The Sacramento Bee has complaints about UC administrator pay and travel expenses. (Of course, we never read in the Bee about pay and travel expenses of the Bee‘s employees or executives – or those of its parent company – which are not available online or through public records requests.) You can read the Bee‘s editorial at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/07/5629077/uc-cant-gripe-about-cuts-while.html
Fire (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) has just released its yearly summary of the state of free speech at 481 public and private colleges and universities in the United States. FIRE defines free speech as “the overwhelming majority of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Few exceptions exist. The survey addresses a wide variety of issues with relevance to free speech, including: Free Speech Zone PoliciesPrior RestraintsSecurity Fee PoliciesPolicies Governing Speakers, Demonstrations, and RalliesPolicies on Bias and Hate SpeechInternet Usage PoliciesPolicies on Tolerance, Respect, and CivilityBullying PoliciesThreats and IntimidationHarassmentPolicies on Bias and Hate SpeechObscenityIncitement The report is both disappointing…
As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year. So we dutifully record the sessions in real time. Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22. This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy. Gov. Brown was in attendance. We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments. But for now, we provide a continuous recording. There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope. The discussion then turned to online ed and…
From the Sacramento Bee: …(T)the University of California’s academic student workers union recently filed a complaint against the UC Office of the President demanding that discussions about class size be a part of their contract negotiations. The union has been bargaining with UC since last summer, and its contract expired at the end of the year… The UC Student-Workers Union, which represents more than 12,000 teaching assistants, tutors and readers across the UC system, is seeking a regular forum to talk about class size with faculty and UC management, said Josh Brahinsky, a Ph.D. candidate in the history of consciousness…
Moreno UC President Napolitano issued a response to the (former California Supreme Court Justice Carlos) “Moreno Report” of Oct. 2013, formally titled “Independent Investigative Report on Acts of Bias and Discrimination Involving Faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.” It includes directives to all campus chancellors: 1) Every campus should designate an official to serve as its lead discrimination officer. This official is responsible for ensuring that an appropriate response is made to all reports of perceived acts of discrimination, bias, and harassment involving faculty, students, and staff from all parts of the campus. * The discrimination officer will…
[More in our Regents coverage. See earlier posts.] The Regents spent some time on the old Master Plan for Higher Ed. There was discussion, according to news reports, among representatives of UC, CSU, and the community colleges on better coordination. …“This report shines an important light on the need to have a central body whose sole focus is guiding the Legislature, governor and our three higher education segments as we plan and build for the future,” (Assembly speaker John Pérez) said. Full story at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-college-reports-20140123,0,5215408.story Um, does no one remember CPEC, which still exists in ghostly form as a website…
We continue our indirect coverage of the Regents. Eventually – as promised – we will post the audio for posterity. [The latest explanation I got for why the Regents post for only one year is that CSU does it that way. Hard to see putting a QED after that. As I have noted in past posts, my home city of Santa Monica posts indefinitely, so why not can’t the Regents do it that way? Oh well!] Anyway, from today’s LA Times: The UC regents on Thursday hired an executive of a Canadian investment fund to be the chief manager of…
