UC Santa Barbara on March 5, 2020     

On Friday August 8, the Trump administration demanded a $1 billion "settlement" from UCLA after freezing $584 million in federal grants for vital scientific and health research. The proposed $1 billion agreement would be the largest settlement since Trump began extorting universities, and marks the first attempt of the federal government to ransom payment from a public university. These attacks have been waged under the guise of fighting antisemitism and investigating alleged Title VII violations, but we see them for what they are: an attempt to cripple public higher education in the nation’s premier public university system. 

Hyde Park, Chicago on June 25, 2017   

It’s great when you’re President of the United States and are unlawfully taking apart the national system for funding STEM research, and then some big universities step in and cut their non-STEM units instead.

 

Case in point: in July, UChicago’s Division of Arts and Humanities announced plans for a reorganization that would cut its number of departments in half, among other things.  The announcement came “just three months after UChicago Arts and the Humanities Division rebranded as a consolidated division.” In mid-August, the Division’s dean, Deborah Nelson, announced a reduction of PhD admissions for some departments and a full “pause” in others.  A week later, Nelson announced that the pause in PhD admissions would cover the entire Division, with a couple of exceptions. 

UCLA on May 14, 2018    

It’s a Friday in the 6^th grade, when you eat at the lunch truck parked outside the school gate. While standing in line, the big kid behind you grabs the five-dollar bill out of your hand. When you turn around, he smirks and says, “I’ll give you this five back if you give me a ten.”  

 

This is the genius shakedown that Trump has imposed on UCLA.  He announced the freezing of $300 million, which UCLA officials said is really $584 million.  Two days later, it was like the first Dr. Evil scene in Austin Powers.  “We hold UCLA ransom for--one BILLION dollars.”

 

Obviously, the choice can’t be to pay $1 billion to get back $584 million. The choice is to say okay, keep the $584 million, or, instead, sue to get back the $584 million that has been (unlawfully) withheld. 

 

It’s not really a choice. UC must pick door number two.

No Regrets Sunday Morning, Victoria Line   

I’ve often broached this topic, most recently in relation to the new UC Irvine plan for hyper-austerity (Liner Note 32; budget analysis in 31 and 33).   This question of professionals’ managerial authority is raised again by some faculty responses to the Columbia and Brown University deals with the Trump Administration, and to the new Trump attack on UCLA. 

 

One professor has aptly summarized the current situation as “a strange moment between critique and advocacy [in which] the two are inseparable.”  Faculty are still critiquing the responses of senior managers as lacking cooperation across the sector—Harvard is off by itself in the Ivy League in suing rather than signing with the Trump Administration. Some, like the members of the UCLA Faculty Association, continue to expose the futility of anticipatory obedience.