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| https://x.com/UCLAchancellor/status/1870173778128388261 |
Not clear who made what decision when. But the first casualty was the police chief.* And, in the end, the result was that someone else was chosen to head UCLA. Hunt was thus the second casualty.
===
*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/12/blame-gameshame-game.html.
From the Sacramento Bee: A Yolo County criminal grand jury indicted a former fire chief at the University of California, Davis who is accused of misappropriating public funds before he resigned from his campus job two months ago. Nathan Jon Trauernicht, 45, pleaded not guilty to the felony charge during his arraignment hearing Monday, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office announced Thursday in a news release. Prosecutors also announced they filed a felony charge of misappropriating public money against 34-year-old Meagan Emily McFadden, who worked for Trauernicht as an executive assistant for more than four years before she left her job at UC Davis several months ago.
...UC Davis officials on Friday said Trauernicht began working for the UC Davis Fire Department in April 2008 and resigned Oct. 1 after nearly 13 years as fire chief. McFadden worked as an executive assistant at the fire department from November 18, 2019, through Jan. 30...
Full story at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article297057184.html.
The Office of Civil Rights (within the US Dept. of Education) has reached an agreement with UC to resolve the various complaints arising from last academic year's protests:
Press Release US Dept. of EducationOffice for Civil Rights Announces Resolution of Complaints Alleging Shared Ancestry Discrimination by Five Campuses in University of California System
Agreement resolves nine complaints filed with OCR against five University of California campuses in Los Angeles (UCLA), Santa Barbara (UCSB), San Diego (UCSD), Davis (UCD) and Santa Cruz (UCSC)
December 20, 2024
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that the University of California has entered into a resolution agreement to ensure its compliance with Title VI of the of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) when responding to allegations of harassment or other discrimination based on national origin, including shared Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab ancestry.
The agreement resolves nine complaints filed with OCR against five University of California (UC) campuses in Los Angeles (UCLA), Santa Barbara (UCSB), San Diego (UCSD), Davis (UCD), and Santa Cruz (UCSC). The complaints alleged that these universities failed to respond promptly or effectively to harassment of their students based on their actual or perceived national origin (including shared Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab ancestry) and that some of these universities subjected these students to different treatment with respect to their access to campus or university programs.
OCR’s investigations included interviewing students and university employees and reviewing university policies and procedures, information related to reports and complaints made to university campuses, and publicly available information such as videos of alleged harassing events on campus in 2023 and 2024. Additionally, OCR reviewed 2024 university taskforce reports and court filings about the alleged harassment at UCLA. Before OCR completed its investigations, the University of California expressed an interest in resolving them through an agreement under Section 302 of OCR’s case processing manual, and OCR determined that resolving its compliance concerns to date through an agreement was appropriate.
These concerns include that university campuses appear to have failed to respond promptly or effectively to a possible hostile environment based on national origin/shared ancestry when: (1) the alleged harassing conduct or protests involved First Amendment-protected speech and the universities appear not to have evaluated if the conduct never the less created a hostile environment based on shared ancestry for affected students; or (2) some of the universities’ responses to alleged shared ancestry harassment may have failed to remedy the effects of a potential or apparent hostile environment and prevent a recurrence of the alleged harassment.
With regard to UCLA and its law school, OCR’s compliance concerns stemmed in part from the university’s receipt of more than 150 reports about protests and rallies in October and November 2023, as well as complaints related to an encampment on campus in spring 2024. These and other reports included:
Reports of rally chants such as, “death to Israel,” “[t]here is no peace until they’re dead,” “intifada now,” and “there is only one solution.” A separate video reviewed by OCR depicted a group that included students beating an effigy of Israel’s Prime Minister and shouting “beat that f*cking Jew” on the campus.
Muslim, Palestinian, and/or pro-Palestinian students experienced unwanted filming, doxing, and being followed both on and near UCLA’s campus by other students and members of the public.
Reports of checkpoints at the spring 2024 encampment that allegedly denied entry to Jewish students who refused to “denounce their Zionism.”
UCLA, through its campus police, allegedly failed to protect Palestinian, Arab, and/or pro-Palestinian student protestors while they were violently attacked, injured, and intimidated by counter-protestors, including third parties.
Of particular concern were reports of violence against students of Jewish and Israeli ancestry by protesters at the encampment and of a violent assault by counter-protestors on pro-Palestinian protesters at the encampment on April 30, 2024, and the subsequent law enforcement response, which the UCLA Chancellor described as one in which students “feared for their safety.” In addition, OCR has a concern that the encampment at UCLA in spring 2024 may have subjected students to different treatment based on their national origin/shared Jewish ancestry, when their access to parts of the campus or UCLA programs was limited. OCR identified a similar concern about possible disparate treatment with respect to Jewish students’ access to a multicultural center at UC Santa Barbara.
