Nathan Hale, meet Jonathan Hale

From the Westside Current: Jonathan Hale, who has become a fixture in Los Angeles’ growing guerrilla-crosswalk movement, was cited for vandalism Sunday after police stopped him midway through painting what he described as a badly needed crossing at a hazardous Westwood intersection. Hale was arrested and cited while painting a crosswalk at Kelton and Wilkins avenues, according to video posted to social media. The longtime bicycle advocate is part of People’s Vision Zero, a group that has been painting or repainting crosswalks at intersections where pedestrians and cyclists have been injured or killed...

Hale received a $250 citation and said he plans to “face justice” when he appears in court on Jan. 5. Mayor Karen Bass’ office issued a statement Tuesday addressing Hale and People’s Vision Zero. “Despite communication about city, state, and federal laws and parameters, Jonathan has chosen to continue to pursue his own course of action,” the statement read. “Our office called him again Tuesday to offer to work together.”

Hale, an avid cyclist, said he contacted the mayor’s office in advance to say he and others would be at Kelton and Wilkins painting the crosswalk, but said he never received a response...

Full story at https://www.westsidecurrent.com/news/crosswalk-activist-arrested-while-painting-westwood-intersection/article_50d8f527-94e8-4e57-9196-5348c51b74af.html.

Or direct to https://www.instagram.com/p/DR_IQu_ETwN.

And you can Google Nathan Hale if you don't know his tale.

Straws in the Wind - Part 202

From Inside Higher Ed: Current and prospective Purdue University graduate students say the institution rejected a slew of Chinese applicants from its grad programs for this academic year. Also, one grad student says the university told grad admissions committees in the past couple of months that it’s highly unlikely to accept students from any “adversary nation” for next year. Faculty were told those countries are China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, said Kieran Hilmer, a teaching assistant on the leadership committee of Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing (GROW), a group trying to unionize Purdue grad workers. That list broadly matches the commerce secretary’s catalog of foreign adversaries. Hilmer said the university conveyed this prohibition verbally. “They didn’t write any of this down,” he said.

Purdue isn’t commenting on the allegations. The university has faced scrutiny from members of Congress about its ties to China. In May, the Trump administration briefly said it would revoke Chinese students’ visas nationwide. The president has since changed his tune and said he would welcome more students from China. ...Purdue spokespeople also didn’t provide a response to the Lafayette Journal & Courier and the Exponent student newspaper when asked about this issue. The Journal & Courier, which first reported the story, cited four faculty members from “a wide range of departments” who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the university.

...While Purdue won’t explain what actions it’s taking or why, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said in a September report that it’s been investigating Purdue and five other universities—Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities and the Universities of Maryland, Southern California and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—all year “regarding the presence and research activities of Chinese national students on their campuses.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/graduate/2025/12/12/purdue-allegedly-rejecting-chinese-other-grad-students.

The Lease - Part 2

The saga of UCLA's lease of a baseball field at the VA continues,* but it looks as though UCLA got an early Christmas present from a recent court judgment.

From the Daily Bruin: UCLA’s 10-acre lease with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes Jackie Robinson Stadium, was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit on Tuesday [Dec. 23]. “Because we are reversing judgment on Plaintiffs’ charitable trust claim, we dismiss UCLA’s consolidated appeals as moot and vacate any injunctive relief with respect to UCLA’s lease and services,” said Judge Ana de Alba in the court’s opinion. 

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Vietnam war-era veteran and UCLA alumnus, barred UCLA baseball from its home ballpark of 44 seasons in September 2024 after deeming the university’s lease illegal for not primarily serving veterans in a class-action lawsuit – forcing the team to move practices off site, either using other facilities on campus or traveling to nearby high school and junior college fields. The lawsuit was filed by veterans advocates, who claimed that the lease was mismanagement on the part of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The dispute centered on whether the land – or rents earned from it – was sufficiently benefiting veterans, a legal requirement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2025/12/23/us-court-of-appeals-upholds-uclas-lease-with-department-of-veterans-affairs.

===

*Our previous post on this matter is at:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-lease.html.

===

Note: According to the LA Times, there will be a refiling of the case against UCLA on other grounds. See https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-12-23/appeals-court-affirms-federal-judges-order-to-build-housing-on-vas-west-los-angeles-campus.

Our traditional offering for tonight

Well, it's traditional in the sense that we did it last year.

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5mF2TCyS-o.

Straws in the Wind - Part 201

From Inside Higher Ed: Two months after legal teams at University of North Carolina system campuses split over whether syllabi are considered public documents, system president Peter Hans announced plans to adopt a new policy that will answer an unequivocal yes. Starting as early as next fall, faculty members at UNC institutions will be required to upload their syllabi to a searchable public database, according to a draft of the policy provided to Inside Higher Ed by student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel. These public syllabi must include the course name, prefix, description, course objectives and student learning outcomes, as well as “a breakdown of how student performance will be assessed, including the grading scale, percentage breakdown of major assignments, and how attendance or participation will affect a student’s final grade.” Faculty must also include any course materials that students are required to purchase.

...The system is currently seeking feedback on the draft policy, a system spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, and “after receiving input from elected faculty representatives and other stakeholders, the system office will revise the draft as needed.” Only Hans, and not the Board of Governors, will need to approve the policy. In October, system campuses disagreed over whether to give up syllabi in response to a broad public records request by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Alongside other conservative groups, the Heritage Foundation has used open records laws to gather information on and expose public university faculty members who teach about race, gender, sexuality and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Syllabi that include classroom policies, required readings and instructor’s names are particularly valuable to conservative critics. The UNC system flagship in Chapel Hill determined that syllabi are not automatically subject to such requests. But officials at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro declared the opposite...

The new policy would also classify syllabi as “work made for hire,” which makes the institution—not the syllabus’s creator—the copyright owner of the syllabus, according to U.S. copyright law. “As such, instructors do not retain personal copyright in these materials, and syllabi owned by a public agency generated in the course of public business, are not copyrightable in a manner that would exempt syllabi from public access to these records, consistent with state and federal public records laws,” the draft policy stated...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/12/12/unc-professors-must-soon-post-syllabi-publicly.

===

From the Yale Daily News: In the wake of a shooting at Brown University... that killed two students and wounded nine others, Yale President Maurie McInnis chose not to issue a campus-wide statement about the attack... In her... email to the News, McInnis wrote that she was “horrified” by the attacks at Brown and in Sydney. But in keeping with the recommendations of a faculty committee’s report, she did not release a campus-wide statement about either of the shootings. “When considering whether to make a public statement, I do follow the guidelines laid out in the Report of the Committee on Institutional Voice,” McInnis wrote in response to a question about the report’s influence on her decision-making. “In this case, I decided to emphasize the work of campus safety.”

Published in October 2024, the report advises Yale leaders to refrain from commenting on matters of public importance, with few exceptions. The report states that university leaders may release statements of “empathy or concern in response to events outside the university,” but advises that leaders should comment only on events of “transcendent importance” to Yale...

Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/12/19/mcinnis-quiet-on-brown-shooting-cites-institutional-voice-report/.

Brownian Movement (Toward Security)

Given the shooting at Brown (and the connected shooting of an MIT professor), Brown appears to be moving toward tighter security:

From ABC News: Brown University is moving forward with a series of safety and security steps following the deadly shooting on campus this month that left two students dead and nine others injured. The Ivy League university's announcement comes the same day the Department of Education announced it would be reviewing the school for potential Clery Act violations.* Brown University's review includes putting Rodney Chatman, the vice president for public safety and emergency management for the school on leave, effective immediately, the university's president announced on Monday. The former chief of police of the Providence Police Department, Hugh T. Clements, will serve as interim chief.

In a message to the campus community, President Christina H. Paxson said the university will first focus on immediate safety measures through a rapid response team working to ensure the campus remains secure during winter break and ahead of the Spring 2026 semester. The university will also hire outside experts to conduct an after-action review of the shooting. That review will examine campus safety conditions leading up to the incident, how the university prepared for and responded on the day of the shooting, and how emergency response efforts were handled afterward...

Full story at https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/brown-university-police-chief-put-leave-dept-education/story?id=128637735.

It's hard to imagine that similar reviews aren't occurring at other universities including UCLA.

===

*U.S. Department of Education Announces Review of Brown University for Potential Clery Act Violations

December 22, 2025

https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-review-of-brown-university-potential-clery-act-violations

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) announced it will conduct a program review of Brown University (Brown) in response to the December 13, 2025, shooting on its campus, which killed two students. The Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) will investigate if Brown violated Section 485(f) of the Higher Education Act, otherwise known as the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act (Clery Act), which requires institutions of higher education to meet certain campus safety and security-related requirements as a condition of receiving federal student aid. 

In the hours after the shooting, public reporting appeared to show that Brown’s campus surveillance and security system may not have been up to appropriate standards, allowing the suspect to flee while the university seemed unable to provide helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin. Additionally, many Brown students and staff reported that the university’s emergency notifications about the active shooter were delayed, raising significant concerns about their safety alert system. If true, these shortcomings constitute serious breaches of Brown’s responsibilities under federal law. 

“After two students were horrifically murdered at Brown University when a shooter opened fire in a campus building, the Department is initiating a review of Brown to determine if it has upheld its obligation under the law to vigilantly maintain campus security,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Students deserve to feel safe at school, and every university across this nation must protect their students and be equipped with adequate resources to aid law enforcement. The Trump Administration will fight to ensure that recipients of federal funding are vigorously protecting students’ safety and following security procedures as required under federal law.” 

As part of the review, FSA has requested that Brown submit information by January 30, 2026, including: 

• Copies of the original 2024 and 2025 Annual Security Reports (ASRs), and any revised versions of these reports that were produced for the purpose of complying with the Clery Act, along with credible evidence of distribution and/or redistribution; 
• An “audit trail” showing all incidents of crime (organized by offense classification) for the calendar years 2021-2024 and an “audit trail” showing all arrests made by Brown University Public Safety and Emergency Management Department (BPS) or other state or local law enforcement agencies, and all referrals for disciplinary action against students or employees for violations of state laws and local ordinances related to the illegal possession, use, and/or distribution of weapons, drugs, or liquor that were included in the statistical disclosures contained in the University’s 2024 and 2025 ASRs; 
• A copy of the BPS’s activity/dispatch/call log for calendar years 2021-2025; 
• A copy of the daily crime log for calendar years 2021-2025; 
• A list of all Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications issued by the university during calendar years 2021-2025, with a brief description of the means or media used to disseminate the notices; 
• A copy of all of Brown’s policies and procedures, including any internal policies and procedures, related to timely warnings and emergency notifications, maintenance of a daily crime log, and emergency response notifications and evacuation, and a copy of any assessments of Brown’s campus safety policies and practices conducted since 2020; and 
• A complete set of BPS’s standard operating procedures regarding dispatch, response to calls, reporting writing, arrests including issuance of citations, and protocols for active shooter scenarios. 

Background 

The Clery Act requires colleges and universities receiving federal student aid to annually disseminate a public Annual Security Report to employees and students, which must include statistics of campus crime and details about the efforts taken to improve campus safety, including timely issuance of campus alerts and safety procedures to the campus community. FSA is responsible for enforcement of the Clery Act and may undertake an investigation of a specific incident or conduct a program review that examines systemic challenges with complying with the law. The Department may fine institutions of higher education that have violated the Clery Act and may require them to make policy changes to come into compliance with the law.

All in 30 Minutes - Part 4

Yours truly mistakenly thought the Regents were on holiday. But their special committee to deal with you-know-what had another closed-door 30-minute meeting last week:

TO THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA: 

Because the membership of the Advisory Group on Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues (“Advisory Group”) includes five members of the Regents’ Governance Committee, there exists the potential for having present a quorum of a Regents’ Committee when the advisory committee meets. This notice of meeting is served in order to comply fully with pertinent open meeting laws. 

On Tuesday, December 16, 2025, there will be a Closed Session, Special Meeting of the Regents’ Governance Committee concurrent with the Advisory Group to discuss Research and Programs Funding Legal Issues 

(Closed Session Statute Citation: Litigation [Education Code section 92032(b)(5)].) 

The meeting will convene at 4:00 p.m. at 1111 Franklin Street, Oakland and adjourn at approximately 4:30 p.m. 

(Advisory Group members: Regents Anguiano, Cohen, Hernandez, Leib, Matosantos, Milliken, Reilly, Robinson, Sarris, and Sures)

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/dec25/federal_december_16_2025.pdf.

It remains unclear what a large committee can accomplish in 30 minutes. It may be nothing much is happening, but that could be said in 30 seconds.

Official Winter Closure Coming

Winter campus closure: Wednesday-Friday, December 24-January 2, 2026

Source: https://registrar.ucla.edu/calendars/annual-academic-calendar#202526.

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZCfydWF48c.

Note: The University Club (former Faculty Club) started its closure on Dec. 22.

Straws in the Wind - Part 200

From Forbes: Three conservative groups are proposing model legislation that would dramatically change faculty tenure paths, teaching loads, research activities and hiring authority. The proposed act is the product of The Goldwater Institute, Defending Education and the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Their “American Higher Education Restoration Act” takes aim at what it describes as “a glut of academic ‘research’ that almost no one reads and which does not meaningfully advance human knowledge.” It would carve out a special pathway to tenure for faculty who teach courses in “American Constitutionalism and Western Civilization,” increase the teaching loads for faculty who work in non-STEM disciplines, create an oversight group — the majority of which are non-university officials — to grant exceptions to the teaching load policy, and impose new governing board control over the hiring of individual faculty.

The proposal contains four sections, which include the following specific “reforms.”

Tenure for Excellence in Instruction of Americanism & Western Civilization

The governing board of a public university “shall establish an Excellence in Americanism and Western Civilization teaching tenure pathway.” Faculty who teach a foundational education in Americanism and Western Civilization course would be eligible for tenure, including submitting expedited applications, without having an expectation for research or requiring an evaluation of their research.

Increased Teaching Responsibilities for Faculty

Full-time faculty who teach in disciplines other than STEM or Americanism and western civilization would be required to maintain a 3-3 teaching load (18 credit hours per year). Faculty members could be exempted from this requirement if, as one example, they receive “external funding for research or other purposes to proportionately compensate the institution for the reduction in the faculty member’s contracted teaching duties.”

Financial Allowance for Taxpayer Supported Research

Other than faculty conducting STEM-related research, faculty members who wish to have a lower teaching load in exchange for conducting research would have to have their request approved by a “Taxpayer Funded Research Award Committee,” composed of the following members, or their respective designees:

The chair of the board of regents, the state superintendent of public instruction, the chairman of the house appropriations committee, the chairman of the senate appropriations committee, the governor, the state treasurer, and three faculty appointed by the governor (one who is in STEM, one who is in a non-STEM discipline, and one who teaches a course in Americanism and Western Civilization course.

The act also authorizes a taxpayer of the state or the attorney general to file a suit for injunctive relief against a public university “that expends taxpayer funding in violation of this article to contract for a faculty member for less than the required teaching commitment.” ...

Full story at https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/12/09/proposed-model-bill-would-change-college-tenure-teaching--research/

What goes around...

This UC-Merced story seems likely to be applicable to UCLA:

From the Sacramento Bee: If you spend any time on or near the UC Merced campus, it won’t take long to notice them. They’re fresh-faced college students zipping from place to place on electric scooters, e-bikes and e-skateboards... On Oct. 14, just a few weeks into the fall semester, there had been so many collisions that campus safety officials had to publish a warning to students. The collisions resulted in “injuries that required medical attention and ambulance transport,” the message said. “While these devices are a sustainable and convenient way to travel short distances, their growing presence on campus has created safety risks for both riders and pedestrians.” 

On Oct. 18, just days after the warning was published, an 18-year-old UC Merced student on an e-scooter was seriously injured after being hit by a car at an intersection near campus. The incident left the student hospitalized in critical condition. While the student has recovered, the incident highlights the rising dangers of students riding micromobility devices on campus. Those dangers have forced UC Merced to action. 

To spread the word on safety, UC Merced has posted signs across the campus and shared videos on social media encouraging safe riding. UC Merced, which does not rent out micromobility devices, has a speed limit of 15 mph; most e-scooters can exceed 20 mph. Some of the signs say “Slow Your Roll” — asking students to slow down. Others point out a “Dismount Zone,” where students are required get off their devices and walk. ...According to UC Merced’s Interim Micromobility Policy, students not following the rules, “may face citations, fines up to $500, impoundment of devices, and possible disciplinary action.” 

...There is no plan to ban the devices any time soon... 

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article313444824.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 199

From the NY Times: Canada is making an aggressive effort to attract highly skilled researchers from around the world, including H-1B visa holders in the United States who are coming under growing pressure because of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies and cuts to research funding. The Canadian government... said it would spend more than $1 billion over the next few years to attract and retain scientists from around the world, including those at major hospitals and universities.

It also said that in coming months it would create an “accelerated pathway” for U.S. H-1B visa holders. H-1B visas are issued to highly skilled people working for American companies and are concentrated in major industries that compete for global talent, such as technology and medicine.

“As other countries constrain academic freedoms and undermine cutting-edge research, Canada is investing, and doubling down, on science,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s Industry minister, said in written comments to the press, without explicitly mentioning the United States. In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Ms. Joly said that the new money would create 100 new research chairs, by funding not just individual senior researchers at the top of those efforts, but their entire teams and labs.

...In April, Toronto’s University Healthcare Network, a major hospitals and research network, said it was recruiting 100 researchers directly from the United States. The University of Toronto, Canada’s top academic institution and one of the world’s highest-ranked universities, lured several top humanities and social sciences professors from Ivy League schools during the year.

In just the past few weeks, the University of Toronto announced it had also attracted two M.I.T. professors, of planetary science and economics, as well as a Stanford economist, Mark Duggan. Mr. Duggan will become the new director at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, which is considered Canada’s equivalent to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/world/canada/canada-usa-immigration-h1-b-visa-talent.html.

===

From the Washington Post: The dean of the University of Virginia’s business school... emerged as the top candidate in the search for the flagship’s next president ahead of a board meeting [last] Friday in Charlottesville, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Board of Visitors is scheduled to review candidates for the top job at the university, a role that has been vacant since James E. Ryan stepped down in the summer amid pressure from the Trump administration over diversity, equity and inclusion policies.The board is likely to vote to appoint Scott C. Beardsley, the dean of the Darden School of Business since 2015, as president, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly...

The past year has been a challenging one for U-Va., which has been thrust into several partisan fights among state and federal officials this year. That included the Justice Department launching several probes into DEI policies and the university’s response to antisemitism. Amid the negotiations, Ryan, board member Paul Manning and others have said the Justice Department made clear that the university would risk losing its federal funding if there wasn’t a change in leadership. Ryan said he stepped down to avoid a costly fight...

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/12/18/university-of-virginia-president-pick-spanberger/.

Advice of Irony

Source: A UCLA PR release at https://newsroom.ucla.edu/magazine/8-things-never-knew-ucla-chancellor-gene-block.

For no particular reason, yours truly wondered whatever happened to former UCLA Chancellor Block who left office very quietly for reasons well known to blog readers. I found the above item in searching including his featured "advice to live by."

Merriam-Webster gives various definitions of irony. Here's one:

Incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony.

Block is currently listed as a faculty member of the UCLA Jane & Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and as Chancellor-Emeritus in the UCLA directory. A Google search for news about him stops with items shortly before he stepped down at the end of July 2024. Basically, he is now remembered for paralysis in the face of the events that started around the time his profile was being prepared for the UCLA Magazine. 

A very sad career ending. Had he stepped down a year earlier, history would have been much kinder. Timing is (almost) everything. But decision making is also important.

Straws in the Wind - Part 198

From the Nashville Tennessean: Medley of Students and Ideas Connecting, or MOSAIC, was an annual event that offered overnight campus stays for prospective students who had already gained admission to the private Nashville school. The student-led group hosted students each spring in conjunction with Anchor Day, an annual campus visit open to all admitted students. The university's decision comes as President Donald Trump and his administration continue to pressure schools nationwide to scrap diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts.

...According to its website, MOSAIC partnered with a variety of cultural organizations at Vanderbilt, including the Black Student Association, the Caribbean Students Association, the Association of Latin American Students, the Multicultural Leadership Council and the Vanderbilt Interfaith Council.

... "We regularly review our programming to ensure that we are aligned with the latest legal requirements and that we are having the biggest impact possible to attract the most talented students to Vanderbilt," an emailed Dec. 8 statement from the university read. "Following a recent review, we have decided to expand our on-campus events to all admitted students and no longer offer MOSAIC as a standalone program. This shift will allow us to ensure that every admitted student feels a sense of belonging and engagement at Anchor Days and other added yield events." ...

Full story at https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2025/12/11/vanderbilt-ends-mosaic-trump-dei/87691572007/.

==

From the Daily Pennsylvanian: Penn International Student and Scholar Services issued guidance to students affected by the federal government's expanded restrictions on entry into the United States in a Wednesday announcement. The Dec. 17 guidance urged potentially impacted students to avoid non-essential international travel and to consult advisors before leaving the country. The advice follows a Dec. 16 White House proclamation that widened full entry travel restrictions to include nationals from Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Syria. These countries join a list of others already subject to full restrictions, including Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. ISSS added that "individuals traveling on Palestinian Authority–issued or endorsed travel documents are subject to full entry restrictions."

According to the guidance, the restrictions will primarily affect individuals who are outside the United States and do not have a valid visa as of Jan. 1, 2026... Penn's guidance additionally identified the following countries that will face partial entry limits as a result of the new measures or earlier restrictions: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Cuba, Côte d’Ivoire, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. ISSS noted that restrictions on Turkmenistan were modified under the proclamation to permit nonimmigrant entry.

...The FAQs also advised departments to discourage non-essential international travel, anticipate potential delays in arrivals or reentries, and remain flexible with academic and employment start dates. The page instructed departments to refer all immigration-related questions directly to ISSS...

Full story at https://www.thedp.com/article/2025/12/penn-isss-international-students-travel-restrictions-trump.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 104

From the Harvard Crimson: The Trump administration appealed a September ruling ordering the return of nearly $2.7 billion in frozen research funds to Harvard, according to a notice of appeal submitted [December 18]. The appeal, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, follows through on the Trump administration’s promise to challenge the Sept. 3 decision by District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, which granted Harvard sweeping summary judgement on constitutional grounds. 

In a brief filing, lawyers for the Department of Justice said it would challenge final judgements in two cases — one brought by Harvard and another filed by the Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The appeal sends the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and formally begins the next phase of a legal battle that Burroughs previously decided largely in Harvard’s favor.

...If the federal government loses in its appeal to the First Circuit, its last hope is the Supreme Court, where the Trump administration may find more sympathy for its arguments. The Court’s conservative supermajority has frequently defended exertions of executive power by the Trump administration...

Federal law does not impose a deadline for the First Circuit to act on the appeal, and because the government appealed from a final judgement, the court does not have discretion to decline review...

The federal government and Harvard are currently in talks over a potential settlement to their months-long conflict, which would entail a payment as large as $500 million in exchange for the restoration of funds and a resolution to ongoing investigations. No details of an agreement have been finalized.

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/19/trump-admin-appeal-funding/.

Transfers

From the Santa Monica Lookout: The vast majority of Santa Monica College (SMC) students weren't born the last time the school failed to rank as the number one transfer college to the California University system. ...College officials announced SMC topped the transfer list for the 35th year in a row, keeping alive a streak that started when George H.W. Bush was president and the first episode of The Simpsons aired on Fox. According to transfer data released by the UC Information Center, 995 SMC students transferred to UC campuses in 2024-2025, with 214 of the transfer students Latino and 59 Black.

UCLA remained the most popular campus for SMC transfers, with 437 students headed to the Westwood campus, while UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara ranked second and third, with 162 and 112 SMC transfer students respectively...

Full story at https://santamonicalookout.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/News-2025/December-2025/12_12_2025_SMC_Top_in_UC_Transfers_for_35th_Straight_Year.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 197

From Inside Higher Ed: The legal battle over whether Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s university board appointees will take their seats is over after a judge set a trial for 2026, Virginia Business reported. Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger will assume office next month, rendering the lawsuit moot.

The case will be dismissed, shutting down an effort to install the Republican governor’s board picks, many of whom had previously worked for or donated to the GOP and were rejected by Virginia Democrats. Now Spanberger, a Democrat, will be able to name 22 board members that otherwise would have been appointed by Youngkin, giving her the opportunity to shift the political balance of boards away from the right...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/12/11/youngkin-loses-battle-over-board-picks.

Blank Check?

