Why folks are nervous

Folks are UCLA are nervous about an effort on campus to consolidate the various local IT systems into a unified arrangement. There are reasons, mainly issues of cybersecurity and compatibility, to have a single system. But the record at UC* and at UCLA** in converting older systems into new ones has not been great. The Regents are currently suing computer consultants for failures related to its pension payment system.*** So, the history is in fact one of cost overruns and failure. So, it's natural that folks are nervous.

Some of the concern in Murphy Hall seems to be that a single organization just should have a single computer/IT system. But that argument depends heavily on defining "organization." Are not individual schools, for example, organizations? If you took the single-system-for-single-organization argument to its logical end, you could argue that UC is ultimately just an entity within state government and therefore the whole state government, including UC, should have a single system.

As for cybersecurity, is it really obvious that having a single system is best? If someone were to hack into such a hypothetical unified system, there would be access to everything. Is it possible that a more diffuse arrangement has certain advantages? Getting into one of many systems might not provide access to others.

Finally, if you are at point A and imagine that point B would be better, isn't it important to consider the costs of the transition? So, if we had a time machine, maybe we should go back to the beginning and create a unified system rather than the multiple systems that actually were developed. But we don't have a time machine and what is - is. 

===

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

**https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/05/do-i-sense-computer-snafu-part-3.html.

***https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/04/the-university-of-california-says-it-wants-justice-for-messy-rollout-of-pension-system-contractors-call-it-revenge-00675055.

Straws in the Wind - Part 185

From the NY Times: ...This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa. At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new A.I. major. And the State University of New York at Buffalo created a stand-alone “department of A.I. and society,” which is offering new interdisciplinary degrees in fields like “A.I. and policy analysis.”

...Interest in understanding, using and learning how to build A.I. technologies is soaring, and schools are racing to meet rising student and industry demand. Over the last two years, dozens of U.S. universities and colleges have announced new A.I. departments, majors, minors, courses, interdisciplinary concentrations and other programs.

In 2022, for instance, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a major called “A.I. and decision-making.” Students in the program learn to develop A.I. systems and study how technologies like robots interact with humans and the environment. This year, nearly 330 students are enrolled in the program — making A.I. the second-largest major at M.I.T. after computer science...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/technology/college-computer-science-ai-boom.html.

And here's some theme music from Harry Shearer for the new major:

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 96

From the Harvard Crimson: The power to grant or deny tenure is a prerogative that faculty have long held sacred. But at Harvard, the final decisions to shut the door on tenure cases have increasingly been made out of departments’ hands — and in direct opposition to the outcome of departmental votes. In a presentation delivered Tuesday to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Nina Zipser, the FAS dean for faculty affairs and planning, reported that the share of internal FAS tenure applications denied at the departmental level has fallen over the past decade.

Under former Harvard President Drew G. Faust, who held office from 2013 to 2018, the figure sat at an average of 61 percent. It dropped to 44 percent under Lawrence S. Bacow, who led Harvard through mid-2023. Since then — in the two years encompassing the short-lived presidency of Claudine Gay and the start of Alan S. Garber ’76’s term — the share has declined even further, to just 30 percent.

That means that most candidates whose tenure cases were rejected in the past two years had received approval from a majority of tenured faculty in their departments, only to see the results of the departmental vote overruled by committees or administrators at later stages of the appointment process...

Zipser also discussed faculty retirements, which reached a 20-year record high during the 2023-2024 academic year, with 28 retirees.

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/3/harvard-tenure/.

 

Just a Thought...

From James Somers, "The Case That A.I. Is Thinking: ChatGPT does not have an inner life. Yet it seems to know what it’s talking about," The New Yorker: ...Was ChatGPT mindlessly stringing words together, or did it understand the problem? The answer could teach us something important about understanding itself. “Neuroscientists have to confront this humbling truth,” Doris Tsao, a neuroscience professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “The advances in machine learning have taught us more about the essence of intelligence than anything that neuroscience has discovered in the past hundred years.” 

Tsao is best known for decoding how macaque monkeys perceive faces. Her team learned to predict which neurons would fire when a monkey saw a specific face; even more strikingly, given a pattern of neurons firing, Tsao’s team could render the face. Their work built on research into how faces are represented inside A.I. models. These days, her favorite question to ask people is “What is the deepest insight you have gained from ChatGPT?” “My own answer,” she said, “is that I think it radically demystifies thinking.”

...People in A.I. were skeptical that neural networks were sophisticated enough for real-world tasks, but, as the networks got bigger, they began to solve previously unsolvable problems. People would devote entire dissertations to developing techniques for distinguishing handwritten digits or for recognizing faces in images; then a deep-learning algorithm would digest the underlying data, discover the subtleties of the problem, and make those projects seem obsolete. Deep learning soon conquered speech recognition, translation, image captioning, board games, and even the problem of predicting how proteins will fold.

...Today’s leading A.I. models are trained on a large portion of the internet, using a technique called next-token prediction. A model learns by making guesses about what it will read next, then comparing those guesses to whatever actually appears. Wrong guesses inspire changes in the connection strength between the neurons; this is gradient descent. Eventually, the model becomes so good at predicting text that it appears to know things and make sense. So that is something to think about. A group of people sought the secret of how the brain works. As their model grew toward a brain-like size, it started doing things that were thought to require brain-like intelligence. Is it possible that they found what they were looking for?

...Jonathan Cohen, a cognitive neuroscientist at Princeton, emphasized the limitations of A.I., but argued that, in some cases, L.L.M.s seem to mirror one of the largest and most important parts of the human brain. “To a first approximation, your neocortex is your deep-learning mechanism,” Cohen said. Humans have a much larger neocortex than other animals, relative to body size, and the species with the largest neocortices—elephants, dolphins, gorillas, chimpanzees, dogs—are among the most intelligent.

...I do not believe that ChatGPT has an inner life, and yet it seems to know what it’s talking about. Understanding—having a grasp of what’s going on—is an underappreciated kind of thinking, because it’s mostly unconscious. Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science and comparative literature at Indiana University, likes to say that cognition is recognition... Hofstadter was one of the original A.I. deflationists, and my own skepticism was rooted in his. He wrote that most A.I. research had little to do with real thinking, and when I was in college, in the two-thousands, I agreed with him. There were exceptions. He found the U.C.S.D. group interesting. And he admired the work of a lesser-known Finnish American cognitive scientist, Pentti Kanerva, who noticed some unusual properties in the mathematics of high-dimensional spaces...

Hofstadter realized that Kanerva was describing something like a “seeing as” machine. “Pentti Kanerva’s memory model was a revelation for me,” he wrote in a foreword to Kanerva’s book. “It was the very first piece of research I had ever run across that made me feel I could glimpse the distant goal of understanding how the brain works as a whole.” Every kind of thinking—whether Joycean, Proustian, or logical—depends on the relevant thing coming to mind at the right time. It’s how we figure out what situation we’re in...

...L.L.M.s appear to have a “seeing as” machine at their core. They represent each word with a series of numbers denoting its coördinates—its vector—in a high-dimensional space. In GPT-4, a word vector has thousands of dimensions, which describe its shades of similarity to and difference from every other word. During training, a large language model tweaks a word’s coördinates whenever it makes a prediction error; words that appear in texts together are nudged closer in space. This produces an incredibly dense representation of usages and meanings, in which analogy becomes a matter of geometry. In a classic example, if you take the word vector for “Paris,” subtract “France,” and then add “Italy,” the nearest other vector will be “Rome.” L.L.M.s can “vectorize” an image by encoding what’s in it, its mood, even the expressions on people’s faces, with enough detail to redraw it in a particular style or to write a paragraph about it.

When [my friend] Max asked ChatGPT to help him out with [a] sprinkler at the park, the model wasn’t just spewing text. The photograph of the plumbing was compressed, along with Max’s prompt, into a vector that captured its most important features. That vector served as an address for calling up nearby words and concepts. Those ideas, in turn, called up others as the model built up a sense of the situation. It composed its response with those ideas “in mind.” ...

Full story at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/11/10/the-case-that-ai-is-thinking.

====

Fredric Brown, "Answer" 1954

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies. 

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev." 

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel. 

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn." 

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer." 

He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?" 

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay. 

"Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. 

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

Straws in the Wind - Part 184

From the NY Times: The University of Chicago was where fun went to die. Tulane University was where you could die from too much fun. Neither place liked its reputation, but in 2016, both felt confident enough in changes on their campuses that they started offering an early decision option for student applicants. Apply by November (or January for the “Early Decision II” option) and get an answer weeks later. You just had to agree to attend if you got in.

Within a handful of years, two-thirds of Tulane’s first-year class had taken the deal. The University of Chicago found so much success that it recently added an opportunity to apply even earlier, in some cases before the senior year of high school has even begun. The enrollment chiefs who made this all happen also found success. According to federal filings from 2023, Chicago’s vice president for enrollment and student advancement, James G. Nondorf, received $967,000 over a year from the university and “related” organizations. At Northeastern University, the executive vice chancellor and chief enrollment officer, Satyajit Dattagupta, got $1.079 million in compensation after decamping in 2022 from Tulane, where he had a strong run in a similar role.

If you’re the gatekeeper at schools like these, where over a third of the students will pay full price — $400,000 or so over four years — you earn your keep by landing just a few more of them each year. Miss your number, however, and the shortfall can cascade through four years of revenue shortages. You could also be out of a job. Vice presidents of sales at high-performing organizations make the big bucks, and thousands of teenagers now sign up each year to say Chicago, Northeastern or Tulane is their true love always...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/business/tulane-university-chicago-early-decision.html.

---

From Inside Higher Ed: House Republicans held a hearing [last] Wednesday broadcasting long-standing conservative allegations of a left-wing bias in the small, prestigious Truman Scholarship program. Witnesses called by the GOP said the winners disproportionately espouse causes such as promoting racial justice and fighting climate change—and wind up working for Democrats and left-leaning organizations—while few recipients profess interest in conservative aims.

...Rather than counter the allegations, Democrats and their invited witness largely called the proceedings a distraction from the issue of college unaffordability, which they accused the GOP of exacerbating...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/financial-aid/2025/12/04/house-republicans-accuse-truman-scholarship-liberal-bias.

Calimony Money to Burn

For those worried about the budget squeeze, you'll be glad to know there is money to burn for certain activities:

From the Mercury News: Cal’s football expenses are soaring following general manager Ron Rivera’s decision to fire coach Justin Wilcox with two years remaining on his contract. In addition to the dead money, the Bears must hire a replacement — Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi, a former Cal player, is the heavy favorite — and pay for new assistants and support personnel. All told, the changes likely will cost the Bears in excess of $35 million.

Good thing they will have the cash to cover the transition, courtesy of the University of California.

The so-called Calimony subsidy payments headed to Berkeley from UCLA — to the tune of $30 million over three years — aren’t the half of it. Literally. The Bears will receive an additional $45 million in “bridge” financing from the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) in three annual installments of $15 million, according to a document obtained by the Hotline through a public records request and supplemental information provided by UCOP.

The additional funding was not approved by the UC regents, although they were made aware of it, and had not been widely disclosed. All told, $75 million is bound to Berkeley in three installments of $25 million that began in 2024-25 and will continue through the 2026-27 academic year. The cash isn’t specifically for football and will be used to support the overall athletic department budget, according to Cal. In response to a request for comment on the additional $45 million from UCOP, a university spokesperson provided the following statement:

“The Berkeley campus appreciates the commitment of the University of California system to preserve and build upon Cal Athletics’ tradition of educating student-athletes while enabling them to compete at the highest level of national competition.”

The Bears have plenty of uses for the influx, over and above the coaching change.

Wilcox’s buyout is approximately $11 million, and the Bears likely will spend at least $20 million on a new coach  — a five-year deal at $4 million annually seems like the minimum outlay — and another $5 million (minimum) to dismiss current assistants and hire new ones.

Also, the athletic department reported a budget shortfall in the 2023-24 fiscal year, with $120 million in revenue and $149 million in expenses, according to financial statements reported to the NCAA. Notably, the revenue figure included approximately $35 million in support from central campus...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/12/03/cal-has-more-cash-coming-than-just-ucla-subsidy-for-football-hire-and-everything-else/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 183

From NBC: Americans have grown sour on one of the longtime key ingredients of the American dream. Almost two-thirds of registered voters say that a four-year college degree isn’t worth the cost, according to a new NBC News poll, a dramatic decline over the last decade. Just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”

...The eye-popping shift over the last 12 years comes against the backdrop of several major trends shaping the job market and the education world, from exploding college tuition prices to rapid changes in the modern economy — which seems once again poised for radical transformation alongside advances in AI.

...What has shifted is the price of college. While there have been some small declines in tuition prices over the last decade, when adjusted for inflation, College Board data shows that the average, inflation-adjusted cost of public four-year college tuition for in-state students has doubled since 1995. Tuition at private, four-year colleges is up 75% over the same period. Poll respondents who spoke with NBC News all emphasized those rising costs as a major reason why the value of a four-year degree has been undercut...

[Click on image to clarify.]

Full story at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna243672.

----

From Inside Higher Ed: Chief diversity officers find their work has gotten harder and more stressful over the past two years, according to a new national survey by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. The survey results... are based on responses from 394 chief and academic diversity officers in February 2025.*

...About 68 percent of respondents reported their jobs were less predictable than two years ago; 87 percent found their work more stressful, and 77 percent reported their jobs were more upsetting. The vast majority of diversity officers—91 percent—identified the political climate as the greatest challenge to DEI work on campuses. Students’ and employees’ mental health and crisis management also rose to the top of their concerns. About 31 percent of respondents said their roles have changed in the past two years, with write-in responses about promotions, demotions, title changes and expanding responsibilities related to student success, human resources, Title IX and other campus functions. About 29 percent reported their DEI offices had been reorganized.

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/12/03/chief-diversity-officers-report-stress-amid-shifting-roles.

===

*https://nadohe.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/resources/NADOHE-2025-State-of-the-CDO.pdf.

The Elephant in the Zoom

The California State Auditor (CSA) apparently raised questions about use of "Online Program Management" companies (OPMs) to provide online instruction UC campuses. Since online instruction came into use, there have been commercial firms that provide instruction and have internet platforms for doing so. The Auditor apparently was concerned about who was doing the instruction as opposed to the method of delivery. The systemwide Academic Senate conducted a review in response.

Much of Senate review seems focused on "transparency" about who was doing the instruction, i.e., disclosing whether the instructor was from UC or from the outside OPM. But there seems to be a larger issue about outsourcing teaching. While much is said in the review about assuring quality, the review seems to sidestep the issue of outsourcing instruction. This avoidance seems surprising given the sometimes excessive concerns at UC and at the UC campuses about protecting "brands." Do we really want to have students, who have competed to be admitted to a UC campus and program, be taught by outside OPM instructors? Is that what our students thought they would be getting when they applied?

That's the unaddressed Elephant in the Zoom.

We reproduce below the cover letter of the review dated Nov. 20 to UC Provost Newman from Academic Council Chair Palazoglu. However, as noted, the issue raised in the Nov. 5 letter to Chair Palazoglu from Katheryn Niles Russ, Chair, Davis Division of the Academic Senate, Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis, seems to have been neglected in the final report: 

...UGC [Undergraduate Council] highlights their concern that the California State Auditor’s (CSA) report revealed that OPM-run courses were misrepresented as UC offerings, and wonders which departments are already using OPMs, how these arrangements benefit students, and what circumstances truly require OPM-hired instructors versus UC faculty and instructors. Similarly, CAES [College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences] questions what prompted the audit by the CSA and asks what the perceived benefits of hiring an outside company to manage these courses rather than vetting and hiring lecturers to manage the course internally are. CAES also wonders whether every OPM instructor should be reviewed and appointed as a lecturer to ensure that they meet UC standards, and whether the interim policy reflects a move to start offering third-party online courses for students for credit...

Source: https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/council-chair-to-provost-presidential-opm-policy.pdf (p. 9)

=====================

November 20, 2025

Katherine S. Newman

Provost and Executive Vice President, Academic Affairs

Re: Systemwide Senate Review of Interim Presidential Policy for the University of California’s Use of Online Program Management Companies

Dear Provost Newman,

As requested, I distributed for systemwide Academic Senate review the Interim Presidential Policy for UC’s Use of Online Program Management Companies (OPMs). All 10 Academic Senate divisions and two systemwide Senate committees (UCEP [University Committee on Educational Policy], UCFW [University Committee on Faculty Welfare]) submitted comments. These were discussed at the Academic Council’s November 17, 2025 meeting, and the compiled feedback is attached for your reference.

The policy responds to recommendations from the California State Auditor (CSA) concerning UC’s use of OPMs. It establishes systemwide standards to uphold academic integrity, transparency, and compliance with federal and accreditation requirements in OPM partnerships. The policy requires that students be informed when courses are taught by non-UC instructors employed by OPMs and that instructor affiliations and credentials be clearly disclosed. It prohibits enrollment-based financial incentives, outlines expectations for student interaction and assessment, and provides guidance for working with accredited and non-accredited affiliates. The policy currently applies to graduate-level programs but may extend to undergraduate programs as UC expands online course offerings.

Senate reviewers expressed general support for the intent of the interim policy to ensure academic integrity, transparency, and compliance with federal and accreditation standards in UC’s partnerships with OPMs. They viewed the policy as an appropriate and necessary response to the CSA’s findings and an important step toward establishing consistent systemwide standards to address identified risks. However, reviewers found that the policy would benefit from greater clarity and detail regarding faculty oversight, intellectual property, and implementation mechanisms.

Policy Scope and Definitions: Reviewers requested clarification of the policy’s scope, noting inconsistent references to courses, programs, and divisions, as well as conflation of terms such as “schools,” “divisions,” and “Extension.” They recommended aligning terminology, clearly distinguishing between instructional and non-instructional OPM activities, and defining the policy’s coverage as UC expands into undergraduate online instruction.

Senate Oversight: Reviewers emphasized that Senate review and continuing faculty oversight must apply to all OPM-affiliated courses and programs. UCEP specifically noted the need to align OPM-related instructional hiring with Senate Regulations 750A and 800A, which govern faculty appointments and course approval. The committee also highlighted variation in Professional and Continuing Education hiring practices across campuses and recommended stronger coordination and oversight to ensure consistency and academic standards.

Instructor Qualifications and Transparency: Faculty supported disclosure of instructor affiliation and credentials but questioned the usefulness of fine distinctions among UC-employed and UC-contracted instructors. Several noted that professional programs may appropriately prioritize industry experience over traditional academic credentials.

Student Data Privacy and Security: There was strong concern about protecting student information handled by third-party vendors. Reviewers urged that all OPM contracts undergo IT security and privacy review consistent with UC data protection policies and that data retention and recovery protocols be clearly specified.

Intellectual Property and Course Ownership: Reviewers sought explicit assurance that instructional materials developed by UC instructors remain UC or faculty property and that UC retains control over the use and withdrawal of content hosted by OPM platforms.

Course Evaluation: Reviewers supported student evaluations but advised aligning them with UC’s established evaluation practices, supplementing them with peer or faculty review and periodic program-level assessments similar to academic program reviews. UCEP recommended that evaluations include items addressing the adequacy of online modality support for students.

Compliance, Accountability, and Transparency: While reviewers supported the prohibition on incentive-based compensation, they found enforcement provisions vague and recommended clearer accountability for campuses and vendors, defined consequences for violations, and greater transparency into UC’s OPM relationships. Many suggested a systemwide registry or regular reporting of contracts, financial terms, and oversight outcomes, and encouraged UC to build internal capacity for online program management to safeguard academic quality.

Overall, Senate reviewers support the policy’s goals and urge UCOP to strengthen provisions related to faculty oversight and appointment processes, clarify terminology and scope, specify data and intellectual property protections, and establish robust enforcement and transparency mechanisms before issuing a final policy.

Thank you for the opportunity to opine. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Ahmet Palazoglu

Chair, Academic Council

cc: Academic Council, Director of Academic Planning and Policy Corona, Senate Division Executive Directors, Senate Executive Director Lin

Source: https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/council-chair-to-provost-presidential-opm-policy.pdf (pp. 1-3)

Straws in the Wind - Part 182

From the Cornell Daily Sun: Cornell’s $60 million settlement with the Trump administration includes a unique financial provision 一 a $30 million investment in agricultural research, to occur in installments over the next three years. However, it is not yet clear how exactly funds will be distributed. The settlement, which was reached on Nov. 7 after months of negotiations following the Trump administration’s decision to freeze $250 million in federal research grants and contracts from April 2025, also requires the University to pay $30 million to the federal government over the next three years. In return, the administration agreed to drop the Civil Rights complaints and investigations they had raised against the University and will restore the halted funding. 

The settlement states that the agricultural investment should be directed towards “research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers through lower costs of production and enhanced efficiency, including but not limited to programs that incorporate AI and robotics, such as Digital Agriculture and Future Farming Technologies.”

...When asked about the purpose of the agricultural research investment and the University's plans for allocating the funds, a Cornell spokesperson referred back to the settlement FAQ page,* stating that it “includes all the information we have to share at this time.” Currently, the University is developing “a program within the Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR) to administer the disbursement of this funding. More information will be disseminated by the OVPR later in the year,” the Federal Agreement FAQ page states...

Full story at https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2025/11/where-could-cornell-s-30-million-agriculture-research-investment-from-the-settlement-deal-go.

===

*https://info.cornell.edu/executive-orders/federal-agreement/.

The Forecast

The UCLA Anderson Forecast met yesterday on campus to discuss the economic outlook, despite gaps in federal data caused by the government shutdown.

From a news release by the Anderson School: The December 2025 UCLA Anderson Forecast for the United States and California describe a situation with two economic trends currently working in opposition. In some sectors of the economy, ongoing and optimistic investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure and rising income among high-wealth households drive the economy, while tariff-induced inflation, policy-driven uncertainty and a gradually weakening labor market indicate signs of sectoral weakness. The result is an economy expected to soften through the first quarter of 2026 before regaining strength later in the year.

In California, the outlook is further complicated by a bifurcated economy: AI, aerospace and other high-productivity

sectors continue to expand, while construction, non-durable goods, leisure and hospitality, and government-funded services face significant headwinds. Deportations, elevated input costs, and weak job growth prolong an employment recession expected to last into early 2026, even as the state continues to outpace the nation in overall productivity.

On balance, the Forecast does not expect an immediate downturn or an immediate resurgence. Instead, both the nation and the state are poised to muddle through early 2026 before experiencing stronger growth in 2026 and 2027...

Full news release at https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/press-releases/us-economy-slow-through-early-2026-while-california-navigates-two-speed-recovery.

You can see the full forecast conference - which includes discussion of cryptocurrency and private equity - at the link below:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks0Wu0fw3FI.

Straws in the Wind - Part 181

From the Daily Cal: UC Berkeley has indefinitely closed the Multicultural Community Center, a space known to students as the MCC that offers cross-cultural community building, due to “criticism received from a number of campus stakeholders.” The MCC... has been closed since the beginning of summer, and campus administrators have offered no solid return date. Interns at the center — who were initially not informed of the indefinite closure — were told by professional staff that the space would remain closed during conversations with the chancellor’s office regarding its current operating procedures. 

...The center had been used in the past as a meeting and organizing space for pro-Palestinian groups during the 2024 Free Palestine Encampments. Students had also faced pressure from administrators to remove signs from windows in support of progressive causes, to which they complied. 

...“We’re caught up in this antisemitism debate that’s going across all university campuses,” [a] junior intern said. “Because of the signage that was on our walls — even though we were open to let anyone put stuff on our walls — they (decided to) not have the space basically be open for any group, and label the campus as having transgender wellness initiatives, DEI-related initiatives and support for things that could be conflated with antisemitism.” 

...The MCC has been under scrutiny for alleged antisemitism. Interns mentioned that there were multiple instances of students coming into the space to confront interns regarding perceptions of antisemitism...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/student-life/uc-berkeley-administration-silently-shutters-student-multicultural-space/article_f1141eab-1212-46c0-a749-f5c7e0bf50ed.html.