Similarly, the evidence to date showed that UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz all had widely reported incidents of alleged harassment against students based on their national origin, including shared ancestry, indicating that these universities also had notice of a potential hostile environment for their students of Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Muslim, and/or Arab ancestry. For example, UC Santa Barbara received notice of antisemitic vandalism at a dorm room and signs posted at a student center that targeted some named Jewish students and stated that Zionists were not welcome. UC San Diego and UC Davis also received reports and complaints about students witnessing or experiencing antisemitic comments or actions by students and professors at protests, online, or in campus departments. Chancellors at various UC campuses made statements to their communities acknowledging hate speech, antisemitic and anti-Muslim discrimination, and/or other harms that students on their respective campuses had experienced.
To resolve the Title VI compliance concerns that OCR identified to date, the University of California has committed to implement actions, including:
Reviewing complaints and reports of harassment and other discrimination based on shared ancestry in academic years (AY) 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 to determine if the alleged conduct created a hostile environment and if further action is needed to provide an equitable resolution of each reported incident.
Reporting to OCR the universities’ responses to reports of harassment and other discrimination based on shared ancestry in the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.
Obtaining OCR approval for any revisions to university policies and procedures to ensure that they address Title VI’s prohibition on discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.
Training university employees and public safety and campus police officers responsible for investigating reports and complaints of discrimination about the university’s policies, procedures, and obligations under Title VI to respond to shared ancestry discrimination.
Administering a climate assessment for university students and employees to evaluate the extent to which they are subjected to or witness harassment and other discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, and know how to report such discrimination. And,
Using the results of the climate assessments and university reviews of reports of shared ancestry discrimination to identify responsive steps for OCR’s review and approval.
===
The news release above, the resolution letter (addressed to President Drake), and the resolution agreement are at:
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| 1957 |
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| 1963 is said to be the date. The cars, however, look to be from an earlier period, possibly 1953. |
"President-elect Trump on Friday said Republicans would push to eliminate daylight saving time, calling it “inconvenient” and “costly.” “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” Trump posted on Truth Social..."
Full story at:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5039673-trump-gop-daylight-saving-time/.
Normally, this topic comes up whenever there is a clock change, i.e., in fall and spring. But now it seems to be on the agenda as winter rapidly approaches.
Our former chancellor retired at the end of July with shall we charitably say less than the normal fanfare for such events. (I don't think I have to explain why.) But it is worth noting that Gene Block and Donald Trump apparently see eye-to-eye on this particular matter. In particular, Block opposed permanent daylight time, a position that often arises in the normal twice-a-year debates. Instead, in an op ed in the Sacramento Bee, he wrote:
...Permanent Standard Time is the only fair and viable option, not only for California, but the entire nation. California lawmakers, regardless of district, have a responsibility to residents in the northern part of the state. They also have an opportunity to make this important point to Congress, which might someday impose a permanent time change for the nation.
Full op ed at https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article226884269.html.
PS: From winter quarter 2022, when masks were required, we present more than you want to know about this topic:
Executive Summary
UC Merced Was Created to Accomplish Several Key Objectives. In the late 1980s, the University of California (UC) projected that enrollment demand would exceed systemwide enrollment capacity by the late 1990s. In response, the UC Board of Regents began exploring sites for a new campus. After considering several locations in the San Joaquin Valley, the board selected Merced as the location for the tenth UC campus. After years of constructing the campus and hiring personnel, UC Merced opened in fall 2004 for graduate students and fall 2005 for undergraduate students. In addition to expanding enrollment capacity for the UC system, UC Merced was intended to help raise educational and economic outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley. Prior to the opening of UC Merced, regional college-going rates were low while regional poverty and unemployment rates were high.
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Campus Has Grown Over Time. Total enrollment (undergraduates and graduate students combined) at UC Merced crossed the 5,000 student-marker in fall 2011. By fall 2023, the campus had grown to approximately 9,100 students. Academic offerings have increased in tandem—growing from 9 undergraduate majors and 3 doctoral programs in 2005 to 27 undergraduate majors and 17 doctoral programs in fall 2023. The number of faculty and staff also has grown, with the campus having a total of approximately 2,500 employees in fall 2023. The campus has completed two major physical build-outs. The initial build-out resulted in about 1.5 million gross square feet (gsf) of academic and auxiliary space, whereas the second build-out (occurring from 2016 through 2020) added about 1.3 million gsf of space (intended to support a campus of 10,000 students).
