Quantum

Some funding is flowing from the feds. From the Daily Californian:

The U.S. National Science Foundation renewed its support for the UC Berkeley-led NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation, awarding the initiative $37.5 million. For the next five years, the funding will help the institute build quantum technologies, explore their applications and discover new ways quantum computing can be used to better understand nature. The initiative spans across California, encompassing research at UC Berkeley as well as at universities such as Caltech, UCLA and Stanford.

“The idea behind a quantum computer is to build a computer that takes advantage of some of those weirder, strange aspects of quantum mechanics to do computations that are hard or impossible on the computers that we have today,” said UC Berkeley associate professor of physics Shimon Kolkowitz, who is conducting research on atomic clocks for the institute. Kolkowitz expressed his hopes for future applications of quantum computing, including its use in the discovery of new materials and drugs, as well as in the improvement of chemical reactions’ energy efficiency. Kolkowitz described the institute’s research as interdisciplinary, spanning many departments including chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, computer science and material science...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/research-and-ideas/nsf-awards-37m-to-its-uc-berkeley-led-quantum-computing-research/article_0ef2bbde-c234-42ee-bb33-c7f4963f87e6.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 433

From the Mercury News: Stanford University has ditched its Flock camera system and hired a new license plate reader firm following controversy over who can access the images captured. The South Bay university signed a contract with Genetec Cloudrunner to provide cameras that can read license plates, collecting images its public safety department can use to investigate crimes, Stanford University said in a press release. “Unlike the Flock system, the new system is designed for use within a single institution,” said Patrick Dunkley, Stanford’s vice provost for institutional equity, access, and community.

Slightly under two years ago, Stanford University installed the Flock camera system at university entrances. Stanford, at the time, said it wouldn’t share any information harvested from the Flock cameras with other police agencies. Over the past several years, concerns have emerged nationwide over Flock camera systems. Its systems, critics say, allow law enforcement to access images from other agencies via the networked license plate readers...

“These license plate reader cameras are an important investigative tool,” Stanford Department of Public Safety Chief Laura Wilson said. “They are just one of the ways that DPS is leveraging technology to help keep our community safe.”...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/08/08/police-stanford-flock-camera-school-safety-crime-privacy-internet-ice/.

UC & Other Universities Support Harvard

From The Dartmouth: [Dartmouth] signed onto an amicus brief filed July 22 with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Harvard University’s April lawsuit against the Trump Administration. Thirty-five other colleges and universities also signed the brief, including all Ivy League universities except Harvard. In the ongoing case, the Trump administration is appealing a September 2025 ruling in favor of Harvard after the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants because the university refused to comply with federal demands to make institutional changes such as reforming admissions and hiring practices, shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion practices and addressing antisemitism “or other bias” in campus programs. 

The brief argues that “even temporary cuts” to federal research funding could have “permanent effects” which “endangers” the “life-changing and history-altering innovations” that arise from “basic research” conducted at colleges and universities... Amici institutions listed advancements in “scientific progress” made possible by federal funding — such as the computer, DNA sequencing, the pacemaker and the “decades-long collaboration among academia, government and industry” which produced the internet — as “enormous long-term benefits” of university research...

Full story at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/08/flavin-dartmouth-signs-brief-in-support-of-harvard-in-research-funding-lawsuit-against-trump-administration. 

List in image above and brief at:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667.00108480602.0.pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 419

From iHeartRadio: Stanford University football players are taking a significant step toward collective bargaining in college sports. They have established the first campus chapter of the College Football Players Association (CFBPA), aiming to lay the groundwork for eventual unionization. The initiative, announced on Monday (July 27), does not seek to form a union or classify players as school employees. Instead, it hopes to inspire similar movements at other schools...

The CFBPA's executive director, Jason Stahl, views this player-led chapter as a precursor to a collective bargaining agreement at the conference level. The association is actively engaging with players from other schools to form additional chapters, with the goal of eventually negotiating with conference leadership. ESPN reports that this initiative comes amid ongoing debates about how to regulate college sports. Some stakeholders advocate for federal legislation, while others see collective bargaining as a viable solution. The Protect College Sports Act of 2026, currently under consideration in Congress, is one such legislative effort...

