Changing Titles

The original topic - item J1 - for discussion at the Regentss meeting on Wednesday, March 20, of a joint meeting of Academic and Student Affairs and Compliance and Audit was to be:

"Adoption of Regents Policy on the Use of University Administrative Websites."

That title has now been changed to:

"Adoption of Regents Policy on Public and Discretionary Statements by Academic Units."

No text of the proposal, either under the old title or the new one, has yet been posted.

As blog readers will know, at the January meeting the Regents debated a version of what is now J1 with a focus on the use of UC websites. There was debate focused on trying to define "landing pages" of websites, i.e., the debate seemed to revolve around the details of departmental political statements' locations rather than the idea of having a departmental position on a political issue. One can surmise from the title change now that the issue is whether departments of UC should take such official positions, regardless of the medium on which those positions are conveyed. Presumably, the new J1 does not limit the right of individuals, as opposed to "academic units," to take positions. Yours truly has seen posts on social media that seem to assume J1 refers to individuals, which seems unlikely. See the Instagram post below which refers to a supposed ban on all political speech:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4rJIWRPPNI/?img_index=1

There would be some enforcement issues. If a department did post a political position on a campus website, campus IT authorities could remove it. However, if such a statement appeared anonymously on social media, at best UC could ask the platform to take it down which it might or might not do. And the poster would be unknown.

Unfortunately, without a specific text, all of the above is speculation based on the title change.