board:

https://ia601608.us.archive.org/5/items/public-engagement-and-development-committee_202303/Board%20end.mp4

=====

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/hernandez-approaches-right-question-on.html.

Swimming in Scandal - Part 8

The swimming scandal at UC-Berkeley keeps making waves. From the Orange County Register:

The University of California-Berkeley has launched a formal investigation into Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton and executive associate athletic director Jennifer Simon-O’Neill’s handling of dozens of allegations over the course of years that former Golden Bears women’s swimming head coach Teri McKeever bullied swimmers on an almost daily basis, the Southern California News Group has learned. Attorneys hired by the university have begun contacting current and former Cal swimmers and their parents as part of a follow-up investigation to an eight-month, $2-million probe that led to McKeever’s firing on January 31, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

The current investigation comes against the backdrop of months of mounting criticism of Cal from former and current swimmers, including Olympic gold medalists, and prominent financial boosters of the Golden Bears athletic program that Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill and other university employees prioritized athletic success over athlete well-being. Specifically, swimmers and their parents maintain that Simon-O’Neill and Knowlton’s inaction led to dozens of athletes being subjected to McKeever’s verbal, emotional and physical abuse and in some cases even enabled the coach’s bullying.

Golden Bears boosters, some of whom have made seven-figure donations to the Cal athletic program, have lobbied Chancellor Carol T. Christ for months to fire Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill, arguing their failure to effectively address McKeever’s behavior caused swimmers to be endangered and damaged the university’s reputation...

Cal declined to comment. Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have repeatedly declined to comment on the McKeever investigation and criticism of their handling of athlete and parent complaints. McKeever has denied any wrongdoing. Her attorney said she will pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit against the university. McKeever’s firing did not include a financial settlement. In recent weeks and months, Knowlton and Simon-O’Neill have privately tried to distance themselves from McKeever, according to multiple sources...

Full story at https://www.ocregister.com/2023/03/23/uc-berkeley-investigating-ad-jim-knowlton-associate-ad-jennifer-simon-oneill/.

What BARD said about Stanford Law's Incident

Earlier today, we posted about the free speech issue that arose at Stanford Law School.* 

From "Bard," the artificial intelligence program of Google:

Question: Given the concerns raised by the student protests against a talk by Judge Duncan at Stanford Law School, what policies should the school implement in case of future incidents?

====

Draft 1:

Here are some policies that Stanford Law School could implement in case of future incidents:

A clear and concise policy on free speech. The policy should state that students have the right to express their opinions, even if those opinions are unpopular or controversial. The policy should also state that students are not allowed to disrupt or prevent others from speaking.

A commitment to transparency and accountability. The school should make sure that all students are aware of the free speech policy and that they know how to report violations of the policy. The school should also investigate any reports of violations and take appropriate action.

A commitment to diversity and inclusion. The school should make sure that all students feel welcome and respected, regardless of their background or beliefs. The school should also provide training on diversity and inclusion to all students and staff.

====

Draft 2:

Stanford Law School should implement the following policies in case of future incidents of student protests:

The school should reaffirm its commitment to free speech and academic freedom. This means that students should be able to express their opinions, even if they are unpopular, and that speakers should be able to express their views without fear of being silenced.

The school should develop a clear policy on protests and disruptions. This policy should make it clear that protests are allowed, but that they must be peaceful and respectful. Disruptive behavior, such as shouting down speakers or blocking access to buildings, should not be tolerated.

The school should provide training to students on how to engage in peaceful protests. This training should cover topics such as how to express your views effectively, how to deal with disagreements, and how to de-escalate tense situations.

The school should have a process in place for resolving disputes between students and speakers. This process should be fair and impartial, and it should allow both students and speakers to have their voices heard.

The school should work to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for all students. This means addressing issues of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination on campus.

By taking these steps, Stanford Law School can create a campus environment where students can express their views freely and where all students feel welcome and respected.