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UC Merced Student Body Is Different From Other UC Campuses. UC Merced enrolls a higher share of undergraduates and lower share of graduate students than other UC campuses. Among its undergraduates, UC Merced enrolls the highest share of resident students and lowest share of students from other states and countries. The campus has the highest percentage of first-generation students (students with at least one parent who does not have a bachelor’s degree) as well as the highest percentage of Pell Grant recipients. UC Merced is the only UC campus with a student body that is majority Hispanic/Latino. The campus also draws more heavily from the San Joaquin Valley than any other UC campus.
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UC Merced Staff Differ From UC System. Compared to other UC campuses, UC Merced relies more on nontenure-track lecturers for academic instruction. Among its tenured/tenure-track faculty, it relies more on assistant professors (and less on associate and full professors). Relative to other UC general campuses, UC Merced hires substantially fewer academic support staff, whereas it hires substantially more student employees. UC Merced administrators indicate making these hiring decisions because they yield lower associated staffing costs and are thus more fiscally viable for a young campus. As a relatively small campus without the same economies of scale of the larger UC campuses, UC Merced continues to spend a larger share of its budget on institutional support and a smaller share on instruction and research.
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UC Merced Receives More State Funding Per Student Than Other UC Campuses. UC uses a formula known as the “rebenching formula” to allocate General Fund (excluding General Fund set-asides for specific programs and one-time allocations) to its campuses. The formula is meant to equalize state per-student funding across campuses. UC Merced is excluded from this formula, as the campus has not yet reached the point where state support under the rebenching formula, its tuition revenue, and local resources are enough to cover its annual operating expenses. Compared to the other UC general campuses, UC provides UC Merced with approximately $10,000 more in state funding per student. In 2022-23, UC Merced received $85 million more in state funding than it would have received under the rebenching formula.
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Some UC Capacity Has Been Added Due to UC Merced but Growth Has Been Slow and Higher Cost. Since 2005, the UC system has added approximately 44,000 resident undergraduate slots. The 7,500 undergraduate slots created at UC Merced accounts for 17 percent of that growth. While contributing to the increase in UC enrollment capacity, UC Merced has repeatedly failed to meet its campus enrollment targets. Moreover, enrolling additional students at UC Merced comes with a higher state cost than enrolling additional students at the more established UC campuses. The $85 million in UC Merced funding above the rebenching formula equates to roughly an additional 10,000 students that could have been supported at the other UC general campuses, many of which had available capacity.
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Certain Educational Outcomes in the San Joaquin Valley Continue to Lag Behind Statewide Averages. While more San Joaquin Valley high school students are now enrolling at a UC campus, with UC Merced accounting for the majority of that growth, certain regional educational outcomes continue to be relatively low. For instance, though college going rates have increased in the San Joaquin Valley, they have not increased as much as the statewide average. Similarly, the percentage of individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree in Merced County has increased, but also by less than the statewide average.
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Regional Economic Indicators Show Mixed Results. It is unclear how much the campus has contributed to overall macroeconomic outcomes in the region. Both unemployment and poverty remain higher in the San Joaquin Valley when compared to statewide averages. Average wages for state-government workers in Merced County, however, have seen a substantial increase since the opening of the campus (growing by nearly 70 percent, notably exceeding statewide wage growth). Employment growth in nonfarm occupations has also increased in Merced County, exceeding the statewide average, but falling behind other regions in the state.
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Key State-Level Takeaways May Be Learned From the UC Merced Experience. In many ways, UC Merced is like new campuses more generally. For at least their first several decades, new public university campuses are likely to experience slower enrollment growth than planned, rely more heavily on state funding, and devote more of their budgets to institutional support and facilities (and less to instruction and research). New campuses, in turn, are unlikely to be able to offer the same overall quality of academic program for decades. Moreover, new campuses are unlikely to generate significant economic impacts in the short term, beyond what might have been accomplished by other major state initiatives. Furthermore, studies have not determined whether the results produced by new campuses could be accomplished in more cost-effective ways.
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These takeaways could help inform and guide the Legislature as it undertakes higher education planning moving forward.
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Full report at https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2024/4937/UC-Merced-at-20-Campus-Developments-Key-State-Level-Takeaways-110724.pdf.
===
The LAO report is the kind of analysis that will get some attention in the legislature and perhaps at the Regents. Note that at least one media interpretation will raise some red flags:
...In polite language, [the report] fundamentally says the campus has fallen well short of its enrollment targets, requires much more state aid than other UC branches to operate, has not had the big economic impact that its advocates promised, and really wasn’t needed to relieve student applications...
