From time to time, we check in on the Hawaiian telescope project - TMT - in which UC is involved. The latest is an item below dated Nov. 7 reported on Hawaii News Now, indicating that a contruction permit for TMT may - or may not - have expired:
There were heated arguments Tuesday at a state Land Board on the future of the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope project on Mauna Kea. The latest legal challenge is about whether construction of the embattled project actually started. The Mauna Kea Hui alleges construction of the TMT has not started, which would be a violation of the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s Conservation District Use Permit permit. Whatever the board decides would determine if the telescope project is permitted to build on Mauna Kea or not. “There’s been no grading up there, pouring concrete. There has not been any of that done here,” said Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman, Mauna Kea Hui attorney.
In 2017, UH-Hilo got a CDUP permit allowing TMT to use the land at Mauna Kea, but one of the conditions was that work needed to start at the site within two years. In 2019, protests stopped the project and UH-Hilo got a two-year extension. In 2021, UH-Hilo said construction had started before the 2019 protests.
...There was no word on when the BLNR [Bureau of Land and Natural Resources] would make a decision, but the stakes are high and could at the very least lead to more delays for project.
The LA Times has a story about a new disabilities studies major at UCLA:
...That UCLA now has a disability studies major, announced this month, is a sign that “the stigma around disability is shifting,” said Victoria Marks, a professor of choreography and chair of the UCLA program. “More and more of our communities are speaking up.” ...
These days, the discipline is booming. Annual submissions to Disability Studies Quarterly have more than doubled in recent years, and the number of majors and minors in the subject has soared, said Jeffrey A. Brune, co-editor of the journal...
The number of students receiving disability accommodations across the 10 UC campuses jumped from 5% in 2018 to 7% in 2021...
From the San Francisco Chronicle: ...Amid persistent campus conflicts between the groups following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s huge military retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza, [UC President] Drake announced a series of measures on Nov. 15 intended to tamp down anger and improve relations between the groups. Included in the measures, UC expects to spend $2 million to develop education programs at each campus that include a “viewpoint-neutral history of the Middle East.” The idea, Drake told the UC regents, was to “improve the public discourse” and create a “better understanding of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Now 150 professors from UC’s nine undergraduate campuses — including historians, Middle East scholars and department heads — say that Drake’s plan is improperly prescriptive and amounts to a form of censorship. “We are all committed to inclusivity and academic excellence, but to suggest that the UC administration should determine how and what we teach will set a chilling precedent for our field,” the letter said...
Comment: Yours truly suspects that what Drake has in mind is something like the Dartmouth approach which we have highlighted in two prior posts on this blog.* No one at Dartmouth is forced to participate in teaching in that program. It is likely that the $2 million figure Drake proposed was pulled out a hat and was really an effort to show the administration was doing something to address campus tensions. It might be best to look at the Dartmouth model and, if someone or some group wants to apply that model to UC, the $2 million might be useful. (I doubt the Dartmouth program cost anywhere near that amount.) Note also that opposing "viewpoint-neutral" teaching, or Drake's incentive for it, might seem to the general public as saying that teaching must be "biased," a Bad Look for UC if it is perceived that way. The headline of the SF Chronicle article is "UC professors decry plan to teach ‘viewpoint-neutral’ Mideast history." Most readers will not get into the nuance of a lengthy, erudite letter.
The Committee to Advise the President on the Selection of a Chancellor
of the Los Angeles will meet tomorrow - Nov. 30th - behind closed doors. There is no public agenda. That's all we know. Because there are five Regents on this committee, the meeting was announced on the Regents' website.
Jewish groups are suing the University of California system, UC Berkeley and its leaders over what they are calling a “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism.”
The 36-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, argues that Berkeley and its law school’s “inaction” on discrimination against Jewish students has led to a spread of antisemitism, and violence and harassment against them.* Demonstrations and incidents on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel serve as examples of the discrimination, according to the complaint.
The complaint is among the first high-profile lawsuits against a university in the aftermath of the protests that roiled campuses in response to the conflict in the Middle East.
Jewish groups are suing over policies enacted by at least 23 Berkeley Law student groups that exclude students from joining or bar guest speakers from presenting if they do not agree to disavow Israel or if they identify as Zionists. They argue that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and say that the policies violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and more.
Additionally, the groups say that the university has failed to address antisemitic incidents on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. They said students’ celebrations of the Hamas attacks resulted in violence against Jewish students. A Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag was attacked by protesters who hit him in the head with a metal water bottle, according to the complaint, and some Jews have received “hate e-mails calling for their gassing and murder.” Jewish students have also said they are afraid to attend class because of the protests...