Full story at https://1340wraw.iheart.com/content/2026-07-27-stanford-football-players-push-for-collective-bargaining/.

Novel Regent

Usually, stories about UC regents don't appear in the Entertainment section. But Regent Greg Sarris is an unusual exception.

From the LA Times: On a Monday morning in California, Sarris sits in his sleek office at the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Rohnert Park. Sarris, 74, has served as chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria for more than 30 years. In his office, diplomas and academic certificates crowd the walls. A framed poster for the 2023 film “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” hangs nearby — she’s a close friend. Behind him, an American flag ripples in the distance outside the window, blurred by the summer heat. Just up the road sits a multibillion-dollar tribe-owned casino, Graton Resort & Casino — a project the writer oversees. “I had never been in a casino. I have a PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford,” says Sarris.

How does an accomplished author find himself at the helm of a multibillion-dollar casino enterprise? It’s a question that still puzzles Sarris. “I told them if we can raise our people and become a platform for social justice and environmental stewardship to benefit Indian and non-Indian alike, I’ll do it.” ...

Before his stint as a reluctant casino mogul, Sarris was a prolific author and university professor at UCLA and Sonoma State. In 2023, he was appointed a regent of the University of California by Gavin Newsom. Over the course of his career, he published six books, and his novel “Grand Avenue” became an HBO original film in 1996...

In 1952, Sarris’ teenage mother gave him up for adoption, her family hoping to evade the embarrassment of their Jewish daughter becoming pregnant by a Native American Filipino man. Sarris grew up in a white family in Santa Rosa alongside three siblings. His adopted father, George Sarris, became abusive, causing Greg to flee the house with his adopted mother’s blessing. “God bless her. She let me go out and live on ranches and run with other people to get away from him.”

At age 30, Sarris uncovered the identities of his birth parents and learned of his Native heritage. He learned his birth mother was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Santa Rosa, with “nothing to mark her grave but an upside-down horseshoe that has her name in it.” In the opening pages of the novel, a dedication to her: Bunny Hartman...

...The Graton Resort & Casino, launched by Sarris over 12 years ago, now plays a vital role in supporting the Pomo Indian community. “I promised early on: roof over everyone’s head, an insurance policy in every pocket and a college degree paid for,” he says. “We give $2.5 million a year in perpetuity to the University of California, so that all California Indians can go to the University of California tuition-free.” The casino has funded theater programs, youth writing intensives and revenue sharing with neighboring tribes...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2026-06-24/graton-resort-casino-greg-sarris-native-history-author.

---

As blog readers will know, the feds are looking into Gov. Newsom's finances and those of his wife. It is unclear that anything illicit has been found. The California practice of "behested" payments, although not illegal, doesn't have a good look. Regent Sarris may be pulled into that issue. From the LA Times:

...In 2020, [Jennifer] Siebel Newsom founded the California Partners Project, a nonprofit focused on improving gender equity in the workplace and the safety and well-being of children in online spaces. She does not collect compensation from the nonprofit or serve on its board. It hosts an annual “gender equity summit” and provides resources for parents on issues such as social media safety and child mental health. The California Partners Project also does not publicly disclose its donors in its tax filings, but much of the nonprofit’s funding appears to come from behested payments. Siebel Newsom does not receive a salary from the organization.

Since its founding, the Newsoms have steered more than $5 million to the nonprofit via behested payments, according to a review of the disclosures. While many donations to the California Partners Project come from charitable foundations, it also received hundreds of thousands from companies including Silicon Valley Bank, Pinterest and the charitable arm of Blue Shield of California. 

Its biggest funder is the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a Sonoma County tribe that operates a casino in Rohnert Park and spends heavily in state and federal elections. The tribe has given $2.3 million to the nonprofit since 2022. In June 2023, Newsom appointed tribal Chairman Greg Sarris to the University of California Board of Regents. Newsom has also supported efforts by the tribe to block a smaller tribe from building a casino in nearby Vallejo...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-06-25/newsom-says-wife-is-target-of-trump-heres-what-we-know-of-her-finances.

Straws in the Wind - Part 389

From Inside Higher Ed: The already-small number of colleges with full-fledged, student-enforced honor codes is dwindling. After a three-year pilot of proctored exams, Stanford University student, faculty and administrative leaders decided in April that the university will allow proctoring for all in-person tests starting in September. Princeton University faculty approved a similar plan a month later. In making those decisions, both institutions grappled with students’ increasing use—sanctioned and not—of artificial intelligence.