====

Draft 3:

Stanford Law School should implement the following policies in case of future incidents:

Enforce its speech policy. The school's speech policy prohibits shutting down speakers through heckling. The school should make clear to students that this policy will be enforced, and that students who disrupt speakers will be subject to disciplinary action.

Provide training on free speech. The school should provide training to students on the importance of free speech and the proper way to express disagreement with speakers. This training should include examples of how to engage in respectful and constructive dialogue with speakers.

Create a forum for students to express their concerns. The school should create a forum for students to express their concerns about speakers and other issues. This forum should be a safe and respectful space where students can share their views and have their voices heard.

Be transparent about its decision-making process. The school should be transparent about its decision-making process for inviting speakers and for responding to protests. The school should make clear to students how it will make decisions about these matters, and should be open to feedback from students.

These policies will help to ensure that Stanford Law School is a place where students can express their views freely and where respectful dialogue can take place.

====

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/stanford-law-tries-to-turn-it-around.html.

City of Berkeley to Join UC in Litigation Over People's Park

UC has apparently found an ally in its legal fight to resume work on building student housing in People's Park: the City of Berkeley. From Berkeleyside:

The Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday night to support UC Berkeley’s state Supreme Court appeal of a lower court’s decision blocking development at People’s Park. The resolution authorizing the city attorney to send the letter was approved as part of the consent calendar at Tuesday’s meeting, with Councilmember Kate Harrison recording a no vote on the People’s Park item...

Mayor Jesse Arreguín and Southside Councilmember Rigel Robinson [asked] the City Council to support UC Berkeley’s appeal in the state Supreme Court to build student housing at People’s Park. Arreguín and Robinson submitted the urgency item for [the] City Council meeting..., saying further delays to UC construction will be detrimental to a local housing crisis.

A state appeals court sided with plaintiffs, Make UC a Good Neighbor and the People’s Park Historic Advocacy Group, in a lawsuit against UC Berkeley on Feb. 24. The lawsuit claims the university violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by not considering alternative sites for a 1,100 bed-student dorm and potential supportive housing at People’s Park, as well as noise impacts to the surrounding neighborhood...

Full story at https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/03/21/city-council-to-consider-supporting-uc-berkeley-appeal-against-peoples-park.

Note that even if UC wins its case, or if the legislature steps in and overrides the opposition, UC-Berkeley will still have to deal with protests such as occurred last summer:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i67VCYsNkQ.

Stanford Law Tries to Turn It Around

The Stanford Law School - if you haven't heard about it - is embroiled in a controversy over free speech and protests.

A conservative federal judge, Kyle Duncan, was invited to give a talk, apparently about a relatively uncontroversial topic, on March 9. Protesters arrived in the classroom and essentially engaged in what is sometimes called the "hecklers' veto" over the judge's views about LGBTQ rights, preventing the talk from going ahead as planned.

A DEI associate dean from the law school was sent in to calm things down but instead made remarks that weren't helpful. Video and audio recordings of the event began to circulate on social media. The most complete video version (9 minutes) is at the link below:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxQyztHuPjg or https://vimeo.com/806801455.* 

The dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, subsequently apologized to Duncan and the DEI associate dean was put on leave. And yesterday, Martinez issued a ten-page [!!!] letter (well, it IS a law school) explaining her actions which you can read at:

https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Next-Steps-on-Protests-and-Free-Speech.pdf.

From Inside Higher Ed today:

Officials apologized to Duncan shortly after protesters interrupted his scheduled talk. With criticism still pouring in from free speech groups and conservative politicians, Stanford Law School announced Wednesday that Tirien Angela Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, is on leave. Steinbach has been criticized for not enforcing Stanford’s free speech policies; when Duncan asked for an administrator to help manage the event as his talk was repeatedly interrupted, Steinbach instead asked pointed questions about his judicial record.