Back on November 4th, we highlighted a program at Dartmouth aimed at dealing with tensions related to the Israel-Gaza War and the Hamas attack.* Much of the energy at other academic institutions has focused on statements and restatements by top university officials.
The Dartmouth approach was recently highlighted in an NBC newcast.
Two days ago, we posted a photograph of the downtown Los Angeles Public Library under construction on the site of the State Normal School which evolved into UCLA. Above is a photo of the Normal School at that site when it was still standing. From the photo information:
The California State Normal School was a teaching college that was founded on May 2, 1862 in San Jose. In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the school to be built in downtown Los Angeles, which would train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. On August 29, 1882, the State Normal School at Los Angeles opened its doors. In 1919, the Los Angeles State Normal School became part of the "UC system" and was absorbed into UCLA, moving to a larger campus on Vermont Avenue in Hollywood (the present site of L.A. City College). The L.A. Public Library would take the old Normal School site, which was located on 5th Street between Grand and Flower streets.
On Monday, tech investor Martin Casado posted a warning on social media about an AI voice-cloning phone scam he said his own father nearly fell for. Casado’s father received a call from someone claiming to be — and sounding just like — Casado, who said he was “in jail after a car accident and needed $10k bail,” Casado wrote in a post on X, formerly called Twitter. “He was headed to the bank but decided to call me just in case (lucky I picked up, I'm in Japan).”
This type of tech-enabled phone scam was the subject of a hearing before the Senate Aging Committee last Thursday. In this type of con, scammers generate a clone of someone’s voice by feeding recordings from phishing phone calls or public social media videos into an artificial intelligence-based system. They can then use those AI clones to call your loved ones, impersonating you, to ask for something (often financial assistance).
Several voice cloning tools are readily available online. The maker of one such tool, Lovo, says it uses an algorithm to break voice recordings into tiny chunks of audio. Those chunks are used to create a model that can turn user-inputted text into a new audio clip using a voice that Lovo says will sound nearly identical to the original speaker’s...
When yours truly looked up Lovo, he got the image above AND the one below, which seems to tout UC-Berkeley as some kind of endorser. Does Berkeley know?
Does Berkeley want its name associated with a program which is great for scamming? Just asking...
Tropical Ice Gardens located in Westwood opened its doors in November 1938. It was billed as "one of the biggest sports and amusement enterprises in Los Angeles annals," and could accommodate 2,000 ice skaters on its outdoor rink and could seat 10,000 spectators in its bleacher seats. Despite its popularity, the Westwood rink was torn town in 1949 to accommodate the expansion of UCLA.
If you got an email like this (yours truly got two of them), I would not click on it. For one thing, the email address shown seems to come from Boston University.
Our weekly examination of the latest California weekly claims for unemployment insurance finds the numbers still creeping up, but still within the pre-pandemic (boom) levels. So let's wait for more data and for the upcoming UCLA Anderson Forecast on December 6th.
The California State Normal School was a teaching college that was founded on May 2, 1862 in San Jose. In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the school to be built in downtown Los Angeles, which would train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. On August 29, 1882, the State Normal School at Los Angeles opened its doors, and in 1919 it became part of the "UC system" and was absorbed into UCLA, moving to a larger campus on Vermont Ave., in Hollywood (the present site of L.A. City College). The L.A. Public Library would take the old Normal School site, which was located on 5th Street between Grand and Flower streets. Designed by architects Bertram G. Goodhue and Carlton M. Winslow, it would eventually be constructed between 1922-1926.
Description: This is the site of the former Los Angeles State Normal School, and future site of Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library. The area has been dug out for the foundation, and work is well under way as construction vehicles make their way in and out of the site. Several men can be seen standing near an excavating machine, which is filling the back of a truck with mounds of gravel; C.G. Willis & Son Excavation is the company that is heading this task. A cluster of men, all wearing suits, can be seen standing on higher ground farther back, and a large apartment building is visible in the background. Photograph dated: January 16, 1924.
As blog readers will know, we have in the past questioned the investment of $4.5 billion in pension and endowment funds in the Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust (BREIT) in late 2022. BREIT at the time was - and still is - the subject of a slow-motion run on the bank, cushioned by the fact that BREIT does not have to give investors all their money back when demanded. Instead, it determines what fraction of the demand it will satisfy. BREIT has continued to experience the run through October.