LA Times sports columnist continues to gush about all the support for UCLA football that is being promised by Chancellor Frenk:

...It’s believed that the last UCLA chancellor to speak at a coach’s introduction was Albert Carnesale in 2003 upon the hiring of Karl Dorrell. All of which makes Frenk’s appearance, not to mention his speaking for nearly five minutes... inside a Luskin Center ballroom, all the more extraordinary. Frenk was there to welcome Bob Chesney, the new football coach who has quickly galvanized a long-suffering fan base with his passion and willingness to immediately poke rival USC by proclaiming that UCLA would soon become “the school in town.” ...

“Athletics are the front porch of the university, one of the most visible signals of what we stand for,” Frenk said. “Athletics connect us across generations and geographies with students and alumni, friends as well as strangers. These things are extremely important and help build community and all of that is coming true at UCLA.” There was also a reference to one word — alignment — that athletic director Martin Jarmond and Chesney would later echo in their remarks. “Winning in college football requires a unified approach across all of the university — university leadership and athletics are aligned and committed to doing the right things to build a winning program,” Frenk said.

Jarmond suggested that Frenk was willing to help in a way that his predecessor was not — a slightly curious idea given Block’s willingness to support the move to the Big Ten Conference and approve Jarmond’s contract extension, but it seemed that Jarmond’s larger point was about increased institutional support for the football program under the new chancellor...

Source: https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/newsletter/2025-12-15/bruins-julio-frenk.

The problem is that when "institutional support" is translated into money, there are real risks. NIL has become pay-for-play. Breaking a contractual commitment to Pasadena for using the Rose Bowl in the end is doable - provided enough money can be provided for the litigation and buyout. The tax to Berkeley for UCLA's move to the Big Ten must be paid according to a regental fiat. What broadcast rights will provide in the future - and who will provide payments for such rights* - is uncertain. (Any contracts there can also be broken.) 

I don't know about you, but blank checks make me nervous.

====

*It was recently announced that the Oscars are moving from broadcast TV to YouTube.

Another Day; Another Academic Shooting - Postscript

From the NY Times: Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts said Thursday that they had connected the killings of two Brown University students and an M.I.T. professor to a man who was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire. Claudio Neves Valente, 48, went to a storage facility in Salem, N.H., shortly after he shot Nuno F.G. Loureiro, the M.I.T. professor who was found dead in his home in Brookline, Mass., on Tuesday, the authorities said. Three days earlier, Mr. Neves Valente had opened fire in an auditorium at Brown University in Providence, R.I., killing two students. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the authorities said...

...Mr. Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, entered the United States on a student visa in 2000 and became a permanent resident in 2017, according to the Providence police. Leah Foley, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, said she believed that Mr. Neves Valente knew Dr. Loureiro from their time in the same academic program in Portugal from 1995 to 2000. Dr. Loureiro earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, according to his M.I.T. profile.

Mr. Neves Valente’s motive for the shooting at Brown University remained unclear, Peter F. Neronha, Rhode Island’s attorney general, said on Thursday. Mr. Neves Valente was briefly enrolled in a graduate physics program at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001, according to Christina Paxson, the university’s president. The authorities said there was no indication that Mr. Neves Valente knew... the two Brown students who were killed...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/brown-mit-shootings-what-we-know.html.

==

Note: Prior posts on these events are at:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/12/brown-u-shooting.html (contains link to the UCLA active shooter training video) and

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/12/another-day-another-academic-shooting.html.

The Way We Live Now

From the Daily Bruin: UCLA is asking community members to inform UCPD if immigration officers enter or are expected to enter campus to execute federal immigration orders. The university issued the notice in a... BruinPost [see below], noting in the message that it has “no indication or reports” suggesting immigration enforcement operations will occur on campus. The BruinPost also advised community members “responding to or having contact with an immigration officer executing a federal immigration order” to immediately contact UCPD, as well as campus counsel.

Steve Lurie, the associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety, said in an interview Thursday that the university will notify students and staff if it can confirm immigration enforcement officers are on campus and performing immigration enforcement activities. He added that the notification would be a campuswide email and not a BruinALERT, noting that the university saves such alerts “for emergencies or danger to campus.”

...Lurie also said the notifications would not be preemptive or “a real-time notification that immigration authorities are in a certain place on campus,” adding that such alerts could be considered obstruction of justice...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2025/12/11/ucla-shares-immigration-enforcement-policies-procedures-in-accordance-with-ca-law.

===

Dear Bruin Community:

With the passage SB 98 (2025) and the continuing practice of AB 21 (2017), state law requires that you be notified of several policies and procedures in place with regard to possible immigration enforcement on campus. These laws require both the California State University and the California Community Colleges, and requests the University of California, to establish various policies and procedures on our campuses to foster a campus environment that is safe and inclusive for all members of our community, regardless of immigration status. This includes a notification when the presence of immigration enforcement is confirmed on campus.

We have no indication or reports that such activities will occur on our campus. However, we want the campus to be aware of UC’s position and our intentions regarding communicating with the campus community.

It is important to note that federal immigration agencies can and do enter campus for non-enforcement activities, which can include recruitment and activities related to normal immigration visa processing. The below procedures and information relate only to immigration enforcement activities.

Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Safety Officer Steve Lurie will host informational sessions with the campus in the new year to share more about SB98 and how UCLA will implement the new legal requirement. 

For a broader overview of UC’s policies and procedures relating to undocumented members of our community, please see UC’s Statement of Principles in Support of Undocumented Members of the UC Community, reissued in January 2025, and Frequently Asked Questions for University Employees about Possible Federal Immigration Enforcement Actions on University Property.

For up-to-date information for our campus, please visit Federal Updates for the UCLA Community. 

Please review the following to ensure awareness and preparedness in the event of immigration enforcement activity on campus:

1. Please notify UCPD at 310-825-1491 as soon as possible if you are advised that an immigration officer is expected to enter, will enter or has entered the campus to execute a federal immigration order.

2. Students, academic employees and staff responding to or having contact with an immigration officer executing a federal immigration order should contact UCPD at 310-825-1491 and campus counsel at 310-825-3828 for purposes of verifying the legality of any warrant, court order or subpoena. Inform the officer that you are not obstructing their access but are following campus protocol.

3. UCLA Student Affairs, Academic Affairs and Personnel and Employee and Labor Relations are available as contacts if you are or may be subject to an immigration order or inquiry on campus. Unless permitted by federal and state education privacy laws, these designees are prohibited from discussing your personal information, including immigration status, with or revealing that personal information to anyone. Please contact: 

• Students: Dean@saonet.ucla.edu

• Academic employees: apoSB98notice@conet.ucla.edu 

• Staff: Employee.Relations@chr.ucla.edu 

4. For more information about your legal rights in an immigration enforcement situation, please consult no-cost counsel at the UC Immigrant Legal Services Center; this Know your Rights Card; and these flyers for students and flyers for employees, including student workers. 

Thank you for your attention to this important matter. 

Source: https://view.bp.e.ucla.edu/?qs=1e5145dc4a79056cb89be04cd1880c3ad8af40d879750742cb392c4a446c34176911315c70f9237bcdcba47339cf44aae795f8ba12c8c910f1c2a4567b5428b9cd69b3d613539d1a77c0d52a322d308a42e245294e39e0e8.

Straws in the Wind - Part 196

From the Wall St. Journal: After years of misfires, artificial-intelligence hacking tools have become dangerously good. So good that they are even surpassing some human hackers, according to a novel experiment conducted recently at Stanford University. A Stanford team spent a good chunk of the past year tinkering with an AI bot called Artemis. It takes a similar approach to Chinese hackers who had been using Anthropic’s generative AI software to break into major corporations and foreign governments. Artemis scans the network, finds potential bugs—software vulnerabilities—and then finds ways to exploit them.

Then the Stanford researchers let Artemis out of the lab, using it to find bugs in a real-world computer network—the one used by Stanford’s own engineering department. And to make things interesting, they pitted Artemis against real-world professional hackers, known as penetration testers.

...The AI bot trounced all except one of the 10 professional network penetration testers the Stanford researchers had hired to poke and prod, but not actually break into, their engineering network. Artemis found bugs at lightning speed and it was cheap: It cost just under $60 an hour to run. Ragan says that human pen testers typically charge between $2,000 and $2,500 a day. But Artemis wasn’t perfect. About 18% of its bug reports were false positives. It also completely missed an obvious bug that most of the human testers spotted in a webpage...

Full story at https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-hackers-are-coming-dangerously-close-to-beating-humans-4afc3ad6.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 103

From the NY Times: Harvard officials have opened a secret disciplinary investigation into at least two students for their roles in drawing scrutiny to the relationship between the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the school’s former president, Larry Summers, according to three people briefed on the matter. The students posted videos online showing Mr. Summers addressing students in a Harvard lecture hall about his connections to Mr. Epstein last month, and took credit for pressuring him to step away from teaching after the disclosures. The investigation includes an examination of whether the students — who publicly criticized Mr. Summers — violated a series of rules, including attending a class they were not enrolled in, the three people said.

The students are facing potential discipline that could range from a private reprimand to being required to withdraw from the school, according to the two people. It is against Harvard’s rules for students to attend classes they are not enrolled in. And it is also against the rules to record classes without consent or publicize those recordings...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/us/harvard-investigates-students-larry-summers-video-epstein.html.

Going Up

From time to time, we have noted the growth of Medicare Advantage plans that now cover more than half of the Medicare population in the US. As blog readers will know, at one point UCOP contemplated shifting the entire retiree health insurance population at UC into such a plan. After a protest, Medicare Advantage instead became a lower-cost option for retirees. Many experts have suggested that the growth in Medicare Advantage plans and there seeming cheapness was due in part to overpayment from the feds. Congress was aware of this issue, but seemed uninterested in doing anything about it. 

That indifference may now shift. Republicans in Congress keep talking about replacing "Obamacare," but can't seem to produce an alternative. With subsidies for such plans expiring, there is now more focus on the problem of rising health insurance costs. The irony is that if the overpayment by the feds is checked, the cost to consumers of Medicare Advantage plans is likely to rise. UC's Medicare Advantage offerings - because they are group - have somewhat different regulations than individual plans. But the logic is the same: if the overpayment is reduced, premiums will rise.

From the NY Times ...The growth of Medicare Advantage plans — which now account for more than half of total enrollment — plays a role as well. These privately offered alternatives to government-run traditional Medicare often reduce upfront costs by including prescription drug coverage. They also include out-of-pocket caps ($5,320 this year) without the Medigap policies that provide that protection in traditional Medicare. That comes with trade-offs, including health care provider networks and frequent red-tape hassles with coverage approvals, known as prior authorizations.

Medicare spends about $80 billion more annually for Medicare Advantage enrollees than it would if they were enrolled in traditional Medicare, leading to higher spending for both Part A (which covers hospitalization) and Part B.

The higher spending contributes to higher Part B premiums that are paid by beneficiaries in both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/business/medicare-part-b-premium-2026.html.

We have also noted on this blog that UCLA created its own Medicare Advantage plan for residents of LA County (but not UC retirees eligible for UC retiree health insurance!). It, too, could be affected.

Straws in the Wind - Part 195

From Inside Higher Ed: As promised in a memo from the chancellor earlier this month, some Texas Tech University system faculty members were asked this week to report whether any course they teach “advocates for or promotes” specific race, gender or sexual identities. It is the latest step in a sweeping curricular review focused on limiting discussion of transgender identity, racism and sexuality across the five-campus public system. By 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 22, faculty members at Angelo State University must fill out a survey for each class they teach. In addition to the course title and reference number, the survey asks the following questions: “Does this course include any content that advocates for or promotes race- or sex-based prejudice, as defined in the Chancellor’s memorandum? Does this course include any content that recognizes or discusses more than two sexes (male and female), or addresses gender identity beyond what is recognized under state and federal law? Does this course include any content related to sexual orientation?”

If a faculty member answers yes to any of those questions, they are then prompted to answer, “What is the course material required for? Check all that apply,” and select from the options “professional licensure/certification,” “accreditation,” “patient/client care” and “other.” Faculty must also provide a justification statement to support their response and are asked to “be as specific as possible.” Once faculty submit their responses, they will be compiled into spreadsheets by college, which department chairs and deans will review. They then must report the outcomes to the president and provost, Angelo State University provost Don Topliff said in an email to all faculty. “Faculty will be notified of outcomes after approval,” he wrote. It is unclear exactly what curricular changes the outcomes will prompt.