“Generally speaking, the university does not comment publicly on pending personnel matters, and so I will not do so at this time,” Stanford Law dean Jenny S. Martinez wrote Wednesday in a statement addressing the controversy. “I do want to express concern over the hateful and threatening messages [Steinbach] has received as a result of viral online and media attention and reiterate that actionable threats that come to our attention will be investigated and addressed as the law permits. Finally, it should be obvious from what I have stated above that at future events, the role of any administrators present will be to ensure that university rules on disruption of events will be followed, and all staff will receive additional training in that regard.”

The statement added that Stanford’s “commitment to diversity and inclusion means that we must protect the expression of all views,” and that the law school will be adopting “clearer protocols for managing disruptions” and “adding educational programming on free speech and norms of the legal profession.”

Martinez also noted that Stanford will introduce “mandatory educational programming for our student body rather than referring specific students for disciplinary sanctions” for their role in the protest.

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2023/03/23/stanford-law-dei-dean-leave-after-disrupted-event.

===

*Yours truly located an audio recording of the full event (41 minutes) at the link below: 

https://davidlat.substack.com/api/v1/audio/upload/6bb8e494-44cf-49ea-b641-737506ef0715/src.

===

Note: A somewhat similar event occurred at UC-Davis, although not at the law school. In that case, violence occurred outside the venue, but the event within it went off as planned:

https://www.kcra.com/article/2-arrested-building-vandalized-uc-davis-event-conservative-activist/43326784.

CalPERS Long-Term Care Tentative Settlement

Although UC employees are not generally covered by CalPERS unless they did some prior work in a CalPERS-covered position, when CalPERS offered long-term care insurance, UC employees - because they were state employees - were eligible. Many did buy long-term care insurance from CalPERS, but then were hit with big premium increases. Litigation resulted. From CalMatters:

CalPERS is preparing to pay out roughly $800 million to settle claims that it misled retirees when it began offering long-term care insurance in the late 1990s and pledged it wouldn’t substantially raise rates on certain plans. The nation’s largest public pension fund in the 1990s and early 2000s sold long-term care insurance with so-called inflation-protection that members believed would shield them from dramatic spikes in premiums. CalPERS nonetheless hiked long-term care insurance rates by 85% in 2012 and continued to raise fees in subsequent years, straining household budgets for retirees on fixed incomes.

The settlement, tentatively approved by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge earlier this month, would resolve a lawsuit that centers on that steep 2012 fee increase. The settlement cannot take effect until plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit review it and have an opportunity to submit comments to the court on it in a process that’s expected to take place between April and early June, according to court records. 

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System pays for long-term care out of a specific fund that is separate from the $443 billion portfolio that supports pensions for its 2 million members. The long-term care fund had about $4.9 billion as of June and about 105,000 active policies, according to CalPERS.

The agreement is the second court-approved settlement in the case. It is significantly less expensive for CalPERS than the first one. The previous agreement would have cost CalPERS as much as $2.7 billion and required retirees to drop their long-term care plans in exchange for payments of as much as $50,000 apiece. Thousands of retirees chose security over cash and rejected that agreement because they wanted to retain to long-term care insurance, according to attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

Under the new agreement, retirees who want to cancel their long-term care insurance will receive 80% of the premiums they paid into CalPERS’ long-term care fund. That could amount to tens of thousands of dollars for retirees. The settlement does not cap how much money a policyholder can receive. Members of the class who want to keep their long-term care insurance will receive $1,000 and a commitment from CalPERS that their rates will not increase until November 2024.

Source: https://calmatters.org/health/2023/03/calpers-long-term-care-lawsuit/.

Hernandez Approaches the Right Question on Blackstone-REIT

As blog readers will know, we have been catching up with the Regents' March meetings. Normally, we would take the second day (March 16) meeting as a whole and discuss it. But as blog readers will also know, we have been tracking the brouhaha raised by UC's investment in the Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust (BREIT).