CIO Bachhar invested $4.5 billion in BREIT, a kind of liquidity bailout, last year in exchange for a "guaranteed" return of 11.25%. There were protests about the investment at subsequent Regents meetings, but these centered on landlord-tenant relations in buildings owned by BREIT. Only Regent Hernandez raised the issue of the financial risk entailed. During the November 16th meeting of the Investments Committee, he again asked Bachhar about the BREIT investment.
Bachhar essentially said that he had gotten 11.25% "guaranteed." He did not say anything about the implicit risk. Note that to get 11.25%, there has to be significant risk, since that return is well above what riskless interest rates (say, in Treasury securities) would provide. In the view of yours truly, the issue of risk (which may have legal aspects since other investors in BREIT in effect are cross-subsidizing the 11.25%), is what needs to be looked at. It may well turn out that, after the fact, the investment turns out to have been a good deal, but that doesn't make it a prudent deal.
In any event, you can see Regent Hernandez's latest question and CIO Bacchar's response at the link below:
From the San Francisco Chronicle: The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to allow taller buildings in a neighborhood near the UC campus that includes the controversial People’s Park to help ease a chronic shortage of student housing. The city of Berkeley will now allow taller buildings in a densely populated neighborhood adjoining the UC Berkeley campus — a major win to address the university’s student housing crunch.
The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to change its zoning laws to permit buildings as high as 12 stories in the Southside area below the campus. The proposed modifications — which also relax some open space requirements — will allow for an additional 2,652 residential units in neighborhoods bounded by Bancroft Way, Prospect Street, Dwight Way and Fulton Street.
“I could not be more relieved and excited that the city has finally taken this overdue and urgent step,” said Council Member Rigel Robinson, who represents the Southside neighborhood. “The student housing crisis has become the defining characteristic of the student experience at UC Berkeley. … And the student housing crisis has ripple effects on our citywide housing crisis.” UC Berkeley provides housing for only 23% of its students, the lowest rate of any UC campus in the state...
Under current practice, the Regents are only very rarely involved in such matters. In the very rare cases of outright terminations of tenured faculty, the Regents are asked to approve. But the vast majority of cases of misconduct typically are resolved at the campus level or within the UC system. Cases of misconduct that might lead to dismissal are sometimes resolved quietly through resignations or retirements.
We are catching up with the second day of last week's Regents meeting. The morning board meeting of the second day of the Regents' November meetings (Nov. 16) consisted of public comments. Topics included graduate student housing, staff pay and health insurance costs, disabled students, the use of PhD students as TAs, undocumented student employment, antisemitism, anti-military programs and labs, divestment from Starbucks, anti-Israel, college admissions, divestment from Blackrock, and lactation stations. The meeting ended with an anti-Israel protest leading to clearing of the room.
In later sessions, the Health Services Committee approved a bonus for former health VP Byington. It was stated that such bonuses would not apply to subsequent health executives.
At the board's second session, the USAC president reported on funding for CARE centers, transfer student issues, undocumented student employment, and students as parents. The grad student representative indicated a desire to work with the UC president and chancellors on Israel-Gaza issues. He endorsed UC-San Diego's decision not to prosecute student union workers after a demonstration on that campus. He also endorsed undocumented student employment by UC, mentorships for grad students, aid for disabled students, and improved emergency evacuation procedures for disabled students.
At the Investments Committee, it was reported that from July 1 through the meeting, there had been a roughly zero return on pension and endowment investments. Hernandez asked about the Blackstone-REIT investment which CIO Bachhar defended citing the 11.25% return.
====
As always, we preserve the Regents' meetings indefinitely because the Regents have no policy on duration of retention. You can see the Nov. 16th sessions at the links below:
We continue catching up with last week's Regents meeting, arriving now at the afternoon of November 15th. The National Labs Committee heard a presentation on the Los Alamos National Lab - the home of the Manhattan Project. UC became connected with Los Alamos 80 years ago in 1943. (Yours truly speculates that the review of Los Alamos at this time may have something to do with the new Oppenheimer movie.) In more recent years, there has been an effort by the Lab to have a southern California connection to UC campuses. Regent Hernandez pushed for the extension of that effort to UC-Merced in his comments.
Compliance and Audit heard a brief review of various audits undertaken during the past academic year. The cyber security element was stressed in response to questions.
Public Engagement had a session via remote connection with Assemblymember Phil Ting. Not surprisingly, he pushed for increased undergraduate enrollment. He also predicted that future budgets would be "tougher" than in the recent past. The commitee then heard about issues in communicating matters related to climate change. Efforts of agriculture and related UC programs to reach out in Spanish were also reviewed. Finally, there was a review of philanthropy (fund raising by UC).
As always, we preserve the recordings of these sessions since the Regents have no set policy on duration of retention.
National Labs and Compliance and Audit can be seen at:
Looking north up Westwood Boulevard near Kinross Avenue (center) in Westwood Village. Various businesses, including the Fox Westwood Theater (left), are present. Photograph dated October 14, 1932.
Yesterday we posted about an extension of open enrollment for emeriti and retirees ONLY to Nov. 21 due to a contract issue involving UC-San Francisco and United Healthcare. We now have received notice that this special extension will run through Nov. 27. See below for details if you are eligible for UC retiree health insurance.
===
UC Systemwide Human Resources recently learned of a change in provider authorization processes next year for UC Medicare Choice members who see UCSF Health providers. Because provider choice is a critical part of choosing a medical plan, the Open Enrollment deadline for retirees has been extended until Monday, Nov. 27, 2023, at 5 p.m. to allow you more time to understand your options.
If you’re happy with your choice of medical plans for 2024, you do not need to take any action.
What’s changing for UC Medicare Choice PPO members who see UCSF Health providers
UCSF Health has shared the following message for members of UC Medicare Choice PPO:
Because UCSF Health Medical Group is the only UC medical group not included in UnitedHealthcare’s network for the UC Medicare Choice – United Health Care plan, UCSF Health will seek Letters of Authorization (LOA) from UnitedHealthcare on behalf of UC retirees and their dependents for care provided by UCSF Health providers, beginning Jan. 1, 2024.
Despite this change, UC retirees and their dependents enrolled in UC Medicare Choice PPO will be able to schedule and keep their appointments with no change in access to care or charges for health care services.
If you have questions about whether an LOA will be required based on your specific medical care situation, please contact UCSF Health directly at (888) 689-8273 or Referral.Center@ucsf.edu.
If you have questions for UnitedHealthcare or need assistance in finding alternate providers, you can speak to a customer service representative at (866) 887-9533, Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–8 p.m.
What's next?
If you would like to learn more about your medical plan options, please review your options at ucal.us/oe. It may also be helpful for you to discuss your options with the health care facilitator at your location.
If you choose to make a change, you must submit your Open Enrollment elections on UC Retirement At Your Service (UCRAYS) by Monday, Nov. 27, 2023, at 5 p.m.
If you’re not able to enroll online or need assistance, the UC Retirement Administration Service Center (RASC) has extended hours through the extended Open Enrollment deadline. Call (800) 888-8267 Mon.–Fri., 7 a.m.–4:30 p.m., to speak with a representative. Please note that the center will be closed in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 23–24.
We're back to our weekly search for signs of recession. Although new California weekly claims for unemployment insurance have ticked up in recent weeks, the numbers are still well within the pre-pandemic (boom) range. The UCLA Forecast will be out December 6th and we'll see what the experts there have to say.
For those who read this blog directly from the website and on a PC or laptop, yours truly personally dissents from the letter of the Council of UC Faculty Associations dated Nov. 16th that appears at a link on the right.
During the public comments session of Nov. 15th, topics included incompletes for disabled students, sexual assault services, antisemitism, employment by UC of undocumented students, funding implications of the student-worker strike settlement, pro-Palestine, UC-Merced medical facilities, CalPIRG and climate change, math preparation for UC, CalWorks, opposition to DEI programs, gun divestment, UCLA's move to the Big-Ten, basic needs of graduate students, staff pay, and opposition to increased pension contributions.
There followed statements by UC Chair Leib and UC President Drake concerning recent campus events surrounding the Israel-Gaza War which we have previously noted on this blog.* Drake also noted improved evacuation procedures for disabled student. Faculty representative Steintrager spoke about faculty pay (including opposition to employee pension contributions), and the Israel-Gaza War and related free speech issues vs. responsibilities.
In Finance and Capital Strategies, UCLA's plan for a high-rise dormitory project was changed to have fewer triples and more doubles, based on objections at a prior Regents' meeting. The ratio will now be 20% vs. 80%, respectively. When the pension actuarial study was discussed, it was noted that the plan's funding ratio is roughly 80%. The president's proposal was to increase the employer contribution but not the employee contribution. The former would go up by 0.5% per year so that over eight years, the employer contribution would rise from 14% to 18%. There would also be about $3 billion in transfers from STIP to the plan. With all of that, plan funding would rise to 100% over 20 years. Three Regents abstained in the final committee vote but the plan was adopted as the recommendation. The abstainers were concerned about doing something in particular for low-wage workers if the employee contribution was raised. It was noted that other state employees contribute 50% of the normal cost whereas UC employees contribute less.
One concern, based on some regental comments at prior meetings was that those who earned pension credits during the two-decade pension holiday would somehow be blamed and penalized for that holiday. Of course, it was the Regents who implemented the holiday, originally because of a state budget crisis in the early 1990s and pension overfunding at that time. Subsequently, with pay below the comparison-8, there was reluctance to create a further de facto pay cut with pension contributions. Ultimately, it was the Regents - again - who delayed the end of the pension contribution holiday due to the budget crisis resulting from the Great Recession of 2008. Bottom line; the discussion could have turned nasty but ultimately did not.
The committee also approved a medical facility for UC-Merced. If we consider Berkeley and UC-SF as a unit, only Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara seem content not to have a med school.
In Academic and Student Affairs, there was a report on issues and legislation relating to community college transfers to UC and a hydrogen energy project. It was noted that graduate student enrollment has not kept pace with undergraduate enrollment. Perhaps the most controversial item was the math preparation standard for undergraduate admission. Mainly, however, the discussion focused on the process by which decisions will be made by a Senate working group.
==
As always, we preserve recordings of Regents meetings since the Regents have no policy on duration of preservation.
The message below was received from the UCLA ERRC:
To provide retired members of the UC Medicare Choice plan more time to switch plans during Open Enrollment if they so choose, the Open Enrollment deadline is being extended. Retirees will have until Tuesday, November 21, 2023, at 5:00 pm PST to submit their Open Enrollment elections.
Please note that the Open Enrollment deadline extension applies to all benefits-eligible retirees, as it is not possible within the UCRAYS system to limit the extension to the members of a particular plan. The extension does not apply to current UC employees.
The extension is mainly due to a contract issue between UnitedHealth Care and UCSF.
The University of California San Francisco Health Medical Group (UCSF Health), an out-of-network provider group, recently decided they will no longer treat Medicare Advantage plan members on an out-of-network basis. This includes UC Medicare Choice plan members.
University of California, Office of the President (UCOP), and Retirement Administration Service Center (RASC) are working with Communications and how best to disseminate this information to affected retirees in a timely manner.
UCLA's football recruitment practices have come under scrutiny after some high school students who seem to have been part of unofficial recruitment were implicated in thefts from a Rose Bowl locker room. From the Pasadena Star-News:
Four Beaumont High School students are suspects in the Rose Bowl locker room thefts during the Oct. 28 game between Colorado and UCLA, authorities said Monday. No one has been arrested, said Lisa Derderian, spokeswoman for the city of Pasadena. Police referred the case to the District Attorney’s Office that handles juvenile cases, she added.
She couldn’t immediately confirm media reports that the suspects were recruits to UCLA and were on a visit that day. UCLA did say individuals tied to the case were not on an official visit. Beaumont Unified School District officials also did not confirm if the students are football players at the school. "We are disappointed and disheartened to hear of the alleged involvement of Beaumont High School students in the incident at the UCLA-Colorado football game on Oct. 28," Alex Sponheim, who oversees the Communications Department at the district, said in an email.
“We strive to promote strong character and integrity in our students, and the alleged actions do not represent our core values as a school, district, and community,” she said.
While the students were not at the football game as part of a school-sponsored event, Sponheim said the district is cooperating fully with Pasadena Police investigation. “As this is still an ongoing investigation, we cannot confirm anything other than that the individuals in question were not on an official visit,” UCLA Athletics said in a statement...
An LA Times article notes that the official/unofficial visit distinction may have something to do with NCAA rules:
...The NCAA allows unlimited official visits by players to Division I schools, although only one visit is allowed per school, which can pay for transportation to and from the campus, lodging throughout the visit, three meals a day and three tickets to a home sports event. Often, players from high schools near a university take unofficial visits...
...UCLA provides security to the home and visitor locker rooms during games at the Rose Bowl... [UCLA football coach Chip]Kelly said “a lot” of recruits were at the game and the Rose Bowl gives them badges to identify themselves...
It seems more time than expected is needed to study the issue of whether UC can legally hire undocumented students. From EdSource:
The University of California needs more time to study whether it can move forward with allowing the hiring of undocumented students for campus jobs, system President Michael Drake said during Thursday’s meeting of the board of regents. Drake’s comments were disappointing to undocumented students who hoped UC would decide this month to begin permitting the hiring.
In May, UC created a working group to consider a proposal to allow the hiring of those students and gave the committee a Nov. 30 deadline to complete a report on the issue and direct Drake on how to move forward. UC took that step after a coalition of undocumented students and their supporters, the Opportunity for All Campaign, lobbied UC to allow the hiring of undocumented students, arguing that it is legal for UC to do so.
