DOJ vs. UCSF

From the LA Times: UC San Francisco’s medical school illegally used race in admissions, discriminating against white and Asian applicants in favor of Black and Latino ones, the Department of Justice [DOJ] alleged Tuesday... In a nine-page letter to UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, the Justice Department alleged the medical school used racially discriminatory practices when selecting its incoming classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025. It said the practices violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars racial discrimination by institutions receiving federal money, and the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions. “Unfortunately, at UCSF Medical School, MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs have taken a back seat to race,” Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. “Aspiring doctors should be admitted based on their qualifications.”

In a statement, a UCSF spokesperson said the university disagrees with the finding. “We will continue to engage constructively with the department and look forward to resolving this matter,” the statement said...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-22/doj-ucsf-medical-school-admissions-discrimination.

---

DOJ News Release: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-ucsf-medical-school-discriminates-based-race-admissions.

DOJ "Findings": https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1462136/dl.

Best

Yours truly is always skeptical about rankings such as those below. But you will undoubtedly be told about it by the three UC systems listed. So you might as well read about it here:

BEST HOSPITALS HONOR ROLL 2026-2027: From US News and World Report

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Cleveland Clinic

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

Houston Methodist Hospital

Johns Hopkins Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital

Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic-Arizona

Mayo Clinic-Florida

Mount Sinai Hospital

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell

Northwestern Medicine-Northwestern Memorial Hospital

NYU Langone Hospitals

Rush University Medical Center

Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital

UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center

UC San Diego Health-La Jolla, Hillcrest, and East Campus Medical Centers

UCSF Health-UCSF Medical Center

University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor

--

Source: https://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings.

 

Dubinett & Hawgood Testimony

Steve Dubinett - dean of the UCLA med school - and Sam Hawgood - chancellor of UC-San Francisco - testified yesterday at the House Committee on Education & Workforce. The topic was DEI in medical education. Both defended their institutions, but both acknowledged problems that had arisen in particular courses at their campuses. Both indicated the courses referenced had been replaced and that the new versions were in compliance with appropriate standards, would be given only by campus faculty, and would comply with university rules limiting use of courses for unrelated purposes.

You can see their opening statements to the Committee at the link below:

https://ia902809.us.archive.org/1/items/newsom-7-1-2026-savings-accounts-for-kids/Dubinett-Hawgood%20testimony%20on%20DEI%20in%20med%20schools%207-14-2026.mp4.

The full hearing is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4EeaPsxa2s.

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.

UCLA ahead in the Wikipedia editing sweepstakes

The Daily Cal calculated the total number of Wikipedia edits - additions and deletions - by campus IP addresses across the UC system. It turns out that since its inception to late 2025, UCLA addresses made over 54,000 edits.

It's not clear whether that's a Good Thing, a Bad Thing, or just a Thing. Below is a chart from the article which can be found at https://data.dailycal.org/2025-12-24-wikiedits. 

Graduate Degrees After Undergraduate

The San Francisco Chronicle provides a listing of the percent of undergrads who go on to get graduate degrees from the various UC campuses. (UC-San Francisco is excluded because it has no undergraduate program.) The chart below highlights Berkeley, but all the other undergraduate campuses are shown:

Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/uc-graduate-degrees/.

Behind Closed Doors This Coming Wednesday

The Regents are having a hybrid closed-door meeting this coming Wednesday. On the schedule is discussion of "legal issues" related to UCLA's change of athletic conference. Oddly, the justification for closing that discussion is a reason related to real estate transactions. It's hard to imagine what that entails.

Below is the notice:

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Date: October 23, 2025

Time: 1:00 p.m.

Location: UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco Campus

1111 Franklin St, Oakland, CA 

400 Q Street, Sacramento, CA

6629 Round Oak Road, Penngrove, CA

1 Newbury St, Boston, MA

425 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles Campus

552 University Rd, Santa Barbara, CA

Agenda – Closed Session

B1(X) Action Authorization to Purchase Replacement Residential Property with External Financing: Current and Future UC Santa Barbara

Chancellors, Office of the President

Closed Session Statute Citation: Acquisition or disposition of property

[Education Code §92032(b)(6)]

B2(X) Discussion UCLA Big Ten Conference Membership – Legal Issues

Closed Session Statute Citation: Acquisition or disposition of property

[Education Code §92032(b)(6)]

--

Source: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/oct25/board23x.pdf.

Letters - Part 2

As blog readers will know, both UCLA (med school) and UC-San Francisco received requests for documents from the US House Committee on Education and Workforce. See:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/08/letters.html.

Today, September 8th, is the deadline set for receiving those documents.

We are also about a week from the next Regents meetings when such matters will be discussed, albeit behind closed doors.

Letters

From the LA Times: The UCLA and UC San Francisco medical schools have been given two weeks to submit years of internal documents to a Republican-led congressional committee about alleged antisemitism and how the schools responded, widening the federal government’s far-reaching investigations into the University of California. The demands from House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) cited reports of Jewish people “experiencing hostility and fear” at each campus and that universities had not proved that they “meaningfully responded.”

Walberg’s letters said the committee would be investigating whether the schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-25/ucla-ucsf-medical-school-house-education-committee.

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UCLA letter: https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/UCLA_med_letter%20from%20House_8.21.25.pdf or https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ucla_med_letter_8.21.25.pdf.

UCSF letter: https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/UCSF_letter%20from%20House_8.21.25.pdf or https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ucsf_letter_8.21.25.pdf.

Note: The actual letters are dated Aug. 25, but the file names indicate they were prepared on Aug. 21.

What the Regents are likely to hear

The Regents are likely to hear about UC-San Francisco layoffs during public comments at their upcoming meetings this week. From SFGATE:

...200 people... were notified on June 25 that they’d be losing their jobs, with UCSF citing “serious financial challenges” as the primary reason. In a June 25 email, the hospital network said the firings were spread across the institution and it slashed positions with “the least impact on patients and daily operations.” ...UCSF did not respond to SFGATE’s request for a list detailing which exact positions were eliminated, but it said about a quarter of them worked per diem and that about half of the full-time employees that were let go held management positions...

Matt Stephen, a physician assistant and co-chair for UPTE-CWA 9119, UCSF’s union of professional and technical employees, told SFGATE that many of the layoffs were frontline workers, including physical therapists, clinical lab scientists, research associates, emergency department clerks and ICU staff. He said the cuts would be detrimental to the hospital network because it is already constrained by its resources... Over the last year, UCSF workers have organized multiple strikes to protest the staffing crisis. During a May protest outside a University of California Board of Regents meeting, 20 labor advocates were arrested by UC police officers after refusing to leave... 

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/heartless-firings-bay-area-health-care-network-20761887.php.

Health Negotiations - Part 2

In late May, we noted on this blog that UC Health and Blue Shield were in seemingly-stalled negotiations for the period beginning July 9.* We also noted that UC folks under the university's various health plans for actives and retirees are under Blue Cross, not Shield. And finally, we noted that deals in negotiations are often struck close to deadlines.

So, for those interested in a follow up, we can now report that as the July 9 deadline approached, the parties moved it to August 9. From the San Francisco Chronicle: 

...Late last week, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu and Supervisor Matt Dorsey waded into the matter, urging Blue Shield to finalize an agreement with UC Health so that the roughly 5,000 city employees and retirees who go to UCSF for medical care will not lose access to critical medical services. Last year, UC Health and Anthem Blue Cross, another major insurer in California, similarly had a dispute over contract terms that lasted months. The two sides eventually reached a new contract... Both UC Health and Blue Shield said Monday that they hope to reach a new agreement and avoid interruptions for their patients and members.

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/ucsf-blue-shield-extend-contract-deadline-20401688.php.

==

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/05/health-negotiations.html.

Layoffs at UC-San Francisco

From SFGATE: UCSF Health is slashing approximately 200 positions to mitigate “serious financial challenges,” the hospital network said in a statement to SFGATE on Wednesday. Kristen Bole, a spokesperson for UCSF, told SFGATE that employees are being notified that their last day will be 60 days from Wednesday. She said those employees won’t be expected to show up to work, but they can work on “items related to their transition.” ...

...A spokesperson for the Employment Development Department told SFGATE that it has not received any WARN filings from UCSF as of Wednesday. Such filings are generally required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act in the vent of mass layoffs. The staff cuts come as health care workers have been striking for more than a week outside UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland to protest UCSF’s proposal to transition the hospital’s workers to become University of California employees...

Additionally, the cuts come amid looming funding threats to the National Institutes of Health and UC System from the Trump administration...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/ucsf-health-layoffs-amid-financial-challenges-20394116.php.

Lawsuit

A lawsuit challenging federal research grant cancellations has been filed by three researchers at UC-San Francisco. This is a "private" effort rather than a filing by UC or the Regents. However, one of the lawyers filing the suit is UC-Berkeley law dean Erwin Chermerinsky. And it is filed on behalf of the three plus "all others similarly situated." 

The current plaintiffs are:

Dr. Neeta Thakur is a pulmonary and critical care specialist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who examines the role of social and environmental stressors on asthma and COPD in historically marginalized communities. She currently serves as Medical Director of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital Chest Clinic and is an associate professor of medicine and pulmonary and critical care clinician at UCSF. 

Ken Alex is Director of Project Climate at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law. He founded Project Climate, a think tank designed to move promising environmental research into the policy realm quickly. 

Dr. Nell Green Nylen joined the Wheeler Water Institute at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) at UC Berkeley School of Law as a Research Fellow in 2013. Since 2016, she has been a Senior Research Fellow at CLEE, providing analysis and recommendations at the intersection of law, policy, and science to inform water governance and management. 

Robert Hirst has an academic appointment as a researcher at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Christine Philliou is a member of the faculty at UC Berkeley who engages in research.

Jedda Foreman has an academic appointment as a researcher at UC Berkeley. 

The defendants are President Trump and a series of federal granting agencies. And the remedy sought is basically the voiding of the grant terminations for the three named plaintiffs and others at UC in their class.

You can find the lawsuit at:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.450653/gov.uscourts.cand.450653.1.0.pdf.

The Numbers

Note: UC-Merced is listed separately at $28.6 million.

Source - EdSource: https://edsource.org/2025/california-research-grants-federal-funding-trump-administration/733468.
 

Some coming back

CalMatters reports that some cancelled NIH grants are being restored. UC itself seems to be maintaining a low profile concerning such issues:

The National Institutes of Health reversed its termination of a $36 million grant to a UC Davis researcher studying dementia, a day after CalMatters wrote about the cancelled grant and the researcher filed an appeal. The National Institutes of Health cancelled the grant last month, following the Trump administration’s ban on federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Charles DeCarli, a neurologist at UC Davis and lead researcher on the project, got a notice from the agency Friday morning that he could again use the grant’s funds and conduct his research. The agency gave no reason for the reversal...

In addition to DeCarli’s, other grants at the University of California were reinstated, said UC office of the President spokesperson Stett Holbrook on Saturday. He didn’t indicate which ones were brought back or when those notices appeared. But at least one notable grant has yet to be restored: a project studying the benefits and risks of the shingles vaccine at UC San Francisco that received national media attention, said Kristen Bole, a spokesperson for UCSF, on Friday...

Full story at https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2025/04/dementia/.

The Special Assembly Meeting of March 25, 2025

There were action items on the agenda of the special March 25th, 2 pm, systemwide Assembly meeting of the Academic Senate which had been called by petition. A little over 300 people were on the Zoom call at the start of the meeting. Most were not members of the Assembly. Yours truly attended so you didn't have to.

The first item asked that across-the-board pay increases for administrators from dean on up occur at the same time as those for regular faculty. In recent years, the former had been getting increases on July 1 and the faculty on October 1. It became clear from the discussion that this vote was largely symbolic of concern by faculty about excessive salaries for top management. Chair Steven Cheung at one point called the resolution "mean-spirited." That remark set off some controversy. A vote was taken first by electronic hand raising. Twenty were reported as in favor, 2 abstained, and 23 voted against. There was some uncertainty about the accuracy of the vote and a roll call was pursued which came out about the same. It was ruled that the motion had failed.

The second matter dealt with a report about converting the entire UC system to a common calendar of semesters. It was said that ultimately it would be the decision of the Regents, were such a conversion to happen. There was debate about the merit of semesters vs. quarters, about the cost of making a transition, and whether it would be best to let the Senate process run its course before making any decisions. 

Chair Cheung said that there is currently no plan for changing calendars at UCOP. Several speakers indicated that given the current budgetary situation, federal funding, and other challenges facing UC, this was not a time to consider adding the burden of changing the calendar.

The there was an action item over a motion that initially assumed any change would be from quarters (for those campuses on quarters) to semesters. A clarifying point was that UC-San Francisco - because it has no undergraduates - would be exempt. The motion was amended to suggest that there be a campus-by-campus vote on adopting a common calendar (whatever that might be) versus remaining on each campus's existing calendar. But by the time a vote might have been taken (around 3:50 pm), a quorum of Assembly members had been lost. 

As a result, no vote was taken and the matter will either be taken up again at another special session or at the next regular meeting of the Assembly if there is room on the agenda.

===

Note: Do you have a sense that not much was accomplished after two meetings and one meeting that was aborted by a technical glitch? Yours truly does.

Lost Funding

The NY Times provides a search option that allows information on how much NIH grant recipients would lose in fiscal year 2024 under a cap of 15% on indirect costs. Yours truly focused on UC in the table below. As can be seen, the total loss for all institutions in California is almost $800 million, about half of which falls on UC:

Loss of NIH funding in fiscal 2024 if indirect costs limited to 15%.

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

University of California, San Francisco   -$121 mil.

University of California, San Diego       -$102 mil.

University of California, Los Angeles      -$65 mil.

University of California, Davis            -$49 mil.

University of California, Irvine           -$41 mil.

University of California, Berkeley         -$25 mil.

University of California, Santa Cruz        -$7 mil.

University of California, Riverside         -$7 mil.

University of California, Santa Barbara     -$3 mil.

UC Lawrence Berkeley Lab                    -$6 mil.

University of California, Merced            -$1 mil.

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

  Total UC                                -$427 mil.

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

Total State of California                 -$796 mil.

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

Note: UC as percent of California               54%

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

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/13/upshot/nih-trump-funding-cuts.html.

Lawsuit against UC-SF

From the San Francisco Chronicle: The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation has sued UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland over an internship program for minority high school students, alleging the program violates state and federal laws because it bases eligibility on race.

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, also names the UC Board of Regents as a defendant. It was filed on behalf of a 15-year-old Berkeley High School student, identified only as G.H., who applied for the program and was rejected. The student is white.

The Community Health and Adolescent Mentoring Program for Success, or CHAMPS, is a three-year internship for minority high school students interested in health professions. It begins in the 10th grade and involves classroom education, health care training, tutoring and rotations in hospital departments, according to UCSF.  

In the complaint, Pacific Legal Foundation argues the program violates the Equal Protection Clause and California’s Proposition 209, which prohibits public universities and entities from using race and ethnicity in employment, education and contracting...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/ucsf-benioff-hospital-internship-lawsuit-20161446.php.

2 Items for Consideration by the Senate - Part 2

Blog readers will recall our earlier post regarding an effort by the senate at UC-San Francisco to add various titles to membership in the senate.* These titles are primarily medical-related and, of course, UC-San Francisco is a medical campus.

To do so, the various other campus senates would need to endorse the proposal and then the UC Regents would have to act.

UCLA's senate has rejected the proposals, which - if approved systemwide - would have substantially enlarged the senate's membership.

From an email of Feb. 11:

Adjunct Faculty Series Academic Senate Membership Memorial to the Regents

Legislative Assembly members voted via the Academic Senate Data Management System on the Adjunct Faculty Series Academic Senate Membership Memorial to the Regents. The Legislative Assembly cast a total of 134 votes: 22 Approve, 110 Disapprove, 2 Decline to Act. A majority of votes cast (82%) were to Disapprove this Memorial.

Health Science Clinical Faculty Series Academic Senate Membership Memorial to the Regents

Legislative Assembly members voted via the Academic Senate Data Management System on the Health Faculty Series Academic Senate Membership Memorial to the Regents. The Legislative Assembly cast a total of 132 votes: 15 Approve, 116 Disapprove, 1 Decline to Act. A majority of votes cast (88%) were to Disapprove this Memorial.

====

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/01/2-items-for-consideration-by-senate.html.
 

Follow the (federal) Money

Top 20 Universities Receiving NIH Grants (2023)

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Johns Hopkins University $842,956,584

University of California, San Francisco $789,196,651

University of Pennsylvania $703,217,343

Duke University $701,940,461

University of Michigan $698,264,076

University of Pittsburgh $658,312,303

Washington University, St. Louis $633,343,121

Columbia University Health Sciences $633,309,114

Stanford University $628,835,527

Yale University $622,499,969

University of California, Los Angeles $580,267,623

University of California, San Diego $572,451,525

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill $559,512,811

University of Washington, Seattle $558,170,733

Vanderbilt University $546,405,280

Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine $501,120,829

Emory University $485,429,870

University of Wisconsin, Madison $446,888,313

New York University $424,963,095

Northwestern University $413,561,989

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Source: Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/02/10/top-20-universities-for-nih-funding-johns-hopkins-ranks-first-again/.

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Note: The table above shows only grants from NIH. In UCLA's case, the total contracts and grants revenue was $1.3 billion, much of which comes from the federal government of which NIH is a part. UCLA's total budget was $11.7 billion. Note also that money flows into UCLA from other federal programs such as Medicare, Medi-Cal (Medicaid), student loans, etc.

Source: UCLA Annual Report 2023 at https://ucla.app.box.com/v/acct-pdf-AFR-22-23.

---

From the NY Times: ...The opening weeks of President Trump’s second term have cast America’s campuses into turmoil, with upheaval that threatens to erode the financial foundation of higher education in the United States. As the administration orders the end of diversity programs and imposes cuts to foreign aid, university presidents and their lawyers fear that millions of dollars in federal funding could ultimately vanish. Some research projects, including many connected to the U.S. Agency for International Development, have been suspended, and program directors have made plans for layoffs.

But universities have largely been quiet. Professors and administrators alike seem wary of provoking a president who has glorified retribution and has already started to tighten the funding spigot. Staying out of the spotlight, some reason, is prudent. Those who have spoken have often relied on carefully calibrated letters and statements, noting that they are watching but hardly offering any overt opposition. In some instances, researchers and campus leaders have been pressured into silence by a government that has demanded they not speak to reporters as money remains bottled up...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/trump-executive-orders-universities.html.