The Investment Committee of the Regents met on the second day. Apart from the usual reviews of what had occurred recently and then over the three years since the pandemic first arrived, there was more discussion of the BREIT matter. The meeting edged into the BREIT matter with Chief Investment Officer Bachher saying real estate was a good hedge against inflation since property values and rents would rise.

To recap on earlier developments, UC had a $2 billion investment in BREIT. As Bachher told it, he happened to hear that BREIT was experiencing a run on the bank. (BREIT - unlike commercial banks - can limit withdrawals - which is what it was doing.) Bachher talked to the CEO of BREIT and offered an additional investment of $4 billion, later raised to $4.5 billion, as a kind of confidence-building bailout. In exchange, UC got a "guaranteed" 11.25% return for a locked-in long-term investment. 

So, the question now is how much of a guarantee Blackstone can really offer since it isn't earning 11.25%. (Presumably, to give UC more than it is earning means taking away something from other investors - who might be unhappy about the deal.) In short, there is a potential financial and legal risk. And the Regents, as fiduciaries with regard to the pension and endowment funds, need to be asking about the risk-reward entailed. They might also be concerned about the casual way $4.5 billion suddenly got invested in, and locked into, BREIT, at least as Bachher tells the tale.

At the January Regents meeting, all the discussion was about whether BREIT was a good landlord. Tenant groups showed up to complain. PR folks from BREIT said all was well. And the Regents meeting turned into a lovefest for BREIT given the PR assurances. There was no risk-reward discussion. None!*

So what happened this time? There were a lot of contradictions. Bachher - as noted earlier - saw real estate as an inflation hedge. He said he had come to the belief that investing in real estate around UC campuses was always a good deal because campuses generated demand. He showed slides of various properties around UC campuses that he had bought. However, he cannot legally charge lower-than-market rents. And he cannot earmark buildings for students, faculty, and staff; he has to function as a commercial landlord. To the extent that he operates legally, and particularly if he buys existing properties, it is unclear how this activity makes housing more "affordable." (He mentioned that he had bought property around Stanford, but no one seemed to catch it or ask how that could benefit UC students, staff, and faculty.)

Bachher said that by direct investing in property, he cuts out the fees, etc., that would be charged by commercial middle men. But the Blackstone investment is effectively with a commercial middle man. He said BREIT has only 6% of its investments in California, so presumably whatever benefits are said to occur by near-campus investing don't come from Blackstone. 

The complaints about BREIT continued, particularly by Investment Committee "advisor" Kathryn Lybarger, the head of AFSCME Local 3299 at UC. Bachher said his door was always open to hear such discussions. He has been much better than his predecessor, Peter J. Taylor, at disarming critics, and he does bend with the wind on issues such as divestments in fossil fuels, if the wind is strong enough - although always finding some financial rationale for the decision.** However, open door or not, the BREIT deal would be contractually difficult to undo, so it would likely take a hurricane to pull out.

At the tail end of the discussion, Regent Jose Hernandez*** finally asked a question that began to get at the financial/fiduciary wisdom of investing in an entity which is experiencing a run on the bank and then "guarantees" 11.25% to get a bailout. He also noted that BREIT appears to be the type of middle man Bachher said he liked to avoid to hold down costs. Bachher said he would discuss the matter with Hernandez "offline," i.e., in private after the meeting.

You can see the Hernandez question and the response at the link below: [Be sure sound is on.]

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NSwZnI8P2I.

===

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-blackstone-matter-lets-have-real.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/more-on-blackstone.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/still-more-on-regents-blackstone.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/more-on-blackstone-lovefest.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/01/watch-regents-investment-committees.html.

**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTXbABD-3o4.

***Regent Jose Hernandez is the President and Chief Executive Officer at Tierra Luna Engineering, LLC, an aerospace company. Mr. Hernandez previously served as President of PT Strategies at PT Capital/PT Strategies from 2013 to 2016. Before that, he was the Executive Director of Strategic Operations at MEI Technologies from 2011 to 2012... He was appointed as a Regent in August 2021 by Governor Newsom to a term expiring in 2033.

