UCLA Faculty Association: Watch the Regents Meeting of Nov. 14, 2024

We're going to jump ahead in our coverage of last week's Regents meeting to the third day, November 14 which was entirely a series of full board meetings, including closed sessions.

Public comments in the morning were heavily tilted toward Israel-Gaza, antisemitism, and free speech issues. Also included were nonunion staff salaries, undergrad health clinics including for sexual assault, the use of a nonunion contractor on a construction project, COVID, and underrepresented student recruitment.

Grad student government comments covered federal funding in the post-election environment, and student debt. Undergrad comments were largely anti-Israel and concern about student health clinics and tuition increases for out-of-state students.

The board heard a presentation on the UC response to COVID by EVP Carrie Byington. It was noted that $1.69 billion was received from the federal government during that period. Precautions and other steps reduced excess mortality at UC to about 17 per 100,000, about a tenth of the rate for the State of California as a whole.

In the afternoon, the board approved recommendations from the various committees. Two items were singled out for discussion. Item F5 - the UCLA cogeneration plant - was controversial because of the 30% increase in costs when the original contract had a supposed ceiling on costs. Nonetheless, it was approved with some dissent. Item F10 - the UC budget for 2025-26 - also attracted concern because of the proposed 10% tuition hike for incoming nonstate students. But it was also approved. Note that what the budget will actually be awaits action by the state legislature next year.

Finally, the Regents took up "campus climate," code words for the protests and related issues. The board had received a report on campus antisemitism and other on Islamophobia. Most of the focus was on the antisemitism report, in part because there was regental criticism of the Islamophobia report as non-specific. Remarks concerning campus antisemitism included "insidious," "intolerable," etc., including by Chair Reily and President Drake.

Interim UCLA chancellor Hunt was asked if any UCLA student, staff member, or faculty who was the subject of a complaint had been disciplined. He responded that while there were "hundreds" of such complaints, nobody in any of these groups had (yet) been disciplined. The Regents were not happy to hear that response. The faculty rep made a defensive comment about the workings of the senate procedures. Again, the Regents were not happy.

But the most telling remark - in the opinion of yours truly - came from Regent Pérez who questioned the way the issue was being presented. Back in 2015, when the issue of campus antisemitism was discussed at the Regents, Pérez complained that there was always a twinning of the issue with Islamophobia - in contrast with discussion of discrimination against other (non-Jewish) groups. You can hear his remarks back then at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUC07I-CikM beginning at minute 8:42. Perez's remarks this time in the same vein are at the links below: