The March meetings of the Regents took place at UC-San Francisco on March 17 and 18 rather than the March 17-19 period originally scheduled.
The meeting on the 17th was somewhat reduced in length, beginning at 10:30 AM rather than 8:30 AM. It began with public comments. Commenters spoke on return of Native American artifacts, funding for the UCLA Advancement Program, out-of-state tuition, immigration enforcement, food assistance, Basic Needs, ending of the UC-Davis equestrian program, the AMCHA antisemitism report, processing of antisemitism complaints, student housing projects, UC funding for grad students, a property dispute with a farm near UC-Davis, Teamsters' issues including violence against hospital employees, doctor bargaining issues including protection of immigrants, anti-Israel, and divestment from fossil fuels.
Public Comments were followed by the Investments Committee. The Investment Academy at Merced was described. CFO Bachhar made generally bullish remarks about AI from a long-run perspective. It was noted that on a market basis, thanks to increases in the stock market, the pension plan was 92% funded on a market basis and 86% of an actuarial basis, i.e., with 5-year smoothing of returns. Regent Makarechian nonetheless raised the issue of a need for increased pension contributions.
Regent Hernandez suggested that the committee should discuss demands for divestment from "military" assets. If you are a really faithful reader of this blog, you may recall a discussion of this matter during the May 14, 2024 meetiong of this committee. At that time, CFO Bachhar came up with the tabulation in response to a student letter demanding various military and Israel divestments. He said that UC at that time held $32 billion of such assets of which $12 billion were US Treasury obligations.* This time, however, Bachhar went further and said that a literal divestments of military assets would essentially involve selling off all US holdings. You can see his remarks at:
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj-Fsaqa7y8.
There was a very brief open meeting of the Health Services Committee in which information on the potential impact of the state Office of Health Care Affordability on UC hospitals was on the agenda in written form. There was no discussion.
Finally, the full board session started with remarks about the effect of that Office and other factors as it related to student health care, particularly students eligible for Medi-Cal, and the need to allow such students to utilize student campus health care programs.
Chair Reilly went over the upcoming agenda. President Milliken spoke about concerns regarding public perceptions of higher education which were colored by issues of cost and tensions over limited admissions. He cited UC's transfer programs as one way UC was addressing such perceptions and referenced "lifetime learning" as another. Faculty representative Palazoglu, in his remarks, referenced federal research funding concerns and rising labor costs of graduate student workers. He noted the possibility of a state bond measure that would fund research.
The Regents then heard a presentation on the UC Inspires Program which is supposed to bridge the gap between research and commercialization of research findings. Various examples were presented such as a new laser treatment for glaucoma.
Finally, the Regents approved funding for upgrading a hospital purchased by UC-San Diego.
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As always, we preserve recording of Regents meetings since the Regents have no policy on duration of retention. You can find the video recordings for March 17 at:
https://archive.org/details/regents-3-17-2026.
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*See our discussion of that meeting at https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/05/watch-regents-meeting-of-may-14-2024.html. If you go to the link there for the Investments Committee, this discussion occurs primarily at 1:45:25 to 1:54:00 with scattered remarks thereafter.
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