Brouhaha Continues

Sometimes yours truly falls a bit behind in keeping track of UC and UCLA events. Among the controversial issues currently under review is a requirement that applicants for the UC undergraduate program take an ethnic studies course in high school. What such a course should include, i.e., who the course should cover and in what way, has proven to be contentious. Ten days ago, the following item appeared in the Bruin. Excerpt:

A UCLA professor serving on the Academic Senate broke policy by leaking internal communications about a proposed ethnic studies requirement for freshman undergraduate admission to the University of California. [The individual], a professor of education and psychology, is a member of the UCLA Academic Senate’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools. He was the committee’s 2021-2022 representative to the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, a committee deliberating on a proposed A-G ethnic studies requirement.

After the board’s May meeting where the proposal received pushback, two of the requirement’s course criteria authors released a joint statement defending the requirement. They said they were informed that the board would now be seeking a broader requirement including social justice, diversity and inclusion courses. In the joint statement, the proposal’s authors expressed criticism of this decision. In emails obtained by The Bruin, [the individual involved] – who is also the director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing – forwarded communications from members of BOARS criticizing the joint statement’s tone and content to... a professor of astronomy and physics who opposes the proposed ethnic studies requirement...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2022/10/04/li-cai-breaks-uc-academic-senate-policy-by-leaking-internal-emails.

As you will note from the excerpt, yours truly has omitted the names involved, although you can readily find them from the source article. Obviously, this topic has created strains and stress in the Academic Senate. It's best in such cases to avoid a Good Guys versus Bad Guys approach to the issue. One background factor that yours truly finds has been omitted in the discussion is that high school and elementary school students have fallen behind in the pandemic in many California public school districts and many students seem to have dropped out of the system entirely. Some districts in the pre-pandemic period were having difficulty with delivering the "traditional" subjects required by UC for admission. Adding more requirements or changing the existing requirements will be a challenge.

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/ethnic%20controversy.mp3

Maybe a Turnaround; Maybe Not

As blog readers will know, we follow California new weekly claims for unemployment benefits as an indicator of the state of the economy and labor market. That measure is still at pre-pandemic levels, as the chart shows. But it is showing a bit of an uptick. The uptick could be just statistical noise. Or it could be the start of the much-awaited slowdown or even recession. There has been a steady flow of anecdotal evidence of job cuts and hiring freezes in the high tech sector, which - of course - is important in California. We will see.

As always, the latest data are at https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

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To hear the text above, go to the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/maybe%20uptick.mp3

Toast to Our Brother

Screenshot of Joe E. Brown from the film

In prior posts, we have noted some UCLA student films from back in the day which have been uploaded to YouTube by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.* Some of these films present a light-hearted look at student life in mid-century at UCLA. One of these films is about fraternity life. (Little is said about sororities.) The film presents a positive spin. Everyone is in coats and ties. 

Notable in the film is the character played by well-known comedian and Hollywood actor of that era, Joe E. Brown.** There is no explanation as to how the film makers persuaded Brown to act in the film. He plays an alumnus of the unnamed fraternity who talks about the virtues of fraternity life to new members. 

Brown did not attend UCLA. But he had a son - Don E. Brown - who did attend, and who was a fraternity member. The son died in the military during World War II in an airplane accident and was honored by the university.*** So perhaps Brown had a warm spot for UCLA as a result. 

The 1951 film - A Toast to Our Brother - may be seen at the link below. You won't see a lot of "diversity" depicted in college or fraternity life in this film. The closest the film comes to that subject is mention of the fraternity brothers helping underprivileged kids who are briefly shown and may be Mexican-American.

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIFxTA6Z8Uw.

Brown at the UCLA ceremony
honoring his son

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/07/student-grumbles-in-1950.html; http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/06/ucla-history-student-complaints-about.html.

**https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0113873/.

***https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19421009.2.4&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1.

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/fraternity%20life%20film.mp3

Joel Handler

From UCLA Newsroom: Joel Handler, the Richard C. Maxwell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA School of Law and a seminal figure in the field of poverty law, died on Sept. 22. He was 89. For more than five decades, Handler broke new ground by drawing attention to how law shaped the experiences of poor people and how it could be used as a tool to promote equal justice. He brought rigorous analysis to reveal inequalities that others ignored, and he pioneered the use of empirical methods to study the impact of law on poor people and other marginalized groups.

Handler’s remarkable influence and range made him one of the world’s leading scholars of social welfare policy and administration, government bureaucracy, law and social change, social citizenship and socio-legal theory. Among the many honors he received were election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a German Marshall Fund grant and a Rockefeller Foundation residency. Handler earned his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1954 and graduated from Harvard Law School three years later. Before coming to UCLA in 1985, Handler had spent more than 20 years as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin. He retired in 2011.

