Neutral

As blog readers will know, in response to campus tensions arising from the Israel-Gaza War, UC president Drake allocated $7 million to the campuses for some kind of "neutral" programming. He didn't define exactly what that was and - apparently - the money has been distributed. Yours truly has yet to see the programming at UCLA.

One interpretation was to have dialogues with different views expressed. As far as yours truly knows, the only such program occurred at the med school before Drake's dollars had been distributed:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-med-school-dialogue-12-20-2023

Even that program was not made widely available. Yours truly, however, did preserve the audio at the link above.

Meanwhile, the notion of neutrality seems to have taken hold at Harvard which - with some other institutions - was the target of ongoing congressional investigations. Apparently, Harvard is setting up a committee to look into a policy of neutrality.* At Yale, there is a group of faculty pushing for a separation of "activism" from teaching.**

And at UC, there is the discussion at the Regents of departmental political statements - which presumably will be resuscitated at the March meetings.

All of these issues appear to be interrelated. Somewhat related were recent anti-Israel divestment resolutions at some UC student associations including UCLA.*** Exactly what that means in practice and whether such resolutions conflict with Regents' policy or raise other legal issues remains to be seen.

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*https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/2/23/institutional-neutrality-feature/.

**https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/02/19/faculty-group-calls-on-yale-to-make-teaching-distinct-from-activism/.

***https://dailybruin.com/2024/02/21/usac-passes-resolution-endorsing-boycott-divest-and-sanctions-movement.