It’s possible UC could still allow the hiring of those students, but that decision won’t be made by the original Nov. 30 deadline, with Drake on Thursday citing “numerous” legal considerations. “We will continue in the coming days and weeks to work on these issues. Our conversations to date have shown how complex and delicate this issue is, and how critical it is for the University of California to get this right. The legal considerations are numerous, and after several discussions with the stakeholders involved, we’ve concluded that it is in everyone’s best interest to study the matter further,” Drake said...
With the Pac-12 reduced to being the Pac-2 next year, a development which began with the departures of UCLA and USC, litigation has developed over who now controls its assets and administration. It appears that the remaining two members - Oregon State and Washington State - have at least won an initial round in the control fight. From a news release by Oregon State: [excerpt]
Dear OSU Community Members
As you know, Oregon State University and Washington State University initiated legal action in September to confirm the governance structure of the Pac-12 Conference, gain access to business information and protect the conference’s assets. In taking this action, we felt a sense of urgency to protect our universities, ensure accountability and transparency, safeguard the Pac-12 Conference, and preserve our options moving forward.
Today the Whitman County Superior Court in Washington decided that Oregon State and Washington State constitute the only remaining members of the Pac-12 Conference Board, granting our request for a preliminary injunction order until the case can ultimately be decided at trial.
This is an important day for OSU student-athletes, the Pac-12 conference and all of Beaver Nation, but our fight is not yet over. The departing 10 schools have announced their intention to appeal this decision. However, we continue to be confident in our position and look forward to working in a collaborative manner with the conference and departing members on a productive path forward. From the beginning, our intentions have been to make reasonable business decisions while continuing to seek collaboration and consultation with the departing universities...
From the Santa Barbara Independent comes confirmation of the rumored* death of Dormzilla (Munger Hall):
The colossal, proposed boondoggle of UC Santa Barbara’s Munger Hall student housing project, memorably nicknamed “Dormzilla,” has finally been laid to rest. On October 25, 2023, UCSB Vice Chancellor Garry MacPherson circulated an official memo to campus staff, students, and faculty announcing two architecture firms chosen to design campus housing for 3,500 students in accordance with UCSB’s 2010 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) targets. The message, unwritten but obvious by omission, was that the new architects were retained to design an alternative to Munger Hall, whose demise had been rumored for months.
In today’s world of unsettling disruption, it is rare when a bad idea championed by an unfettered billionaire like Charlie Munger comes to a decisive end, thanks to genuine grassroots opposition. It is worth marking the moment, as a reminder that people can make a difference when they organize and thoughtfully make their views and voices heard.
On October 24, 2021, Munger Hall’s first public opponent grabbed national and international attention. Dennis McFadden, a consulting architect to UCSB for 15 years, wrote a scathing letter resigning from UCSB’s Design Review Committee stating he was “disturbed” by the Munger Hall plan and the lack of transparency in the project’s design and approval process. His fury at Munger Hall’s plan — for 4,500 students to be housed in a behemoth 1.7 million square foot building, where 94 percent of the tiny 7-by-8 foot bedrooms were windowless — was summed up in his letter stating that Munger Hall was “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being.” ...
We will do our standard discussion of the Regents meetings as time permits. But below is an excerpt from yesterday's full board meeting in which UC Regents Chair Richard Leib and UC President Drake commented on current campus tensions related to the Israel-Gaza War.
The profound ongoing tragedy in the Middle East is having painful repercussions on our campus.
I know that all of us feel deep sorrow over all the terrible human suffering that has occurred, and that continues.
However, some people in our community are in serious tension with each other because they see the current situation from starkly opposed perspectives. For them, the arguments and sentiments expressed by the other side feel deeply to be a zero-sum existential threat. And I understand that.
Because MIT is and must be committed to protecting freedom of expression, the intractability of the opposing viewpoints puts us between a rock and a hard place.
We have been asked repeatedly to take sides. We have been told that not taking sides is tacitly endorsing one side or the other. Perhaps most concerning is that some of our actions have been interpreted as side-taking. (And I would acknowledge here that many haven’t taken a side but have sympathy for all parties – and don’t want to be forced to take a side.) But let me emphasize: I am not adjudicating these issues – the whole world is grappling with them.
Our role is to find a way to steer the Institute through this fraught passage – to keep our campus safe and functioning.
We’re here together to pursue MIT’s great mission of discovery, invention, problem-solving, teaching and learning.
To live up to that mission, we need a campus community where we can all express our views.
