What did the Regents Do?

As blog readers will know, after their Friday closed-door meeting, the Regents released a statement saying they would not divest. And they would not allow a UC academic boycott.* But you had to prowl around on the various UC websites to find the regental statement. Today's LA Times, however, carries an article on that statement, so now the protesters know.

As blog readers will also know, the Regents never released an agenda for their meeting. When you click on the supposed link for the agenda, you get "file not found" as the image on this post shows.

So, we don't know for sure what was discussed, apart from divestment and boycotting. However, there is this clue in the LA Times article:

...One member of the UC Board of Regents said Saturday the anti-Israel campaign would go nowhere. “We’re never going to divest,” said the regent, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The regent was not in favor of moving to dismantle protest encampments, saying escalation would be unwise, but added that board members planned to have discussions this summer about what should be the proper time, place and manner of protests...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-27/uc-rejects-calls-for-israel-related-divestment-boycotts-driving-pro-palestinian-protests.

So, the best guess is that the Regents have left it to the various UC chancellors to figure out what to do and may not be keen on pushing for dismantlement. They may want to avoid scenarios such as have occurred at Columbia and USC where police were called. Recently, the president of MIT said the encampment there would have to end soon, but she left the deadline fuzzy. See below:

Or direct to https://ia801406.us.archive.org/35/items/a-laugh-a-tear-a-mitzvah/MIT%20Community%20Message%20from%20President%20Kornbluth.mp4.

The thinking at UC may be that the encampment will somehow dissipate if left as is. And the various UC chancellors may not want to be the first to take more aggressive action, even at the MIT fuzzy level. But the situation could escalate rather than just fade away.

So far, Chancellor Block has said nothing. The latest BruinAlert has some information:

BruinALERT: Regular campus activities continue uninterrupted by the encampment demonstration that remains in Royce Quad. To date, the activity has been mostly peaceful. Our approach continues to be guided by several equally important principles: the need to support the safety and wellbeing of Bruins, the need to support the free expression rights of our community, and the need to minimize disruption to our teaching and learning mission. These same long-standing principles have allowed UCLA to uphold a history of peaceful protest.

UCLA is following University of California systemwide policy guidance, which directs us not to request law enforcement involvement preemptively, and only if absolutely necessary to protect the physical safety of our campus community.

We’ve taken several steps to help ensure people on campus know about the demonstration so they can avoid the area if they wish. This includes having student affairs representatives stationed near Royce quad to let Bruins and visitors know about the encampment, redirect them if desired and to serve as a resource for their needs.

We also have safety teams who are wearing Student Affairs Mitigators (SAMs), Public Safety Aides (PSAs) and CSC security uniforms throughout the demonstration site. You may also hear helicopters dispatched by news media who are covering the demonstration.

For more information about emergencies at UCLA, please visit https://bso.ucla.edu/.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/04/all-is-wellfor-now.html. As we have noted previously, the official rationale for having a closed-door meeting was "litigation." But we know at least part of the agenda was investment policy and boycott policy. While any policy decision could conceivably lead to litigation, it is hard to see how such policies carry a significant litigation risk.