AI is at the “forefront” of honor code reform, said JT Torres, director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University... A typical honor code asks students to adhere to a set of academic integrity and behavioral standards that prohibit acts like cheating, plagiarism, lying and stealing, and enlists students as the enforcers of those standards. The code only works as well as the students who enforce it, and success relies on students’ desire to adhere to social norms...

According to a 2025 Inside Higher Ed survey of more than 1,000 students, 85 percent had used generative AI to complete coursework. Over half—55 percent—said they used it for brainstorming ideas, 44 percent used it to edit or check their work, a quarter used AI to complete assignments or coding work, and 19 percent used it to write free responses or essays. What types of AI use constitute cheating vary by institution, professor, class and assignment, and that makes it difficult for students to parse what constitutes an honor code violation...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/06/22/can-and-should-honor-codes-survive-ai-age.

Straws in the Wind - Part 376

From Reuters: Law professors overwhelmingly preferred answers drafted by AI over ones written by fellow professors, a new Stanford Law School study found,* suggesting that the technology is ​capable of legal reasoning and that law students may benefit from AI ‌tutoring. Professors from 14 U.S. law schools developed a list of 40 questions representative of those first-year contracts students ask during faculty office hours. The professors wrote answers to the questions, and researchers ​had two AI platforms — Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and NotebookLM — also answer them.

The same ​professors blindly judged the short answers head-to-head and chose the AI-generated ones as most ⁠beneficial to students 75% of the time. The AI platforms performed just as ​well as the professor rated most highly in the study...

Full story at https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/ai-beats-law-professors-stanford-tutoring-study-2026-06-02/.

===

The study is at https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/salinas_et_al.pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 338

From the Stanford Review: Marriage Pact, Stanford’s online matching platform, has released its aggregated data from the 2025–26 cycle, covering 4,177 submissions. Its annual questionnaire asks students about academic interests, professional ambitions, faith, preferences, and politics. Libertarian, Conservative, Republican, Apolitical, Independent, Democrat, Liberal, and Socialist are independent self-selected groupings. Throughout, groups are sorted from highest to lowest mean agreement.

The 2025–26 results show a clear political shift to the right at Stanford. Students are notably more right-wing than they were five years ago, and right-wing students are both more ambitious and more optimistic about their ability to change the world than their left-wing or centrist peers.

From Fall 2020 to Fall 2025:

• The Right (Libertarians, Conservatives, and Republicans) nearly doubled, from 6.9% to 12.1% of the student body.

• Socialists and Communists were roughly cut in half, from 10.7% to 5.0%.

• The broader Left coalition (Communist, Socialist, Liberal, Democrat) declined only slightly, from 70.6% to 67.3%.

• The middle (Independent, Apolitical, Other) edged down from 22.4% to 20.7%...

Full story at https://stanfordreview.org/number-of-right-wing-students-at-stanford-nearly-doubles/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 312

From Bloomberg: President Donald Trump’s administration has opened a new front in its campaign to reshape US colleges, homing in on racial diversity at some of the top medical schools in the country. The Department of Justice has launched investigations into medical programs at Stanford, the University of California San Diego and Ohio State University, accusing them of giving a leg up to minority applicants. The administration has made similar claims about a swath of universities. But for medical schools, those accusations — and the accompanying risk to their federal funding — are an especially potent weapon.

Medical programs already took a hit last year when the president slashed billions in research grants, which disproportionately affects biomedical fields. The National Institutes of Health alone terminated nearly $2 billion in payments to medical schools as of last June. But even bigger sums could be at stake if the DOJ investigations widen beyond the initial slate of schools.

The NIH awarded over $19 billion to medical programs last year, and students rely on federal aid and loans to afford famously expensive medical degrees. If schools are found to be in violation of anti-discrimination law, they risk getting cut off from all this funding...

Full story at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-08/trump-targets-top-medical-schools-as-next-higher-ed-battleground.