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/about/members-and-advisors/bios/jose-hernandez.html.

Preservation of Regents Recordings: Please Stand By - The Answer

In a prior post, we noted that we had received a communication from a representative of the Regents about the policy we had cited that recordings of Regents meetings would be deleted after one year.* Yours truly had been told that the one year rule was the policy with the only explanation being given was that CSU trustees deleted their recordings after one year. But it was noted that at a point in 2019, the recordings stopped being deleted.**

I then inquired whether the policy had been changed to indefinite preservation. What I learned was that in fact there is no policy, nor was there ever a policy. It's just what someone used to be doing. And now someone is no longer doing it.

So it turns out that yours truly had forgotten the rule he learned over a 40-year career at UC and on various Academic Senate committees: When someone says there is a policy, ask to see it in writing. Often, "policies" turn out to be "practices," not official policies. And also often, it turns out that no one knows who decided on the practice. My favorite line from the latest season of the detective show Goliath: "So this decision was made by no one and yet somehow it happened." Video below:

In any event, yours truly is glad the Regents are no longer deleting their recordings. But since there is no official policy of keeping them indefinitely, or any official policy at all, he will continue preserving them indefinitely. That will be the official policy of this blog.

PS: We haven't finished our review of the March Regents meetings due to other obligations; specificially, we haven't reviewed the second day. But we will get there. And we have preserved the recordings, just in case:

https://archive.org/details/public-engagement-and-development-committee_202303.

====

*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/preservation-of-regents-recordings.html.

====

**To get further into the weeds: In the early years of this blog, the Regents live-streamed the audio of their meetings. There was no posting of the audio after the meetings. So, if you had the time, you could record from the stream as it occurred, but there was no after-the-meeting source online. Yours truly suspected that in fact there was a recording even though it wasn't being posted. So he would file a Public Records Act request for it and get it by postal mail. Eventually, the formality was dropped and he would just get a CD copy of the audio recording without the official filing. He then posted the audios, eventually on archive.org. At the time, archive.org had limits on the size of the files that could be posted, so when the Regents began providing video, yours truly would just post the audio track of the video. And the Regents would deleted the video after one year. Eventually, the size limit on archive.org was lifted and we went to video posting, our current procedure.

We're late, but same old

We usually get to check new California claims for unemployment benefits to see if there are signs of a recession at least by the weekend. We're late this time due to other activities. But the answer once again is that we remain at prepandemic (boom) levels. 

As always, the data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

New Phone Service for Survivors

A new service for survivors and beneficiaries of UC emeriti and retirees has been announced. There have been complaints of long and sometimes fruitless waits on the phone after the death of of emeriti and retirees.

The UC Retirement Administration Service Center (RASC) has met a critical milestone in their strategic initiative to rebuild the center’s operations — the launch of a new team and phone line (888-825-6833) dedicated entirely to serving the survivors and beneficiaries of UC employees and retirees. This specially trained team will offer a high-touch experience, delivering benefits as quickly and smoothly as possible. “Our employees work hard for the benefits they leave their loved ones, and we have a responsibility to make sure survivors get the benefits and support they deserve,” said Cheryl Lloyd, UC’s vice president of Systemwide Human Resources and chief human resources officer. “Our new survivor support team has been recruited and trained to focus solely on helping survivors, with professional, compassionate and efficient service.”

UC's strategic initiative began with a comprehensive independent review process meant to ensure that the Retirement Administration Service Center lives up to its commitment to the people it serves. The initiative has grown to encompass a new operating model and leadership team for the center, with substantial additional resources dedicated to serving prospective retirees, retirees, survivors and beneficiaries.

Source: https://ucnet.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2023/03/the-uc-retirement-administration-service-center-introduces-dedicated-support-for-survivors-and-beneficiaries.html.