Partial Restoration

You'd have to be a really faithful reader of this blog and someone with a very good memory to recall our postings from back in 2023 about UC-Berkeley's attempt to close an anthropology library. It resulted in an occupation by students and a promise of some kind of reading room.* Two years later, we have a follow-up:

From the Daily Cal: UC Berkeley’s anthropology department opened the refurbished Constance Chiang Pan Anthropology Reading Room, or CCPARR, through a gift from anthropology and economics alumna Constance Chiang Pan. Due to budget cuts, campus closed the original Anthropology Library as a circulating library in January 2023, which was considered a “big loss” for the campus and department, according to anthropology department chair Sabrina Agarwal... The initial announcement about the library’s closure in 2023 led to a months-long occupation and protest from students and faculty. Eventually, campus and then-Chancellor Carol Christ allowed the department of anthropology to keep the space to create a reading room...

It took almost eight months for the library staff to help retain and reorganize the “invaluable” collection of 20,000 historical anthropological volumes, selection of emeriti books and the UC Berkeley Folklore Archive that was saved by campus’s smaller renovation funds, according to Agarwal. The other 10,000 to 15,000 books were placed in another campus library or can be obtained at the Northern Regional Library Facility, where UC Berkeley archives are stored...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/following-spring-2023-protests-anthropology-library-reopens-as-constance-chiang-pan-reading-room/article_8d9d0b46-c8e7-4a32-ad05-bfc7240478e8.html. 

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/05/special-libraries-at-berkeley-going.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 180

From the Cavalier Daily: Some University [of Virginia] faculty have expressed skepticism about the intentions behind Freedom of Information Act requests they have received in recent years from Virginia residents and organizations. While acknowledging the right of individuals and organizations to file FOIA requests to obtain public records — such as course syllabi or emails — some faculty also claim that the law has been weaponized and created a sense of curriculum policing at the University.

According to the Code of Virginia, the Virginia FOIA law ensures access to “public records in the custody of a public body or its officers and employees.” FOIA says that “all public records shall be available for inspection and copying upon request,” unless there is an exemption invoked. Exemptions include certain personnel records, scholastic records, health records or other information which is shared with a public institution under the condition of confidentiality. Any Virginia citizen can file a FOIA request to receive records from a state public body.

...According to Assoc. Sociology Prof. Ian Mullins, recently some FOIA requests have targeted faculty within the College of Arts and Sciences Engagements program. The Engagements program is a yearlong sequence of small, seminar style courses for first-year College students that aims to introduce them to the liberal arts and sciences. Janet Spittler, Engagements program co-director and associate religious studies professor, confirmed via an email statement to The Cavalier Daily that every course in the Engaging Aesthetics Pillar — one of four pillars in the program which focuses on exploring the world through “the lens of human creativity” — has received a FOIA request for its syllabi. Spittler was not able to confirm when these requests were filed, nor whether the requests were limited to the Fall 2025 semester or not.

...Although [Media Studies Prof. Robin Means] Coleman emphasized that individuals and organizations have the right to access these records, and that these rights are crucial for holding public institutions accountable, she also stressed that this right has been abused to target certain offices and faculty at universities across the country. “I'm not opposed in any way to the spirit [or] the principles of what's behind [open records requests],” Coleman said. “The challenge that folks are facing is navigating the weaponization of that really useful tool … It becomes sort of de facto censorship that faculty have to worry about.” ...

Full story at https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025/11/faculty-question-the-motives-behind-foia-requests-for-course-materials-text-messages.

Note: UC emails, etc., are subject to Public Records requests. You should not assume privacy.

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From the NY Times: A University of Oklahoma student says she is the victim of religious discrimination because a psychology instructor gave her a zero for an essay that cited the Bible and said that “the lie that there are multiple genders” is “demonic.” The complaint by the student, Samantha Fulnecky, follows a series of similar conflicts at colleges around the country over how professors should talk about gender in the classroom, a battle in which each side insists it is protecting academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

The instructor who flunked Ms. Fulnecky on the essay has been placed on administrative leave while the school investigates the episode, according to a statement the University of Oklahoma posted on social media. The instructor is a graduate student at the university. Dozens of professors have lost their jobs or been disciplined in recent months over issues related to political speech, often because of posts on social media. Texas A&M University fired a faculty member who was accused of teaching a course that recognized more than two genders, after a video of her discussing gender in class was posted online.

...The instructor, who was not named in the university’s statement, declined to comment, writing in an email that, “as advised by my lawyer, I will not be making any public statements at this time.” ...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/oklahoma-bible-essay-gender-teasing-zero.html.

In case you were confused...

As we noted in an earlier post, UCLA Health has created its own Medicare Advantage plan for those eligible for Medicare. However, the UCLA plan is NOT an option for those who are eligible for UC retiree health.

Many UC retirees may have received letters such as this one. At least 6 variants have appeared at the mailing address of yours truly. The fact that the letters say UCLA Health on the top and come at the same time that UC has its open enrollment was confusing. This blog warned its readers that if they were recipients of UC retiree health insurance, they should not sign up for the UCLA plan thinking it was an option.* Furthermore, on the reverse side of the letter shown, there is a cautionary note in small print indicating that those under any kind of employer-based group plan should not be enrolling in the UCLA plan. The UCLA plan is for individuals, not groups.