Straws in the Wind - Part 300

From The Atlantic: The events of the past three months seem almost perfectly engineered to spark campus unrest. In January, mass-deportation operations led to the brazen killing of U.S. citizens at the hands of masked immigration agents. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it would no longer regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. A few weeks later, the Trump administration joined forces with Israel to launch an attack on Iran without congressional approval. One might expect left-leaning college students to have practically started a revolution.

But campuses across the country—places where, just two years ago, students occupied buildings and colonized the quad to protest Israel’s war against Hamas—are strangely silent. These days, those same students mostly head to class. The extent of the change is jarring. David Sengthay, a Stanford senior and the head of the undergraduate-student senate, told me that protests typified the university’s history, up to and including his first two years in Palo Alto. But by the time he returned as a junior, in fall 2024, something was different...

Sengthay said that he and other Stanford students had envisioned college as a “playground for free speech and democracy” before the greater responsibilities and pressures of adult life. They’ve since discovered that the rules of the game have changed.

Full story at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/campus-protests-trump-iran/686518/.

UC-San Diego Med School Admissions Investigation

The US Dept. of Justice has announced an investigation into three med schools including at UC-San Diego, apparently related to the Supreme Court's anti-affirmative action decision. From the NY Times:

The Trump administration has opened investigations into admissions policies at three major medical schools, expanding the federal government’s pressure campaign beyond campus culture and taking aim at the heart of scientific authority in the United States. The Justice Department on Wednesday informed Stanford University, the Ohio State University, and the University of California, San Diego, about the investigations and demanded that the schools turn over extensive lists of data by April 24 or risk interruptions to essential federal funding...

The government is seeking information about medical school applicants from each of the past seven years, including test scores, home ZIP codes and any familial relationships to alumni or ties to university donors. The administration also demanded copies of any internal messages at the universities about diversity, equity and inclusion and any correspondence between school officials and pharmaceutical companies about admissions policies...

Officials at all three universities confirmed they had been notified about the inquiries. A Stanford spokeswoman declined to comment. U.C. San Diego said it was reviewing the notice from the Justice Department and that it was “committed to fair processes in all of our programs and activities, including admissions, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.” ...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/us/politics/trump-medical-schools-civil-rights.html.

Disability Creep

There has been increasing concern about the rising proportion of undergraduate students claiming disabilities on college campuses. Most of the UC campuses show that trend. Disabled students can receive accommodations on tests and other assignments. But the rise seems prominent in a number of private universities. The San Francisco Chronicle has a search option for looking at the trend.

From Fall 2013 to Fall 2023:

• Stanford (top of the list in Fall 2023): 7% to 38.2%
• Dartmouth: 7% to 15.8%
• Cornell: 6% to 21.6%
• Harvard: no more than 3% to 21.0%
• Brown: 10% to 22.0%
• Yale: 8% to 19.8%
• Columbia: 6% to 14.3%
• Princeton: no more than 3% to 15.5%
• U of Pennsylvania: 6% to 15.0%
• USC: no more than 3% to 13.0%
• CalTech: no more than 3% to 11.7%

===

*https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-disabled-disability-student-21361362.php.

Straws in the Wind - Part 279

From the Stanford Review: Last year, Stanford paid former President Marc Tessier-Lavigne a $2 million salary after he resigned in disgrace—but he wasn’t even on campus. He was on leave, running a multibillion-dollar biotech startup, and somehow collecting a higher salary from the university than when he was its President. This is how the compensation system was designed to work. The money is part of a largely confidential deferred compensation plan, agreed to in advance by the Board of Trustees. It’s not just former presidents either: Philip Pizzo, who left his position as dean of the School of Medicine in 2012, collected $4 million well over a decade after his departure. Former President John Hennessy went from $1.5 million to $2.4 million.

It’s clear why the executives would prefer this structure. Deferred compensation is tax-efficient, reduces sticker shock, and helps the board compete for leaders who could earn more in the private sector. But while their artificially deflated salaries show up on IRS reporting, the real terms are confidential, and board records are restricted for twenty years. The public disclosures only report what was paid year to year. By the time the full story surfaces, the contracts are already binding.