Faculty at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center received a similar email this week, a faculty member told Inside Higher Ed. But instead of filling out a survey, they are being asked to enter the same information directly into a spreadsheet...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/curriculum/2025/12/11/texas-tech-gathers-info-race-gender-course-content.

==

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: When this fall’s new doctoral and master’s students were filling out their applications, there was little cause for concern about the near-term future of graduate education. That’s changed. President Trump’s return to the White House in January brought a cascade of new policy changes, including widespread termination of the grants that fund many doctoral students’ work and proposed caps on how much their institutions could be reimbursed for research. Visa-policy changes and an uncertain political climate made international students leery about continuing their education in the United States.

Those changes have triggered a destabilization of graduate-school enrollment for both master’s and doctoral programs. Cash-strapped colleges are cutting down on the size of Ph.D. classes, which cost them money, and finding that new master’s students, which broadly make them money, are harder to come by.

Available data doesn’t yet capture the extent of the damage. This fall, graduate-program enrollment stayed steady, rising by just 0.1 percent, according to preliminary numbers from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. In fact, doctoral programs saw a 1.1-percent enrollment bump. But underlying that statistic is the fact that dozens of doctoral programs decided in the spring to enroll fewer students than usual, or to pause admissions entirely, for fear they might not be able to fund their usual cohorts.

Meanwhile, master’s programs, which according to the Clearinghouse data accounted for nearly two-thirds of total graduate enrollment, experienced a 0.6-percent enrollment decline, with many programs reporting precipitous declines in their international-student populations.

The fall-2026 enrollment picture, though, is likely to paint a fuller picture. Doctoral programs will reckon with the impact of two consecutive years of reduced or canceled cohorts, while the elimination of the Grad PLUS student-loan program — slated for July 1 — will force some students to reconsider how they might fund their education.

The relative stability of the fall-2025 numbers, therefore, could engender a false sense of security. With the Trump administration wrapping up its first year in office, “fall 2026 will be a real barometer to the direction that we’re going,” says Chevelle Newsome, president of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS)...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/has-the-graduate-school-collapse-begun.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 102

From the Harvard Crimson: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 will continue to lead the University beyond June 30, 2027, after Harvard’s governing boards agreed to extend his presidency for an indefinite period, according to a Monday announcement from Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81. The move delays a presidential search that had been expected to begin in 2026 and signals the governing boards’ confidence in Garber’s leadership as Harvard faces intensifying political pressure from the Trump administration and ongoing internal debates over campus climate and free expression.

Garber, who became president in August 2024 after serving as interim president, following former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation, had previously been slated to serve through the end of the 2026-27 academic year...

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/16/garber-to-be-extended/.

Hey, it's only money - Part 3 (Thanks, but NIL thanks)

From NBC Sports: ...Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman went from UCLA to the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, and after all the success he’s had, he wanted to give back to the UCLA football program by contributing to a player getting money from the name, image and likeness fund. He now thinks that was a mistake... 

“I gave money to a kid. I won’t mention who,” Aikman said. “I’ve done it one time at UCLA. Never met the young man. He was there a year, he left after the year. I wrote a sizable check, and he went to another school. I didn’t even get so much as a thank you note. It’s one of those deals to where I’m done with NIL. I mean, I wanna see UCLA be successful, but I’m done with it.” ...

Full story at https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/troy-aikman-says-hes-done-contributing-to-nil-after-a-ucla-player-took-his-money-and-left#.

But then there is this from the LA Times: Troy Aikman said he’s “done with NIL” after writing a check to a UCLA football player who never thanked him and went on to leave for another school after one season. There was a reason for that lack of gratitude, according to one person familiar with the Bruins’ football name, image and likeness operations from that time not authorized to discuss donor information publicly. The player in question didn’t know who funded his NIL deal, only that it was coming from the team’s collective, Men of Westwood. It was standard practice for players not to know which donors or alumni contributed NIL funds that were distributed to the team...

Aikman [also said] he believed that players should be able to leave one school for another amid coaching turnover but should have to otherwise stay with the program paying them. “There’s got to be some leadership at the very top that kind of cleans all of this up,” Aikman said. “Starting with players that accept money. There’s got to be some accountability and responsibility on their behalf, to have to stick to a program.” ...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2025-12-10/why-troy-aikman-didnt-get-thanked-by-that-ucla-football-player.

It's hard to keep a good scandal down

Back last January, we noted that the Regents had for several years held closed-door meetings on the "Pension Administration Project," a mysterious topic title that appeared to involve a failed computer system project for pension administration.* Details were leaking out and appearing in popular news sources.

Now columnist Dan Walters seems to have stumbled on it:

From CalMatters: The University of California is one of the world’s most prestigious centers of higher education and cutting-edge medical, technological and social research. One assumes that its faculty and administrative cadre are saturated with extremely bright people. Nevertheless, UC has succumbed to a managerial disease that has afflicted other corners of state government — the chronic inability to successfully adopt information technology...

UC’s attempt to upgrade its pension system echoes that experience. As described in an article by Politico, a website devoted to politics: “In April 2019, the University of California unveiled a new computer program that school officials promised would overhaul its clunky, outdated system for disbursing pension payments to more than 150,000 former employees.

“Glitches and bad data, however, marred the launch, delaying payments and causing other problems. Now, six years later, the university is still embroiled in a bitter legal fight with the contractors it hired to build the system, claiming the companies repeatedly misled and defrauded the university.”

...Twelve years ago, UC officials awarded contracts to two companies, Sagitec Solutions and Linea Solutions, worth $28 million to upgrade the pension system’s outdated computer system. When the upgrade was tested a half-decade later, chaos erupted. Pension payments weren’t delivered on time, pension calculations were riddled with errors, UC retirees pelted the system’s administration with complaints, and the contractors and UC executives began pointing fingers of blame at each other.

...I once asked an acquaintance who sold computer software to state agencies why so many systems failed. He said bureaucrats often don’t know what they want and are rarely conversant about tech capability, leading to misunderstandings about what will be done...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/12/university-california-pensions-technology/.