Dead Cat - Part 2

The story of the sad demise of Powell Cat* continues in the Bruin:

Hundreds of students paid their respects to Powell Cat on Thursday evening, writing messages and leaving flowers for the school’s unofficial mascot...

Hundreds of attendees (watched) as Kathy Brown (gave) a speech in front of Powell Library. Brown, assistant to the university librarian, was one of Powell Cat’s primary caregivers, and managed the Powell Cat Instagram account...

Attendees wrote fond messages on posters decorated with student illustrations of Powell Cat...

More information with photos of the event at:

https://dailybruin.com/2023/03/18/gallery-students-attend-memorial-for-powell-cat-uclas-unofficial-mascot.

===

*We will not make a musical link today to the recent financial instability as we did last time: 

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/dead-cat.html

Because that wouldn't be cool:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42mMCcrnok.

Preservation of Regents Recordings: Please Stand By

As blog readers will know, yours truly has been preserving recordings of the Regents meetings, first as audios and more recently in video format, for many years. We have often noted that we do so because it is regental policy to delete them after one year. 

Yesterday, I received an email from a representative of the Regents saying that the one-year rule is no longer in effect and that it changed at a point in 2019. 

I am endeavoring to find out if the official policy is now indefinite preservation (as opposed to not having deleted the recordings for some period longer than a year). 

At several points in the past when I inquired about the one-year rule from the now-retired secretary of the Regents, I was told that there is such a rule and was given the explanation that one year is what CSU does.

Yours truly would be delighted if there is now a rule of indefinite preservation; it would save him the hassle of downloading and uploading each meeting. So, please stand by while we await clarification.

Lawsuit against the Internet Archive: Important

Blog readers will know that we often have preserved material, including quarterly pdf editions of this blog, on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/about/. There is substantial material - text, books, music, other audio, photos, video - on the Internet Archive. It also has a feature - the Wayback Machine, https://web.archive.org/ - that reproduces the internet as it was at dates in the past. Thus, if a website disappears, it lives on via the Wayback Machine. 

The Internet Archive can be a very important source for researchers. However, some publishers have filed a lawsuit regarding copyright infringement on one aspect of what the Internet Archive does: act as a library. (The Internet Archive is a member of the American Library Association.) As yours truly understands it, what the Internet Archive does is emulate a physical library. It buys a book just as a physical library would, and it lends that book out for a fixed duration to one patron at a time. But what it lends out is a digital copy that expires after the fixed period, again, one patron at a time. 

It might be noted that anyone can post on the Internet Archive for free. Thus, instructors can make class lectures and other material easily available to students. It is supported by foundation donations and individual donations. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation are among its institutional donors. It has a search engine - which is not as effective as what you will encounter on commercial social media, say on YouTube, but on the other hand there is more flexibility on the Internet Archive about posting than - again - on YouTube and other social media.

Below we reproduce an opinion piece about the above-mentioned lawsuit from Inside Higher Ed of 3-17-2023:

===

The Internet Archive Is a Library

A lawsuit against the Internet Archive threatens the most significant specialized library to emerge in decades, say a group of current and former university librarians.

By Dave Hansen, Deborah Jakubs, Chris Bourg, Thomas Leonard, Jeff MacKie-Mason, Joseph A. Salem Jr., MacKenzie Smith, and Winston Tabb. 

Dave Hansen is executive director of Authors Alliance. Deborah Jakubs is university librarian emerita at Duke University. Chris Bourg is director of libraries at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thomas Leonard is university librarian emeritus and professor of journalism emeritus at University of California, Berkeley. Jeff MacKie-Mason is university librarian, chief digital scholarship officer and professor in the School of Information and the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley. Joseph A. Salem Jr. is the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and vice provost for library affairs at Duke. MacKenzie Smith is university librarian and vice provost of digital scholarship at University of California, Davis. Winston Tabb is the Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives and Museums Emeritus at Johns Hopkins University. They each write in their individual capacity and provide titles and institutional affiliations for identification purposes only.

