Listen to the Regents Full Board meeting of Sept. 17, 2020

In our continued coverage of last week's Regents meeting, we will jump over the Wednesday afternoon session and go to the full board meeting on Thursday. (We'll get back to Wednesday afternoon when yours truly has a chance to listed to those sessions.)

The Thursday full board meeting began with public comments. Topics included disabled students, mental health, pay cuts, the Hawaiian telescope, police, UC pension investments in a Laguna hotel which has a labor dispute, layoffs, preserving historic murals at UC-San Francisco, outsourcing, and access to data related to Prop 209.

There were various reports after the public comments. The graduate student representative noted problems with the UCPath payroll system in getting proper pay to grad student assistants. Dr. Carrie Byington reported on the strategic plan for UC Health, with much discussion of diversity, retention, and the effects of the coronavirus. General issues of "accountability" were raised. A review of how UC reacted in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008. There was discussion of Prop 209 (anti-affirmative action) and its possible repeal via Prop 16 in November. Note was taken of the adverse poll results on repeal that discussed in Friday's post on this blog.* The Regents enacted an anti-quota resolution, apparently to persuade voters that Prop 16 would not produce strict numeral quotas on admissions. Finally, there was approval of formation of an LLC (limited liability corporation) to capture revenue from university inventions at Berkeley and UCLA. 

You can hear the recording of the meeting at the link below. Note that at the moment we cannot embed a player due to changes in the Blogger system. (The "legacy" system is no longer available on Blogger which permitted the embedding.) However, the link will take you to the recording:

https://archive.org/details/board-9-17-2020

(I have emailed Archive.org about the embedding issue.)

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/09/did-regents-undermine-prop-16.html

A UCLA-Centric View of Last Night's Seismic Event

The Bruin takes a UCLA-Centric view of last night's earthquake. But its article does provide a reminder about at-risk campus buildings through a link to an earlier article that appeared just one year ago:

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Powell Library and Charles E. Young Research Library are three of 15 buildings that were found to pose serious risk to life according to a seismic assessment initiative released by UCLA on Thursday.

There are three UCLA buildings that would pose a greater risk to life in the case of a strong earthquake, denoted as a severe risk – The Clark Library Gate House, the Kneller House and the UCLA Nimoy Theater – which are located off campus and are unoccupied, said Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Gregg Goldman in an email statement.

UCLA’s study stems from updates to the UC Seismic Safety Policy made by the University of California in 2017 to assess the seismic risk of buildings on all 10 UC campuses and includes 97 buildings UCLA has reviewed in phase one and two of a three phase review process. Phase three for all UC building assessments is set to be completed no later than June 30, 2020...

Full story from the earlier article at https://dailybruin.com/2019/09/01/seismic-assessment-lists-some-ucla-buildings-as-posing-serious-risk-to-life

Did the Regents Undermine Prop 16?

The Mercury News carries an article - see below - about concerns of Asian-American parents concerning Prop 16 (which would end the ban on affirmative action under Prop 209). At the same time, a PPIC poll suggests its chances of enactment are poor.*

The Regents took two actions - which can be seen as interrelated - recently. One was to endorse Prop 16. They could alternatively have stayed silent. The other action was to drop use of the SAT and ACT. The latter decision was contrary to a recommendation in a faculty report the Regents themselves had commissioned. They could have simply accepted the faculty recommendation or just postponed the issue.

Former Governor Brown used to say that not every problem needs a law. Similarly, not every controversial issue or ballot proposition needs an opinion from the Regents. Perhaps there are cases where less is more, and this may have been one of them. Just a thought...

Here is the Mercury News piece: (excerpt)

Six years ago, when California lawmakers mounted a campaign to repeal the state’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions, Chinese American opponents of the proposal flooded lawmakers with calls, emails and petitions. Their campaign, mobilized on the group messaging app WeChat and in Chinese-language media, was successful, and the constitutional amendment died in the Legislature.

This year, a better-organized effort to repeal the ban has put Proposition 16 on California’s November ballot. It’s an even broader initiative that would reverse the measure approved by voters in 1996 banning any consideration of race and gender in public college admissions, as well as other government functions such as hiring and contracting. The initiative’s supporters have dwarfed their opponents in fundraising and endorsements, but a poll released this week found Proposition 16 is trailing badly among voters.

One potential factor: Proponents of affirmative action are once again facing vocal resistance from some Asian American families — in particular, from more conservative recent Chinese American immigrants — who fear it will mean fewer spots for their children at top University of California schools.

“The opposition is fixated on higher education,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside professor who studies Asian American political attitudes.

Members of the No on 16 campaign, which has held car parades and rallies in several East Bay and Peninsula suburbs and picketed outside the Los Gatos headquarters of Netflix after founder Reed Hastings’ wife donated $1 million to the Yes side, downplayed the importance of college admissions in interviews.

“Everyone knows that in the Asian community, that their kids have to be very, very good to get into a good college — that’s an open secret,” said Frank Xu, a San Diego IT consultant and member of the No campaign who came to the United States from China in 2005. “Proposition 16 will make it worse, but that’s not the biggest concern.”

Instead, Saga Conroy, another member of the opposition who immigrated to the United States from China in 2009, said she and other first-generation immigrants oppose affirmative action because it offends their more traditional notions of America as a land of equal opportunity, where anyone can make it if they work hard. The proposition’s supporters say that has never been the American reality and that systemic racism means that a level playing field is a myth. Conroy and others in the No campaign, which calls itself Californians for Equal Rights, disagree.

“California is so diverse, and we (treat) everyone equally,” she said. For immigrants, “Prop 16 doesn’t fit into their American journey.”

Still, Sunny Shao, a doctoral candidate who works with Ramakrishnan and tracks political activity on WeChat, said concerns about college admissions are “the main mobilizer” against Proposition 16 on the wildly popular platform. And nationwide, Asian Americans have similarly been on the front lines of fights against affirmative action programs at Ivy League colleges and top New York City high schools.

At 20.5 percent, Asian American students had the highest admission rates at UC Berkeley last year, compared to 17.9 percent of White students, 14.4 percent of Latinx students and 11.6 percent of Black students. A similar pattern held at UCLA.

Black and Latinx admission rates to Berkeley and UCLA, the system’s most selective campuses, plummeted after California’s ban on affirmative action 22 years ago.

In the zero-sum world of college admissions — where an acceptance letter for one student means rejection for another — affirmative action opponents worry that increasing the number of Black and Latinx students will by definition mean fewer White and Asian students will make it in...

Full article at https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/17/proposition-16-why-some-asian-americans-are-on-the-front-lines-of-the-campaign-against-affirmative-action/

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*https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/ppic-statewide-survey-californians-and-their-government-september-2020.pdf (p. 10)

Note: There used to be folk wisdom among politicos in California that a proposition on a controversial subject was in trouble unless it got something like 60% support BEFORE the campaign began. Starting with 47% no and 31% yes is not promising to say the least. Of course, we won't know until Election Day.

Another element to consider from a different PPIC publication is the profile of likely voters in the state (as of September 2020):

Source: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/JTF_LikelyVotersJTF.pdf

No Training

UC national labs suspend diversity training after Trump administration order

San Francisco Chronicle, Nanette Asimov, 9-17-20

The Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, managed by the University of California but federally funded, has suspended its employees’ diversity training program by order of the Trump administration, which recently called such programs “divisive, anti-American propaganda,” The Chronicle has learned.

With more than 1,400 scientists and engineers, and thousands more visiting scholars and students from around the world, the lab that overlooks San Francisco Bay is funded largely by the U.S. Department of Energy and conducts unclassified research across several scientific disciplines. It is known as Berkeley Lab.