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-clue-to-ongoing-mystery.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 194

The Classroom Experience at Columbia - Report #4: Task Force on Antisemitism

Introduction: Academic freedom must be guaranteed to everyone at Columbia, including members of protected classes (i.e., groups protected under antidiscrimination law). In listening sessions, the antisemitism task force heard of disturbing incidents in which the academic freedom of Jewish and Israeli Columbia students was not protected in the University’s classrooms. We alluded to these incidents in our second report, published in August 2024 as part of our discussion of the listening sessions, and we promised to consider them more fully in a subsequent report. That is our purpose here.

We begin with our central point: We urge the University to protect freedom of expression to the maximum extent possible while also complying with antidiscrimination laws. Censorship has no place at Columbia. Neither does discrimination. We will describe a range of policies that can protect free expression while averting discrimination. In balancing these goals, we would err in the direction of protecting free expression, even when it makes members of our community uncomfortable. Importantly, however the University decides to strike this balance, it must do so consistently for all protected classes...

Source: https://www.columbia.edu/content/report-4-task-force-antisemitism.

Full Report #4 is at:

https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/Columbia%20University%20Task%20Force%20on%20Antisemitism%20Report%204%20Dec%202025.pdf.

Note: Report #4 refers to evidence collected for Report #2 which is at:

https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/Columbia%20Report-2-Task-Force-on-Antisemitism.pdf.

Another Day; Another Academic Shooting

The authorities said on Tuesday that they had opened a homicide investigation after a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Mass. The professor, Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was a member of the departments of nuclear science and engineering and physics, as well as the director of M.I.T.’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the school said...

“This is an active and ongoing homicide investigation,” the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. An office spokesman, David Linton, said on Tuesday that there had not been any arrests in the case...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/us/mit-professor-shot-brookline-nuno-loureiro.html.

No arrests at this time in the Brown U case, either.

I never promise you a Rose Bowl? - Part 5

From Pasadena Now: UCLA did not assert the Rose Bowl Operating Company (RBOC) or the City violated the stadium’s long-term lease agreement before the university began exploring a move to SoFi Stadium, according to a court document filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. According to the lease, UCLA can terminate the agreement early only if a “Game Threatening Default” occurs, defined as an immediate condition preventing the team from playing at the stadium. The lease prevents UCLA from playing home games in another stadium in Los Angeles or Orange counties. The City has filed a lawsuit to compel the university to honor its contract,

Under the contract, a breach notice from UCLA could have provided Pasadena an opportunity to cure any alleged deficiencies or to address operational concerns. The filing, submitted as part of Pasadena’s lawsuit against the Regents of the University of California, offers a detailed account of early 2025 communications that raised concern about UCLA’s intentions, but also makes clear that at no point did the university allege any contractual default by the City or the stadium. “At no time has UCLA ever asserted that any ‘Game-Threatening Default’ exists [or any default by the RBOC or the City for that matter] under the Agreement or otherwise.” according to statements made by Rose Bowl General Manager Jens Weiden in court documents...

Full story at https://pasadenanow.com/main/ucla-did-not-claim-breach-by-city-before-exploring-move-to-sofi-stadium.

Do you have a sense that the money it will take to settle this matter will be a large sum? Yours truly does.

Straws in the Wind - Part 193

From the Washington Post: The Trump administration... said it has reached an agreement with seven states to resolve a lawsuit challenging the legality of former president Joe Biden’s student loan repayment plan, a deal that could leave millions of borrowers scrambling to find another option to repay their debt. The proposal marks a key moment in the political battle over how to address staggering student loan debt, with liberals saying they want to ease the financial burden for borrowers and conservatives calling that effort fiscally irresponsible and patently unfair to Americans who never went to college. The fight has spawned one lawsuit after another and thrown the entire student loan repayment system into chaos. About 7 million people are now enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education program, commonly known as Save, which offers lower monthly payments and a faster path to loan cancellation. They will have a limited time to find a new plan if the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri approves the proposed settlement, the Education Department said...

The settlement stems from a lawsuit brought by Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma to overturn Save. Under the agreement, the Education Department must cease enrolling anyone in the Save plan, deny any pending applications and move current enrollees out of the program. The department will convene a panel of experts for a negotiated rulemaking to repeal the Save regulation, which was already part of the tax plan. The settlement calls on the department to notify the Missouri attorney general’s office at least 30 days before canceling more than $10 billion in federal student loans. That provision will expire 10 years after the date of the settlement agreement.

Conservatives and some moderate Democrats have argued that widespread debt cancellation disproportionately benefits students who attend expensive elite colleges and unfairly subsidizes higher education. Graduates of elite schools, however, make up a small share of students with education debt... 

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/12/09/trump-ends-biden-save-student-loan-plan/.

Call for Nominations

Nomination Portal Open for Emeriti Awards

Emeriti are encouraged to nominate colleagues or themselves for three different emeriti awards

Nominating Procedures for Awards: Departments are limited to one nomination each year for each award. Department chairs or their designees are asked to submit nominations. Individuals also may nominate colleagues for these awards, but must coordinate with the department chair to submit nominations. For awards, nominations must include a cover letter, a copy of the nominee’s curriculum vitae and two supporting letters from leaders in the field commenting specifically on the nominee’s achievements performed exclusively after retirement.

===

Constantine Panunzio Award

The Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award created by a bequest from Professor Panunzio of UCLA, the award honors outstanding scholarly work or educational service (e.g. service in professional, University, Academic Senate, emeriti, departmental or editorial posts, or committees) performed since retirement by a University of California emeritus or emerita in the Humanities or Social Sciences.

Deadline for final nomination from each campus are due by Monday, February 9, 2026:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/panunzio2026

===

Dickson Emeritus Professorships

The Dickson Award was created by a gift endowment from the late Edward A. Dickson, a Regent of the University of California from 1913 to 1946. The award honors outstanding research, scholarly work, teaching, and/or educational service (e.g. service in professional, University, Academic Senate, emeriti, departmental or editorial posts, or committees) performed by an emeritus/emerita professor performed exclusively after retirement. Each of the UC campuses has received funds that will support one or more awards each year.

===

Carole Goldberg Emeriti Service Award

The Goldberg Award was created in 2014 to recognize extraordinary service by an emeritus/emerita professor to the academic enterprise performed exclusively after retirement. The award honors outstanding service in professional, University, Academic Senate, emeriti, departmental or editorial posts, or committees performed at UCLA by an emeritus/emerita professor since retirement.

===

For Dickson and/or Goldberg nominations:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/emeritiawards26