--

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, has grown into one of the most important cultural institutions of the modern age. What began in 1996 as an audacious attempt to archive and preserve the World Wide Web has grown into a vast library of books, musical recordings and television shows, all digitized and available online, with a mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge.”

Right now, we are at a pivotal stage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, still pending, brought by four of the biggest for-profit publishers in the world, who have been trying to shut down core programs of the archive since the start of the pandemic. For the sake of libraries and library users everywhere, let’s hope they don’t succeed.

You’ve probably heard of Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which archives billions of webpages from across the globe. Fewer are familiar with its other extraordinary collections, which include 41 million digitized books and texts, with more than three million books available to borrow. To make this possible, Internet Archive uses a practice known as “controlled digital lending,” “whereby a library owns a book, digitizes it, and loans either the physical book or the digital copy to one user at a time.”

Despite its incredible library collections, which serve the needs of millions of people, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc., and Penguin Random House assert that the Internet Archive is not a real library.

In their lawsuit against the Internet Archive, which could extract millions of dollars from the nonprofit organization, the publishers claim that the Internet Archive “badly misleads the public and boldly misappropriates the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.” In their view, the archive’s “efforts to brand itself as a library” are part of a scheme to “fraudulently mislead” people, circumvent copyright law and limit how much profit publishers can extract from the ebook market. They describe the Internet Archive as a “pirate site” and its business model as “parasitic and illegal” and characterize controlled digital lending as “an invented paradigm that is well outside copyright law.”

The Internet Archive, in turn, argues that the practice of controlled digital lending constitutes fair use under copyright law, and asserts that “libraries have been practicing CDL in one form or another for more than a decade, and hundreds of libraries use it to lend books digitally today.”

Why is it so important to the publishers that the Internet Archive not be identified as a library? Primarily because Congress has long recognized the valuable role that libraries play in our copyright system and has created special allowances in the law for their work. In this suit, the publishers seek to redefine the Internet Archive on their own terms and, in so doing, deny it the ability to leverage the same legal tools that thousands of other libraries use to lend and disseminate materials to our users.

The argument that the Internet Archive isn’t a library is wrong. If this argument is accepted, the results would jeopardize the future development of digital libraries nationwide. The Internet Archive is the most significant specialized library to emerge in decades. It is one of the only major memory institutions to be created from the emergence of the internet. It is, and continues to be, a modern-day cultural institution built intentionally in response to the technological revolution through which we’ve lived.

Libraries are defined by collections, services and values. In The Librarian’s Book of Lists (ALA, 2010), George M. Eberhart offers this definition: “A library is a collection of resources in a variety of formats that is (1) organized by information professionals or other experts who (2) provide convenient physical, digital, bibliographic, or intellectual access and (3) offer targeted services and programs (4) with the mission of educating, informing, or entertaining a variety of audiences (5) and the goal of stimulating individual learning and advancing society as a whole.”

The Internet Archive has all these characteristics. It is a one-of-a-kind independent research library, with its holdings fully available in digital form. Its substantial physical and digital collections are unique. It employs librarians and other information professionals. It is open to all interested readers. It cooperates with peer libraries in support of archiving the information and contemporary discourse as manifested in the World Wide Web. It has an active community of researchers who depend on its collections. And it is an engaged, responsive, resource-sharing partner to hundreds of peer libraries. It is also now an integral part of the interlibrary loan system, sharing its holdings with other libraries worldwide. It shares the keystone values of all libraries: preservation, access, privacy, intellectual freedom, diversity, lifelong learning and the public good. And it does all this without commercial motive as a mission-driven not-for-profit organization.