At the time, UC system executives were almost universally opposed to placing a new campus in Merced because it would siphon away construction and operational funds that, they thought, would be better spent elsewhere. However, they never voiced that opposition publicly because the Board of Regents, composed of governors’ appointees, and [Governor] Davis were insisting that it be done... In short, the motives of Merced campus advocates, both public and private, had only tangential connections to educational needs, and two decades later that’s still true. UC Merced is the system’s poor stepchild.
Full story at https://calmatters.org/commentary/2024/12/uc-merced-campus-awkward-stepchild/.
The recollection of yours truly is a bit different. UC executives at the time seemed quite happy to continue to discuss creating a new campus in the region. As long as the precise location was uncertain, there was a whole collection of hopeful Central Valley legislators who would support the idea (and UC) in the hope that - if they played nice - eventually their preferred site would be chosen. However, there was only so long that UC could play the game of considering and discussing, but not chosing, a site. And once a specific site was chosen, UC inevitably disappointed several legislators from the region and pleased only one assembly member and only one state senator.*
That said, there is no point now in revisiting what might have been. The only choice is to make UC-Merced a success where it is and what it is.
===
*This is not a new opinion on this blog. From 2011:
https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2011/11/merced-developers-learn-to-be-careful.html.
Dear UC Retirement Savings Program Participant,
We want to make you aware that a limited number of UC Retirement Savings Program (RSP) accounts administered by Fidelity were affected by fraudulent activity in October 2024. Fidelity identified the issues involved, addressed any vulnerabilities, took immediate steps to protect affected accounts and restored unauthorized transactions.
Your UC RSP account(s) were not affected. However, we want to take this opportunity to remind you of our Fidelity Customer Protection Guarantee and steps you can take to help protect your account(s).
The Fidelity Customer Protection Guarantee
Under Fidelity’s Customer Protection Guarantee, Fidelity reimburses any losses from unauthorized account activity, provided the activity was not due to a plan participant’s own actions. We understand that these kinds of situations can be concerning, and we want to reassure you that our team is here to support you.
Steps to help protect your account(s)
As part of our ongoing commitment to your account security, below are tips and resources to help you protect your UC RSP and Fidelity account information. If you haven’t done so already, please consider taking the following steps as soon as possible:
1. Review your UC workplace account(s) (www.netbenefits.com) and personal Fidelity retail account(s) (www.fidelity.com), if applicable, regularly. Ensure your contact information and financial statements are accurate, including transaction history, bank, and tax information. Pay close attention to your profile information, especially mobile numbers and emails associated with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and account alerts.
Scan or Click the QR code to view Fidelity’s security checklist and safety resources, including top five account security recommendations, and more.
2. Pay close attention to account change alerts. Fidelity will notify you of any accounts opened on your behalf, as well as profile changes.
3. Report any concerning issues to Fidelity. If you notice any recent unusual activity or unauthorized changes, contact Fidelity immediately at 1-866-682-7787.
4. Take advantage of UC’s information security resources. UC offers services to assist you in managing cybersecurity risk, including multi-factor authentication applications and resources for reporting potential phishing attacks. For more information about cybersecurity at UC, including best practices for keeping your digital information safe, visit security.ucop.edu.
5. Attend the “CyberWellness®: Personal Security Checklist” webinar on Thursday, December 19, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. PT, where you’ll learn actionable tips to secure your accounts, identity and devices. Register here.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Your vigilance in detecting and alerting authorities to security issues is important. We will continue to work with UC officials to monitor threats to your accounts and strengthen measures to help discourage additional attacks.
Sincerely,
Fidelity Investments
===
*Yours truly is told the fraud was effected by creation of phony Fidelity accounts for minors with the same Social Security numbers as those of UC employees (presumably obtained from the dark web). A flaw in the Fidelity security system allowed transfers of money from the legitimate accounts to the phony accounts. Apparently, the flaw has been corrected and those whose accounts were hacked were reimbursed.
From the Daily Cal: On Friday, Academic Student Employees, or ASEs, of the UAW 4811 completed their ratification vote, deciding 79.8% in favor of approving an agreement to extend the union’s contract. UAW 4811 is the union representing the 48,000 academic workers across the UC system. “We see (the contract extension agreement) as very promising, and clearly the vast majority of our membership agrees given the margin of the vote,” Tanzil Chowdhury, the statewide ASE chair for UAW 4811 said. “I think it puts us in a strong position, and we’re excited to get to the table in July to start hammering out that new contract.”
The contract extension means that the contract will now expire on Dec. 31, 2025, instead of their original date of May 31, 2025. The agreement also includes a 4% raise for academic student employees and a transitional funding pilot program. The UAW 4811 bargaining team initially reached a tentative agreement with the university on Nov. 15. The union vote to ratify the agreement took place between Dec. 3 and Dec. 6...
Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/uc/uaw-4811-votes-to-extend-contract-with-uc/article_739a5254-b842-11ef-8f2e-070fd45bf4e9.html.
The going hypothesis is that the extra revenue is coming from the high tech sector and capital gains therein.
Unused borrowable resources stood at over $93 billion. Not all of that cash can be used to deal with deficits on an annual basis. But it can be used to cover monthly imbalances within the fiscal year.
The controller's report for November is at https://sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/November2024StatementofGeneralFundCashReceiptsandDisbursements.pdf.
There is a sense that despite the $3.9 billion in unexpected receipts, the budgetary outlook for UC will be constrained. But what the governor will propose and what the legislature will do remains to be seen. The budget process is not over 'til it's over (in June).
Wilshire Bl near UCLA: Storm Drain Work, Sewer and Catch Basin Work Summary Metro contractors will continue working on the storm drain laterals, sewer lines, and catch basin activities for the future Westwood/UCLA Station. Work will be done in phases with lane closures on Wilshire Bl between Veteran Av and Westwood Bl Utility services will be maintained. Work on the sewer and catch basins has been ongoing. The temporary traffic control will require restrictions to eastbound lanes on Wilshire Bl between Veteran Av and Westwood Bl. Date: Ongoing through Winter 2024 Work hours: Monday to Friday, 9 pm to 6 am and 9 am to 3:30 pm Continuous Weekends, Friday to Monday, 9 pm to 6 am Traffic Control:
Noteworthy:
Source: https://cloud.sfmc.metro.net/GayleyAvandWilshireBl_StormDrainWork. |
Comparative lit class will be first in Humanities Division to use UCLA-developed AI system
Textbook for Zrinka Stahuljak’s winter 2025 course is generated by the Kudu platform
Sean Brenner
Zrinka Stahuljak’s comparative literature course next quarter will cover much of the same subject matter she has taught in years past: a sweeping survey of writing from the Middle Ages to the 17th century. But, thanks to AI, the course format and materials will take on a totally new look for 2025.
Comp Lit 2BW will be the first course in the UCLA College Division of Humanities to be built around the Kudu artificial intelligence platform.* The textbook: AI-generated. Class assignments: AI-generated. Teaching assistants’ resources: AI-generated. While that might make it sound like Stahuljak is ceding her wide-ranging expertise to bots, she said the opposite is true. The new technology, she said, will have immediate tangible benefits for her, teaching assistants and — critically — students.
“Because the course is a survey of literature and culture, there’s an arc to what I want students to understand,” said Stahuljak, a professor of comparative literature and of European languages and transcultural studies. “Normally, I would spend lectures contextualizing the material and using visuals to demonstrate the content. But now all of that is in the textbook we generated, and I can actually work with students to read the primary sources and walk them through what it means to analyze and think critically.”
Because Stahuljak can focus on those aspects of teaching during lectures, TAs would in turn be liberated from those tasks and can instead devote more time to helping students with writing assignments — an element of instruction that sometimes receives short shrift in large classes, she said. Another benefit, Stahuljak said, is that the platform can help professors ensure consistent delivery of course material. Now that her teaching materials are organized into a coherent text, another instructor could lead the course during the quarters when Stahuljak isn’t teaching — and offer students a very similar experience. And with AI-generated lesson plans and writing exercises for TAs, students in each discussion section can be assured they’re receiving comparable instruction to those in other sections.
Building the course
To create the new textbook, Stahuljak provided Kudu with course notes from previous iterations of the class, along with PowerPoint presentations and YouTube videos she self-produced for remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. With significant human input and thorough human review of the material, the Kudu platform produced a digital publication that will be available to students for $25 as part of package that also includes AI tools.
The e-book can also be printed, if needed, and it can be used with audio readers, making content readily accessible for students with disabilities.
Elizabeth Landers, a UCLA doctoral candidate in history, managed the course materials development for Kudu. She said the digital format also enables the textbook to be updated during the quarter if needed — for example, if students request more context about a specific topic, new text, video or images could be uploaded in time for the following class session.
When students ask the AI platform for help on course material, it draws only from resources provided for the class.
The course creation process can take three to four months, Landers said, and Kudu’s process calls for professors to spend a maximum of 20 hours on materials development, including reviewing and editing. Kudu compensates them for that time. “The rest of the process is managed by the team at Kudu,” Landers said. “We have all of the backend support to understand where the instructors want to go with the material.”
For the comparative literature course, content was vetted by Stahuljak and Jakob Johnson, a history major who graduated in 2024.