But we also need MIT to be a place where we all feel safe and free to live, work, and study.
And that is not where we are right now.
I want to make crystal clear that our response to last week’s protest is absolutely not a comment on the content of the views expressed. Our response is the result of students having deliberately violated MIT’s policies against disrupting the functioning of our campus.
MIT is, at its heart, an educational institution. It’s a place of learning, where complex and sensitive subjects can and should be debated and discussed. Because we staunchly support the right to free expression for everyone at MIT, student activism and protests are perfectly appropriate features of campus life.
And that’s why – as the community has seen repeatedly over the past weeks – even protests and demonstrations that many find deeply offensive have been allowed to proceed. In the United States, what many people instinctively think of as “hate speech” is actually protected by law.
However, we naturally have policies in place to keep the community safe and allow the Institute to function and, as the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom makes clear, “the time, place, and manner of protected expression, including organized protests, may be restrained so as not to disrupt the essential activities of the Institute.”
In addition, as I have said many times, it is just not acceptable to target individuals, and we have received multiple reports of such targeting.
When activism crosses such fundamental lines, we need to hold people responsible for their actions. In a world with so many channels for communication, imposing this basic accountability is not equivalent to “silencing.”
I would recommend that you take a look at the FAQs sent along with this video to understand what happened, what we did, and why.*
More broadly, I need to talk with you about the state of our community and about how we treat each other – all of us – not just students, but faculty, staff, parents and alumni. I know I’ve said this many times, but please hear me:
I need to ask that you work with me to repair some things that are broken.
Right now, at least on the surface, the campus feels pretty normal. And we’ve stepped up campus security to keep things safe.
But I know some people are feeling fearful. And there is some awful behavior.
No one in our community should have to feel afraid to walk on campus wearing a Star of David, or a yarmulke, or a hijab – or any other emblem of their faith. No one in our community should feel ostracized in their dorm or their lab, or denied a place in a study group, or intimidated in a hallway because of their nationality, their religion or their political views. And no one should be disrupting our classrooms by chanting slogans of any kind.
Let me say this loud and clear: No one has a right to interrupt the education of our students. The classroom is sacrosanct. (Classroom disruptions have only occurred a handful of times – though unfortunately viewed millions of times on social media – but we’re providing instructors with updated guidelines to handle them.) And it is also out of bounds to disrupt the essential work of our faculty and staff in our offices and labs.
Now I want to say a word about antisemitism.
Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.
Working with faculty leaders, Chancellor Melissa Nobles will lead a new Institute-wide commission called “Standing Together Against Hate.” A group within it will spearhead efforts to combat antisemitism at MIT, and we'll announce the leaders soon. Elements may range from local group discussions with trained interlocutors, to speaker series, to curated reading lists, to programming in our student residences.
Although antisemitism will be our initial primary focus, this effort will ultimately be broader, and will include efforts to address prejudice and discrimination against Arabs and Muslims. We cannot let these issues fester on our campus either.
And beyond this, I'm working on new idea to create a “corps,” that would challenge people to step up, in service to the well-being of the MIT community. More about that as the contours take shape.
But in the end, we cannot succeed against these insidious toxic forces with administrative actions and educational programs alone. We can only do it as a community of human beings who – whatever our differences – are committed to treating each other with decency and respect. We need to find a way to live together.
Last Thursday was a low point for our community – because we lost the capacity for listening and learning.
Is that really what we want MIT to be? With students shouting each other down, and pushing and shoving each other, to the point that we had to intervene because we feared a serious altercation? Do we want things to escalate even further, as we’ve seen on other campuses?
Should our community – so deeply analytical and committed to facts – become a place where people spend their time repeating rumors and half-truths on the internet? Where we say things that we know make other people afraid?
I trust and expect that we can do better than that.
For instance, I’ve heard of nascent efforts by students to facilitate communication across difference.
Two Sloan faculty members are launching a podcast called “The We and They in Us.”
And I’m particularly grateful that a group of Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern and North African faculty are showing us the way, through direct outreach to students and to their colleagues.
The people of MIT have tremendous intellectual and creative gifts.
We have a great deal to offer the world – at a time when the world urgently needs our special skills and expertise.
Let us strive to be a community that can offer the world the wisdom of our example.
From the LA Times: Mattel, the company behind Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Barbie, pledged in 2017 to donate $49 million to UCLA to support its children’s hospital. But now the hospital says Mattel never came through with the money. According to a new lawsuit, the El Segundo toy company made “the inexplicable decision a few short years later to renege on that pledge” and is now trying to offer the pediatric hospital just a few million dollars, plus a bunch of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels cars and other in-kind donations.