Those of us who have worked with the Internet Archive or drawn on its many offerings have long seen the organization as a peer. The Internet Archive fulfills the mission of a library in ways we could only dream of a few decades ago. We cannot defend against the publishers’ lawsuit. We can, however, stand with Internet Archive as it fights for the right to buy, preserve and lend books, which is what libraries do.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/17/librarians-should-stand-internet-archive-opinion.

Watch the March 15th Afternoon Session of the Regents

We are catching up with the Regents sessions of last week. As always, we preserve the recordings of the Regents since they are otherwise deleted for no apparent reason after one year. We previously covered the morning sessions of March 15th.* The Regents' afternoon sessions of March 15th featured meetings of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee and the Finance and Capital Strategies Committee. Excerpt from the Daily Cal:

During the Finance and Capital Strategies Committee session, preliminary funding for the Ridge Walk North Living and Learning Neighborhood at UCSD was approved, part of their goal to provide four-year guaranteed housing at least 20% below market price for students. Additionally, financing for proposed housing units at UCSC were approved by the committee. The units, known as the Hagar and Heller developments, were contested in public comment the last time they were brought to the floor — however, no public comments were made during this committee session. “The need for student housing resonates within our campus and resonates within the Santa Cruz community,” said UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive. “We are in a new phase of relationships between UC Santa Cruz and the surrounding community.”

Presentations from UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry and UCLA’s School of Nursing followed, requesting further funding for high school and undergraduate outreach, need-based financial aid and diversifying faculty and student body. The California Community College and UC Task Force presented to the Board of Regents at the Academic and Student Affairs Committee meeting. [Note from yours truly: There was some discussion of what the definition of "need based" entailed and a request to come back with a more detailed explanation.]

Notably, Eric Van Dusen, Outreach and Tech Lead in Data Science Undergraduate Studies at UC Berkeley, discussed a new UC Transfer Pathway. The new pathway is for the undergraduate data science major, which has seen massive growth since it was introduced to Berkeley in 2018. The Academic Council Special Committee on Transfer Issues, or ACSCOTI, is working to push an introductory data science curriculum in California Community Colleges in hopes of making the program more accommodating for transfer DS students — who made up only 18% of 2022’s graduating class of 677, according to Van Dusen.

“At Berkeley, we support transfer students who have found their way to the data science major, providing a separate seminar with academic and career counseling focusing on the specific needs of transfer students who are often first-gen and low-income students, likely navigating multiple responsibilities while acclimating to a four-year campus,” Van Dusen said.

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/2023/03/15/uc-regents-discuss-plans-to-mitigate-housing-crises-worker-wages-pass-measures-in-march-meeting.

Apart from the items described above for Finance and Capital Strategies, various changes were put forward regarding the employee savings programs to comply with changes in federal law. UC created a "captive" insurance company for various risks and a status report was presented. It was noted that the UCLA-Heaps case created a cash flow issue for the university because UC carried the entire risk. There were repeated references to the "profit" the captive insurance company accrued excluding Heaps. But, of course, you can't exclude Heaps if you are talking about risk; it happened. So, it's not clear why you would exclude it. The question is, was UC better off - given all actual events - with its captive approach than it would have been if it relied on the commercial insurance market. The response was that it is difficult to obtain sexual misconduct insurance commercially. Whether it is impossible, however, is the question. And it was not fully answered.

===

Links to the recordings of the meetings can be found below:

Academic and Students Affairs:

https://archive.org/download/board-joint-meeting-academic-and-student-affairs-finance-and-capital-strategies-committees/Academic%20and%20Student%20Affairs%20Committee.mp4

Finance and Capital Strategies:

https://ia601609.us.archive.org/5/items/board-joint-meeting-academic-and-student-affairs-finance-and-capital-strategies-committees/Finance%20and%20Capital%20Strategies%20Committee.mp4

Link to the entire (morning and afternoon) March 15th meetings:

https://archive.org/details/board-joint-meeting-academic-and-student-affairs-finance-and-capital-strategies-committees.

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/03/watch-regents-morning-session-of-march.html.