If you somehow signed up anyway despite these warnings, you will want to undo what you did.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/11/reminder-dont-choose-whats-not-on-menu.html.

I never promised you a Rose Bowl? - Part 3 (Moving on edition)

Excerpt from Ben Bolch, sports columnist, LA Times:

 ...Who’s driving the proposed move to SoFi Stadium and what do the numbers look like? There’s been lots of chatter about chief financial officer Steven Agostini trying to clean up the financial mess you both inherited within the athletic department. I’m assuming there have been extensive calculations about a Rose Bowl payout and how much more money you’d make playing at SoFi Stadium.

But how much of that is SoFi spin and aren’t you worried that a judge could make you pay so much in damages that the whole thing would be a net negative? Yes, you’d presumably get suite revenue at SoFi Stadium, but would anyone want to buy one given what we’ve seen from this football team over the last decade? Shouldn’t you just go back to the Rose Bowl, football helmet in hand, and ask for a lease renegotiation that satisfies both sides?

Are you sure a big enough chunk of the fan base is on board with a move to Inglewood to justify such a jarring and abrupt abandonment of the school’s longtime home? If you indeed left the Rose Bowl, how would you compensate donors who contributed major gifts to the stadium for capital improvements on the premise that the Bruins would be a tenant through the 2043 season? And why would any business entity ever feel comfortable signing a long-term lease with the school again? ...

Full column at https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/newsletter/2025-11-24/ucla-unlocked-nov-24.

NOTE: As blog readers will know, the Academic Senate is already unhappy about lack of disclosure of financial information by Murphy Hall. A screw-up in the Rose Bowl/SoFi Stadium matter could end up costing big bucks. What exactly are the projections for staying in the Rose Bowl, moving to SoFi, and for potential legal liability costs? And what about the issue - raised above - about soliciting future donations from those "who contributed major gifts to the [Rose Bowl] for capital improvements on the promise that the Bruins would be a tenant through the 2043 season"? Enquiring minds want to know.

And meanwhile:

From the Bruin (excerpt):

...The City of Pasadena and the [Rose Bowl Operating Company] alleged in their TRO application that UCLA met with SoFi representatives as early as March 2025. They also claimed that UCLA informed the plaintiffs’ council Oct. 18 that it was “moving on” from the Rose Bowl...

Source: https://dailybruin.com/2025/11/29/it-is-our-home-students-react-to-uclas-possible-move-to-sofi-stadium.

Moving on? Seems to be the trend:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKfEDZ8Htjk.

Particularly true when you have no truck with staying:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYrwtpZ8IfY.

Straws in the Wind - Part 179

From Inside Higher Ed: As Duke University navigates a $108 million federal research funding freeze and multiple investigations by the Trump administration, administrators want faculty to avoid talking to the media about institutional operations, The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper reported... According to an August email obtained by The Chronicle, Jenny Edmonds, associate dean of communications and marketing at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, encouraged faculty to “continue to engage with the media to disseminate [their] research as [they] have always done,” while also cautioning that “media attention to institutions of higher education and discussions about institutional responses to policy changes have become more prominent than ever.”

...At an Academic Council meeting in October, Duke’s president, Vincent Price, and council chair, Mark Anthony Neal, commended faculty members for not speaking to a New York Times reporter; the reporter had visited the campus while working on a story about the Trump administration targeting Duke’s diversity, equity and inclusion program...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/11/26/duke-asked-some-faculty-avoid-talking-media.

From Inside Higher Ed: Hackers who attacked Dartmouth College in August stole information concerning more than 35,000 people from multiple states, according to The Record from Recorded Future News. The security breach was part of a larger attack by cybercriminals against Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) software, which Dartmouth and other higher ed institutions use to manage operations. Dartmouth, which confirmed the leak to SecurityWeek last week, discovered in late October that hackers had obtained files that contained individuals’ personal and financial details, including Social Security numbers. College administrators have since notified authorities in California, Maine, New Hampshire and Texas that residents of their states have been impacted...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/12/01/dartmouth-latest-college-be-targeted-hackers.

All in 30 Minutes - Part 3

The Regents are having yet another 30-minute meeting today about you-know-what, to which you are not invited:

November 29, 2025

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 2, 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 

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)

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Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/dec25/federal-12.2.2025.pdf.

Watch the Regents Meeting of Nov. 20, 2025

As noted in a post last Saturday, the big event of the November 18-20 Regents meetings was the approval of the cohort tuition plan on November 19. Thus, the business conducted on November 20 was more of a mopping up. There were public comments which mainly repeated themes heard on the previous two days: Opposition to a deal with the feds, support for undocumented and international students including issues of CalFresh, funding for disabled students, divestment from military, divestment from Israel, pro-Israel, low staff morale, Teamsters negotiations, post-doc funding, ICE on campus. 