The suit, filed last week on behalf of the regents of the University of California and the UCLA Foundation, accuses Mattel of breach of contract for going back on its giving pledge and is seeking the full amount of the original pledge, plus damages for alleged financial difficulty stemming from the company’s decision to back out of its giving plan.
“As a last resort, UCLA Health has taken legal action to compel Mattel Inc. to honor its $49 million pledge,” UCLA Health spokesperson Phil Hampton wrote in a statement. “Litigation is not the University’s preferred path. UCLA Health made multiple good-faith attempts to resolve this matter through meaningful dialogue, and those efforts were unsuccessful.”
“We are hopeful that an alternative resolution can be found through dialogue grounded in respect for a relationship of more than 25 years and in pursuit of a shared interest: the care and well-being of children,” Hampton added.
Mattel, in a statement, disputed UCLA’s claim that it had breached its contractual obligations...
From Sportico: While testifying before a Senate Judiciary Committee last month, new NCAA president Charlie Baker sought to make the case that it isn’t just the association that opposes college athletes becoming employees of their institutions. The athletes, Baker submitted, are almost entirely in opposition, as well. Relying on seven months’ worth of personal experience, Baker told lawmakers he had “talked to probably a thousand student-athletes since I got this job, and I haven’t talked to one yet [who] wants to be an employee. I think that’s important.”
The under-oath comment set off the BS detectors of NCAA skeptics inside and outside of college sports, including that of UCLA senior backup quarterback Chase Griffin. “I think, in the literal sense, what Baker said is impossible,” said Griffin, who has become a leading advocate for college athletes profiting from their play. Griffin recently launched a newsletter called The Athlete’s Bureau, designed to “amplify the perspectives” of college athletes.
Baker’s anecdotal testimony was recently contravened by the findings of Bill Carter, a sports marketer who runs the NIL consulting firm, Student-Athlete Insights. Last week, Carter publicized the results of an email survey he says he conducted with a panel of 1,086 current college athletes, in which 73% were “in favor” of becoming employees of their institutions and more than half were “interested” in joining a college athlete union. In a telephone interview, Carter acknowledged that his poll is not to be taken as a scientific survey, but said its revelations are likely to be much more representative of where college athletes stand on the employee question than what Baker conveyed to senators.
In last month’s hearing, Baker didn’t elaborate how he had determined, through interactions with athletes, the unanimity of their anti-employment sentiment. For example, was he simply extrapolating athletes’ disinterest by them not bringing the subject up? Had he regularly solicited their interest in the matter and, if so, in a dispassionate or open-ended manner? And what kinds of athletes had he been speaking to? Recently, Sportico has repeatedly asked the NCAA for further clarification about Baker’s claim to Congress—as well as the association’s lack of more rigorous insights into the question of where athletes stand on the matter of employment, direct compensation and unionization.
The NCAA’s response has been largely tangential. Initially, its communications department provided copies of letters sent to members of Congress by Cody Shimp, chair of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), as well as four commissioners of HBCU conferences, which advocated against college athletes obtaining employee status. When pressed further about what Baker said he gleaned from his personal athlete interactions, the NCAA suggested that he was basing his assessment on the formal positions of the SAAC groups...
We have noted in prior posts that there is litigation concerning requiring DEI statements for hiring and promotion purposes at California community colleges.* Although that litigation does not directly involve UC, any decision regarding public community colleges is unlikely to differ if applied to UC. A court has suspended community college DEI requirements on grounds that the plaintiff is likely to succeed, according to Inside Higher Ed:
A California judge has suspended the enforcement of rules instituted by the California Community College system intended to ensure faculty and staff members uphold diversity, equity and inclusion values. The rules, which took effect in the spring, establish criteria for the evaluation of employees regarding their “demonstrated, or progress toward, proficiency in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility … competencies that enable work with diverse communities,” according to a May memo from system leaders.
The injunction, granted Tuesday, was in response to a lawsuit against Bakersfield College and Kern Community College District leaders filed by Daymon Johnson, a history professor at the college. His suit alleged that he and other professors were penalized for espousing conservative views under the system’s mandate and discouraged from exercising their free speech rights. The lawsuit claimed the rules were unconstitutional and called for them to be suspended.
A magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California concluded that system leaders’ “aim of promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in California’s system of community colleges undoubtedly is important.” However, Johnson “has shown a likelihood of success on the merits that the regulatory scheme Defendants have put in place to advance these interests is contrary to the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in the academic arena.” ...