“The Department of Energy has asked all the national labs, which are funded by taxpayer dollars, to suspend their diversity, equity, and inclusion training programs,” lab Director Mike Witherell told employees Friday in a memo acquired by The Chronicle. “Berkeley Lab is cooperating with this request and is pausing DEI-related training until we can, working with DOE, assess our offerings in light of the current concerns.”

Lawrence Livermore National Lab, a national security research institute in Livermore funded mainly by the Department of Energy and run in part by UC, has also suspended much of its diversity training, The Chronicle has learned.

Both laboratories declined to comment. They referred The Chronicle to the Department of Energy, which did not respond to several requests for comment and for the department’s directive.

The federal crackdown comes as President Trump’s re-election campaign increasingly focuses on disparaging racial justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, playing to white fears and grievances, and stoking the culture wars. Among the most recent examples, this summer the president called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” and, in rolling back anti-segregation provisions of the Fair Housing Act, he assured suburbanites that “crime will go down.”

A widely circulated memo from the U.S. Office of Managment and Budget, issued Sept. 4 to the heads of federal agencies and executive departments, including the Department of Energy, makes clear that the president’s intent is to eliminate all anti-racism instruction funded by federal dollars, and to cancel any contracts or other federal business in which multicultural acceptance plays a part.

“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” wrote Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Citing unidentified news reports, Vought asserted in the memo that the purpose of training employees on matters of diversity is to indoctrinate them with the idea that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” and that it is racist to believe that “America is the land of opportunity.”

“The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,” Vought wrote, adding that additional guidance is forthcoming for agencies and departments to cancel any federal contracts that touch on such things, and to look for legal rationales supporting such actions.

The federal order drew criticism from at least one faculty member, who called it “unethical and harmful,” and unease from UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who serves on the regents’ national laboratories committee...

Full article at https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/UC-s-national-labs-suspend-diversity-training-15575382.php

Another End of the Beginning Report on the California Labor Market as of August

 

As officially measured, the California unemployment fell to 11.4% in August. However, we were still very high by historical standards.

The latest news release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is at: 

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm.

It would be nice to have a detailed NET accounting

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Bruin on revenue loss due to the coronavirus crisis by UC. Look, we all know that UC is losing money due to the situation. But some of it has been recovered from the federal government. Other federal money may yet come. The problem is that UC tends to cite gross losses without the offsetting federal receipts. What is relevant is the NET loss after federal reimbursement. How about a simple table by fairly detailed category showing the gross loss, federal offsetting receipts received, federal requests pending, and reasonable potential future federal reimbursements? By "fairly detailed," we mean more detailed than the health vs. "campus" division in the Bruin article. Example for the "campus": Tuition (international, other out-of-state, in-state), dorm rent, food service, etc.).

The University of California is pursuing federal funding to alleviate its nearly $2 billion revenue loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UC system has incurred high costs since the beginning of the pandemic and hopes to obtain additional funding if the federal government passes new stimulus packages, said UC spokesperson Stett Holbrook in an emailed statement.

The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, which is currently stalled in the United States Senate, could give states a total of $27 billion to help public universities offset costs incurred from the pandemic. These funds would be allocated to institutions based on each institution’s proportion of Pell Grant recipients and total student enrollment, according to the HEROES Act. The amount of funding the UC could get from the HEROES act is not yet determined.

The UC already received $761.1 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act as of July, Holbrook said. The act allocated $137.4 million to the campuses, $130 million toward student financial aid and $493.7 million toward UC Health.

From the beginning of the pandemic in March through July 31, the UC lost $1.9 billion in expenditures and revenue, Holbrook said. Nearly $900 million of losses came from the UC campuses and $1 billion came from the UC Academic Health Centers, Holbrook said...

Full article at https://dailybruin.com/2020/09/17/uc-system-experiences-nearly-2b-loss-as-a-result-of-pandemic-seeks-federal-aid

UCLA History: Computer

UCLA's mainframe computer in the 1960s. Note the tape drives and the large printer in the foreground.