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/in-memoriam-joel-handler.

Although not mentioned in the obituary, Professor Handler was one of the early members of the Department of Public Policy as what is now the Luskin School was being created.

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia801402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/handler.mp3

November 1 Deadline Approaching

COVID-19 vaccinations

Per the revised policy, UC campuses must establish an ongoing COVID-19 vaccine compliance schedule, and the annual UCLA deadline to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination and booster (if eligible) or to request an exception is approaching. Both actions may be done via the UCLA COVID-19 Action Center.

The deadline for faculty and staff is Tuesday, November 1. Those who have previously submitted proof of primary vaccine series and booster, and those who have already received an approved exception, do not need to take any further action to be considered compliant with the policy. However, those who have not yet submitted proof of vaccine and booster (if eligible) or requested an exception must do so using the UCLA COVID-19 Action Center.

Those scheduling appointments for COVID-19 booster shots will receive a CDC recommended bivalent vaccine (for ages 12 and older) targeting both the original strain of the virus, as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants that are predicted to continue circulating this fall and winter.

Although UCLA does not require those who are already boosted to receive the newest bivalent vaccine, this booster is highly recommended due to its ability to combat multiple strains of COVID-19. It is recommended that you get an updated bivalent booster at least two months after your last COVID-19 vaccine (either the final primary series dose or last booster). This is regardless of how many boosters or which type of vaccine or vaccines you got in the past. 

Flu vaccinations

In addition, flu season has arrived. The CDC recommends that all individuals, except those who have medical contraindications, receive an annual vaccination to protect against the flu. Per the revised UC Vaccination Policy (PDF), students, staff and faculty who are learning, living or working on its campuses are required to receive or opt out of an annual flu shot. The UCLA deadline to attest or decline the flu vaccination for 2022–23 is Tuesday, Nov. 1.

Full notice at https://covid-19.ucla.edu/deadlines-for-covid-19-and-flu-vaccine-compliance/

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/nov%201%20deadline.mp3

Admissions: An Audio History You Didn't Know About (Food for Thought at Brown)

From time to time, in view of the upcoming Supreme Court decision on admissions and affirmative action, we have been posting Gatecrashers podcasts on Jewish admissions semi-quotas to the Ivy League at mid-century. Today, the featured campus is Brown where the issue was food. From the Gatecrashers description: 

While today most American universities offer all sorts of dining accommodations, the on-campus dining scene in the 1950s was far less welcoming for students with specific dietary needs. For students who observed the Jewish dietary laws known as kashrut, and therefore didn’t mix milk with meat or eat pork or shellfish (among other restrictions), their options for elite colleges were narrowed even further, often to schools in big cities where kosher meat and other offerings could more easily be procured.

Apparently, Providence, Rhode Island was not one of those "big cities."

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To hear the text above followed by the Gatecrashers podcast (with extraneous announcements removed), click on the link below:

https://ia801402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/brown%20admissions%20food.mp3

United Campus?

The announcement of the purchase of the Rancho Palos Verdes campus has raised concerns, as blog readers will know. We have noted the effective geographic isolation of the new satellite campus. By public transportation, as we pointed out, currently there is realistically no possibility of commuting to and from Westwood. By car - or perhaps by some shuttle bus service UCLA might provide - we are talking about an hour each way, assuming no traffic fiascos on the San Diego Freeway.

The Academic Senate, in an email recently circulated, talks about the necessity of keeping UCLA united. It's hard to see how that can be done. If the new campus is part of the undergraduate program, having a stand-alone campus will not be keeping UCLA united. It will not be like the separately-located med schools that some UC campuses have.

From the Senate's email:

Recently, the Chancellor announced the campus expansion of UCLA to two sites in Rancho Palos Verdes and San Pedro. The Executive Board of the UCLA Academic Senate held a closed session meeting in mid-August to provide the Chancellor with a letter titled Campus Expansion Principles and Process that advised on parameters, principles, and shared governance processes.* We emphasized, among other things, that campus expansion must serve the academic mission and our public mission, must involve faculty hiring, must be undertaken through shared governance, must not drain the Westwood campus of resources, must keep UCLA united, and must advance values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We provided this letter to the Chancellor, at his request, for his recent presentation to the UC Regents, who approved the land acquisition.

We share this letter now with all Academic Senate members to encourage a transparent and deliberative shared governance process during this historic moment, a process we particularly welcome given that the Academic Senate did not have an opportunity to provide substantive advice in the critical early stages of the decision-making process.

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*https://dms.senate.ucla.edu/issues/issue/?6489.Campus.Expansion.Principles.and.Process.2022.Aug.

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To hear the text above, click on the link below:

https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/united%20campus.mp3