“What’s amazing is that this takes a general education course from being about information overload to being much more about helping students find a through line and key themes over the course of 10 weeks,” Landers said. “Now, instead of a professor lecturing about historical facts — because those are all in the textbook — they can instead focus on things like, ‘How do we think about this particular text?’ and ‘How can we think about it differently?’ And that’s how critical thinking starts to happen.”
Closed-loop system provides guardrails
When students have questions about course material, they’ll have the option of asking Kudu for help. But unlike ChatGPT and other public large-language models, Kudu will draw information only from the resources Stahuljak has uploaded.
“It will only respond based on course content,” said Stahuljak, who is the director of the UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies. “So it’s there to help our students, but it also reduces the risk of them using ChatGPT to generate their homework assignments.”
The system anonymizes the content of students’ queries, giving them the freedom to ask questions they might be less inclined to in front of their classmates and professors. That closed-loop system also has the ability to identify writing in students’ assignments in which more than half of the content is AI-generated.
A UCLA connection
Kudu got its start as a tool for UCLA science courses. That stands to reason: The platform was developed by Alexander Kusenko, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, and his former doctoral student Warren Essey. While Stahuljak’s course will be Kudu’s UCLA Humanities debut, the system is already being used this quarter in a social sciences course, an introductory history class taught by Professor Stefania Tutino.
“Coming from a STEM field, I was surprised to see the extensive and sophisticated use of Kudu tools in the humanities,” Kusenko said. “However, now I see that humanities scholars are taking the lead and taking Kudu in an exciting new direction.”
Stahuljak already plans to use Kudu for other courses.
“It allows us to spend more time teaching basic analytical skills, critical thinking and reading skills, in a consistent manner — the things professors are best at doing,” she said. “Those are hard things to do when you have 300 students in a classroom, but this allows us to do them much better.”
Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/comparative-literature-zrinka-stahuljak-artificial-intelligence.
==
*Note: The catalog version of the course is at:
https://catalog.registrar.ucla.edu/course/2024/COMLIT2BW
==
You won't be surprised to learn that there are critics of this development. See:
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the turn against higher education in Washington posed a greater threat to the University than anything in recent memory, making his most direct comments yet on Republicans’ sweep to power during a closed-door session of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
At the FAS meeting on Dec. 3, Garber said he met with roughly 40 members of Congress during six trips to Washington since becoming president. Garber said he emerged from the conversations convinced there was bipartisan frustration with Harvard and acknowledged that he believes the criticisms contain elements of truth.
Garber’s remarks — among his first since President-elect Donald Trump won a second term in the White House — suggest Harvard’s leaders are reevaluating their public messaging in the face of an increasingly hostile climate in Washington. During his remarks, Garber said that the University’s communications strategy has not worked as well as its leaders had thought...
Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/12/13/garber-trump-harvard-impact/.
"Not worked as well as its leaders had thought" is probably the understatement of the year. It reminds yours truly of the understatement in Emperor Hirohito's announcement of the surrender of Japan in World War II: "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage."*
==
*https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/jewel-voice-broadcast/.
Prof. Link was recently the subject of a lengthy and lauditory article in the UCR Magazine which details his expertise in Chinese affairs and how he has been barred from China for his work on behalf of a Chinese dissident scholar.***
The Wall St. Journal op ed opens with: Kim Wilcox, chancellor at University of California, Riverside, wrote me a letter of censure on Aug. 16. I was, in the administration’s view, guilty of “discrimination” against “individuals seeking employment.” I had made “unwarranted comments” about race. Mr. Wilcox based his claim largely on the following statement, which I had written to colleagues on a faculty search committee in December 2022: “[Candidate X] is lively and charming—and yes, Black, which is great—but I can’t say that I found his sophistication and experience up to the level of our top candidates.” I expressed my worry that some of my colleagues would, as they had in the past, make the applicant’s race their “overriding criterion.”
It then goes on to describe various procedures and tribunals that became involved and the intervention of the chancellor. It closes with:
As Mr. Wilcox was contemplating his final decision on my case, I offered to visit his office to hear face-to-face his decision and reasoning. He didn’t answer. A few months later I got a message from university counsel warning that all of what happened to me is confidential and that my writing about it “may result in discipline.”
By publishing his op ed, it appears that Prof. Link has now written about what happened, despite the warning. So now Chancellor Wilcox, who is due to retire at the end of the academic year, has to respond - or not. His choice. But if he doesn't respond, Prof. Link's version of the events he describes stands as the public record.
It's your move, Chancellor Wilcox.
===
*https://www.wsj.com/opinion/uc-riversides-dei-guardians-came-after-me-39d8e26e.
**https://complitlang.ucr.edu/people/faculty/link/.
***https://news.ucr.edu/ucr-magazine/winter-2024/the-accidental-dissident. The article begins: “Blacklisted by the Chinese Community Party” is a badge of honor Perry Link has worn for almost 30 years. On any night, Link, a UCR professor of comparative literature, may be heard on Voice of America or quoted in The New York Times. He’s a leading voice on the human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. But reducing his role to that of a commentator on the CCP and the dissidence it has inspired does Link an injustice. He played a pro-democracy role in a significant episode of Chinese history, the spring 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy. In a series of events that could be storyboards in an espionage thriller, Link helped in the escape of the communist party’s “public enemy No. 1,” the dissident Fang Lizhi. In Link’s telling, he never intended any of it — he is an accidental dissident...
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health wants to take on campus culture at elite universities, wielding the power of tens of billions of dollars in scientific grants.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist, is considering a plan to link a university’s likelihood of receiving research grants to some ranking or measure of academic freedom on campus, people familiar with his thinking said.
Bhattacharya, a critic of the Covid-19 response, wants to counter what he sees as a culture of conformity in science that ostracized him over his views on masking and school closures.
He isn’t yet sure how to measure academic freedom, but he has looked at how a nonprofit called Foundation for Individual Rights in Education [FIRE] scores universities in its freedom-of-speech rankings, a person familiar with his thinking said.
The nonprofit scores schools based on a survey of students’ perceptions of factors such as whether they feel comfortable expressing ideas. Schools are also penalized if their administrators sanction faculty for opinions or disinvite a speaker from a campus event after a controversy...
Full story at https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/jay-bhattacharya-national-institute-health-grants-cancel-culture-645101f5.
In case you are wondering, here is what FIRE says about UCLA, which it ranks as #220 (out of 258):
Important end-of-year security reminder
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If you receive an email or text with a link or an attachment for viewing these statements, it is a phishing scam designed to gain private information.
Do not open attachments or click email links that claim to provide access to your 1095-C or W-2.
To access your electronic tax documents, always visit UCPath online using a safe/known link.
(From a recent UCPath email.)
Yours truly has noted that various notifications from the UCLA Faculty Club are being blocked by at least one UCLA department's IT system. Even when he tells the blocking program to release the messages, they often aren't released.
It seems likely that in order to block what may be malicious or fraudulent messages, messages that are desired are being lost. Unlike the past, where messages identified as spam can still be read in a spam folder, the new filters simply make them inaccessible. Below is an example from the Faculty Club.
From the LA Times: UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond’s contract extension that runs through June 30, 2029, calls for incremental raises rising to an annual salary of $2.1 million. The contract, signed in May by recently departed chancellor Gene Block, took effect July 1 and superseded Jarmond’s previous contract that was set to expire in the summer of 2026. As part of his new contract, he will receive $1.55 million in Year 1, $1.6 million in Year 2, $1.8 million in Year 3, $2 million in Year 4 and $2.1 million in Year 5. Those amounts in the first two years represent significant raises over the $1.25 million Jarmond was set to make this year and the $1.31 million he would have made in 2025-26 under his previous contract...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2024-12-10/ucla-jarmond-contract.
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw.
Yours truly came across this story in a recent edition of Inside Higher Ed: The University of Florida is opening its board retreats to the public after the Board of Trustees was accused of violating state law by essentially holding closed meetings, NPR affiliate WUFT reported. While board retreats are supposed to be public, in accordance with Florida’s Sunshine Law, the UF governing board has met in secret quarters since 2018. Though the board gave notice of the meeting dates as required by law, the university did not provide the location of the retreats, which critics argue amount to conducting closed meetings...
Following critical coverage, UF spokesperson Steve Orlando told the NPR affiliate that board retreats are public and that the board’s “intent has never been to close them.” Going forward, the university will publish the location of such retreats ahead of time, he said.
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/12/09/university-florida-accused-sunshine-law-violations.
Of course, California has similar laws requiring open meetings - with exceptions for certain topics such as personnel actions. When the UC Regents hold their retreats, they are open technically except for such topics. Unlike their other meetings, however, the retreats don't take place on a campus where lots of folks can easily attend. Nor are they live-streamed, with the recordings available thereafter. In principle, anyone could have driven up to the UC Lake Arrowhead resort and attended the most recent retreat. From the Westside of LA, the drive would take about 2 hours.
So, yes, you can attend the open session. And you could bring your own recording device and make the recording public. No doubt that this meets the letter of the law. On the other hand, nothing would prevent the Regents from live-streaming the program and/or making a recording available. They just don't.
Were there open-session topics at, say, the retreat last September that were somehow especially sensitive? Below is the agenda:*
So why not use modern technology and make the proceedings more accessible? Seems like an open and shut case can be made for doing just that, even if the law doesn't require it.