Other topics included gender-affirming care, military equipment for UC police, opposition to the proposed investment in the Big Ten athletic conference and divestment from Blackstone (which - as faithful blog readers will know - got a quasi-bailout from UC in exchange for a promise of above-market returns). There may have been some confusion between Blackstone and Blackrock, two separate firms with similar names in the comments. (???) AFSCME negotiations were also mentioned.

The undergraduate and graduate students leaders both complained of lack of access to Milliken and the campus chancellors. Undergraduate complaints also included lack of access to collective bargaining sessions, lack of data on penalties imposed for protests, notification of ICE on campus. Proposals included having the newly-approved 1% surcharge on tuition go to student services and zero-cost textbooks. Graduate student complaints concerned data sharing with the feds, opposition to the tuition hike, lack of access to chancellors, a problem with Clery crime notifications, and ICE-on-campus notifications.

There was then a brief meeting of Compliance and Audit which consisted of presentation of annual and fiscal audit reports. It was noted that there is increased complexity in legal rules regarding research security with regard to certain foreign countries and companies. The Governance Committee then dealt with an executive pay adjustment and regental meeting dates for 2027. Finally, the full board reconvened to approve the various committee recommendations.

As always, we preserve Regents meetings indefinitely since the Regents have no policy on retention. The general site for the Nov. 20 meeting is at:

https://archive.org/details/31-regents-board-11-20-2025

The initial board meeting is at:

https://archive.org/download/31-regents-board-11-20-2025/31-Regents%20Board%2011-20-2025.mp4

Compliance and Audit, Governance, and the second board meeting are at:

https://archive.org/download/31-regents-board-11-20-2025/32-Regents%20Compliance%20and%20Audit%20Committee%2C%20Governance%20Committee%2C%20Board%2011-20-2025.mp4

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 95 (An off-the-shelf observation)

Our previous post on this blog dealt with partial restoration of a library at Berkeley. But what is the library situation at Harvard?

Well, according to an article in the Harvard Crimson magazine, freshmen at Harvard are supposed to be introduced to the very large library there through a special program:

"When new students arrive at Harvard, they face not only the steep adjustment to coursework and campus life, but also the challenge that comes with navigating the world’s largest academic library. To alleviate this, the First-Year Librarians program was born: an initiative that pairs groups of freshmen with a personal librarian... As librarian Lee LaFleur explains, the objective is to act as an “orientation lens” so that students can “learn about their new library, learn about the role of librarians in academia.” But despite these ambitious goals, most first-years on campus seem unaware of the initiative..."*

Perhaps if the reporters had spent more time with the first-year librarians, they would have found that "Shelf" is not a verb.

Just an impolite thought that yours truly will immediately shelve, and give them an A.**

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*https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/11/27/first-year-librarians/.

**https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/us/harvard-students-absenteeism.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 178

From the Columbia Daily Spectator: Columbia is absent from the list of 38 universities facing proposed suspensions from a Department of State federal research partnership program, according to an internal memo... The memo and an attached spreadsheet indicate that the department is looking to suspend institutions from partnering with its Diplomacy Lab program effective Jan. 1, 2026, because they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices.” Diplomacy Lab is an initiative between the federal government and over 60 universities that aims to harness “the expertise and fresh perspectives of students and faculty members to conduct research on key foreign policy topics,” according to an information sheet about the program.

A State Department spokesperson told Spectator that all agency programs are under review to ensure they are aligned with the priorities of President Donald Trump’s administration. The spreadsheet evaluated the hiring practices of 75 universities on a 4-point, color-coded scale... Universities showing “clear DEI hiring policy” were marked red for suspension from the program, whereas institutions showing “merit-based hiring with no evidence of DEI” were marked in green.

...In its July 23 $221 million settlement with the federal government, Columbia pledged not to consider “race, color, sex or national origin” as a factor in its hiring decisions. Columbia has also committed to submitting admissions data to the federal government, beginning with an initial October report...

Full story at https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/11/23/columbia-set-to-retain-embattled-state-department-research-partnership-as-other-universities-face-potential-suspensions-over-dei-hiring-practices/.

From The Guardian: More than three dozen universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Duke have their participation in a federal research partnership on the chopping block after the state department proposed to suspend them over their diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices. Last week, the Guardian obtained an internal memo and spreadsheet showing that the state department is moving to exclude 38 institutions from the Diplomacy Lab program, which pairs university researchers with state department policy offices on foreign policy projects. The suspensions would take effect on 1 January, and because the list is not finalized, the schools have not yet been informed.

The targeted schools include elite universities such as Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the University of Southern California, as well as American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University and several University of California campuses. 

Universities recommended to remain include Columbia University, MIT, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin. Several of these moved to comply with the administration’s anti-DEI demands earlier this year – Columbia agreed in July to pay more than $200m to the federal government and pledged not to use “race, color, sex or national origin” in hiring decisions, while the University of Virginia’s president resigned in June after the justice department demanded he step down over the school’s diversity practices...

Full story at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/25/us-universities-cuts-dei-state-department.