Imagine how preposterous this would seem for any other job. How perverse would the incentives be if a hedge fund told its manager that most of their pay comes after they leave, and they can collect even if they lose half the portfolio? No firm would structure compensation that way, because the point of accountability is that it exists while someone still holds power. If a regular Stanford employee resigned in the same circumstances as Tessier-Lavigne, amid an investigation that found problems occurring at “unusual frequency” under their supervision, they’d walk away with nothing beyond their last paycheck. The MTL case isn’t even the worst possible scenario; a future president whose actions cause genuine institutional damage would receive a seven-figure check for potentially decades to come, and we’d learn about it two years later on a tax form.

The fix here is straightforward and far from novel. Publish the total value of executive compensation packages, and disclose the terms and vesting schedules...

Full story at https://stanfordreview.org/why-stanford-hides-massive-executive-paychecks-in-secret-contracts/. 

Fertile Adventures in Artificial Intelligence

I asked Gemini: "According to a Stanford study at

https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj24291/files/media/file/wfh-and-fertility-29-january-2026.pdf  

one couple working from home will produce 0.32 child. How many couples working from home would it take to produce one whole child?"

Answer from Gemini: Based on the study Work from Home and Fertility, it would take approximately 3.125 couples (or 4 couples to ensure at least one "whole" child) to produce one additional child compared to couples where neither partner works from home. Here is the breakdown of that calculation: The study estimates that lifetime fertility is greater by 0.32 children per woman (couple) when both partners work from home (WFH) one or more days per week compared to when neither does. To find the number of couples needed to reach an increase of 1.0 child: 1 \div 0.32 = 3.125. The study notes that this effect is even more pronounced in the United States specifically, where the estimated increase is 0.45 children per woman when both partners WFH. In the U.S. context, it would only take about 2.22 couples working from home to produce one additional child.

Foreign Funding

The US Dept. of Education has released a list of foreign funding of US universities in 2025. As can be seen above, having a med school helps in obtaining such funding. But prestige also helps. (MIT doesn't have a med school.) 

UCLA ranks as number 23 with over $750 million.

Source: Section 117 Foreign Gift and Contract Public Transparency Dashboard:

https://www.foreignfundinghighered.gov/.

Straws in the Wind - Part 209

From the LA Times: A Stanford software engineering degree used to be a golden ticket. Artificial intelligence has devalued it to bronze, recent graduates say. The elite students are shocked by the lack of job offers as they finish studies at what is often ranked as the top university in America. When they were freshmen, ChatGPT hadn’t yet been released upon the world. Today, AI can code better than most humans. Top tech companies just don’t need as many fresh graduates.

...Stanford students describe a suddenly skewed job market, where just a small slice of graduates — those considered “cracked engineers” who already have thick resumes building products and doing research — are getting the few good jobs, leaving everyone else to fight for scraps... The shake-up is being felt across California colleges, including UC Berkeley, USC and others. The job search has been even tougher for those with less prestigious degrees.

...The engineers’ most significant competitor is getting stronger by the day. When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it could only code for 30 seconds at a time. Today’s AI agents can code for hours, and do basic programming faster with fewer mistakes.

Data suggests that even though AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are hiring many people, it is not offsetting the decline in hiring elsewhere. Employment for specific groups, such as early-career software developers between the ages of 22 and 25 has declined by nearly 20% from its peak in late 2022, according to a Stanford study. It wasn’t just software engineers, but also customer service and accounting jobs that were highly exposed to competition from AI. The Stanford study estimated that entry-level hiring for AI-exposed jobs declined 13% relative to less-exposed jobs such as nursing...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-12-19/they-graduated-from-stanford-due-to-ai-they-cant-find-job.

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.

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.

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.

Money Ball

From the Sacramento Bee: Justin Wilcox, UC Berkeley’s head football coach, earned the title of highest paid state employee last year, earning $4.7 million, according to the latest salary data. UCLA’s head basketball coach, Michael Cronin, came in second after earning $4.1 million in 2024. Head football and basketball coaches at public universities are often the most well paid government employees across the country because those programs generate an enormous amount of revenue for the university system, said Roger Noll, a professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University.

For example, UC Berkeley and UCLA each took in more than $45 million in revenue from their football teams in 2023, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Department of Education. Wilcox and Cronin made substantially less than the previously highest-paid coach. UCLA paid its former football coach, Chip Kelly, $7.1 million in 2023. Kelly is currently the offensive coordinator for the Las Vegas Raiders...

Full story at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article312447469.html.