===
*https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept24/board9.4.24.pdf. Note: You can phone in your public comments. When yours truly did so on one occasion, he was the only commenter.
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-12-11/ucla-police-chief-blasted-for-security-lapses-that-led-to-protest-violence-is-out.
...[The] expectation that UCLA PD remain less visible and engaged with the community was demonstrated in UCLA’s response to the encampment. Encampment members... made clear throughout the encampment period they did not want to engage with police or to see police in or around the encampment, and the UCLA administration was responsive to these requests.
Although there are some conflicting accounts about how this translated into direction to police – with the UCLA PD reporting that they were told to stay entirely off campus, while some administrators told us that the police were not told to stay off campus but rather were told to stay out of sight – there is general agreement across most accounts that police were instructed to remain wholly unseen by protesters. This played out during the encampment period in many ways and instances, such as when protesters objected to officers’ presence in a nearby building, where they had positioned themselves to gain information about the state of the encampment, administrators instructed officers to leave. UCLA PD therefore was handicapped in its ability to gain information about the encampment, its size, whether there were any weapons within the encampment, and whether protesters around the encampment were posing a growing danger to those within the encampment. When administrators instructed the police department to engage, the police lacked critical information that could have helped it determine the lowest level intervention necessary to accomplish its goals...
Full report at https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/LAPD%20report%20on%20UCLA%2011-5-2024.pdf.
To summarize, the UCLA police chief is told by unnamed "administrators" to have his officers stay away from the encampment because those in the encampment didn't want to see police. Then, when an incident occurred, the UCLA police weren't there to deal with it. So, the response to all of this is to fire the police chief. And the "administrators" presumably are untouched.
Any questions?
With respect to taxes and regulation, the Forecast assumes that, to the extent that they happen, they will have only minor impact and will take time to be felt. In the U.S. forecast, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts that expire in 2025 are expected to be renewed, as are some smaller tax cuts through the next two years. Assumptions about Trump administration policies is based on the Forecast economists’ guesses and not on any data other than pronouncements Trump made during the presidential campaign, and his recent appointments of key personnel for the incoming administration. It is important to keep in mind that political exigencies can radically alter promised policy.
The unemployment rate for the fourth quarter of 2024 is expected to average 5.3%, while the averages for 2025 and 2026 are expected to be 5.5% and 5.0%, respectively. The UCLA Anderson forecast expects the 2025 and 2026 total employment growth rates to be -0.7% and 1.6%. At the same time, non-farm payroll jobs are expected to grow at rates of 1.5% and 1.3% during the same two years. Real personal income is forecast to grow by 2.3% in 2025 and 2.6% in 2026.
Despite higher interest rates, the continued demand for a limited housing stock, coupled with state policies inducing new home building, should result in the beginning of a recovery this year in the housing sector, followed by slow but solid growth in new home production thereafter. The forecast anticipates new units to grow to 143,000 by the end of 2026. Based on this level of home building, the private sector’s prospect of building out of the housing affordability problem over the next three years is nil...
Full release at https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/news-and-events/press-releases/incoming-administrations-policies-signal-new-economic-uncertaintie.
UPDATE: The video of the Forecast program is at:
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbpRv5pt5OE.
Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton lost reelection after American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 spent more than $1 million supporting candidates to replace him in the primary and later in ads bashing him and tying him to high gas prices and crime.
Although the union, which represents service workers across UC campuses, did not support Republican Steven Choi, a conservative from Irvine, its decision to oppose a largely pro-labor Democrat probably helped cinch the race in a close contest...
[Newman] believes that the union’s campaign against him was spurred by his reluctance to support a bill last year that would have put a measure on the ballot asking voters to enshrine basic labor standards for all UC employees. The bill was sponsored by AFSCME Local 3299 and fizzled before it ever made it to the governor’s desk, facing a long list of opponents who said it was unnecessary and unfairly singled out one group of public workers...
It’s unlikely that Choi will have much influence in the California Capitol, where Republicans struggle to get any major policies signed into law. He thinks that the union that targeted Newman knew that and chose to risk helping elect a candidate it disagrees with in order to send a message to other Democrats about what happens when you oppose them.
“I think this was a power play to show how strong they are,” Choi said. “And what kind of penalty they can play against uncooperative legislators.”
Needless to say, members of the legislature were not pleased to see the photo and the incident led to a series in events culminating in Samish going to prison.
Sometimes, even things that are true need not be said nor demonstrated.
You can read a brief summary of this affair at https://cal170.library.ca.gov/a-dummy-brings-down-an-empire/.
