Trump’s Attacks on the University of California (and higher education more generally)

By Roberta Millstein

With so many people in Davis affiliated in some way or another with UC Davis, I thought it might be helpful to try to highlight the two fronts on which the University of California is under attack by the federal government, because it is easy to get lost and confused in the details.  And before I get into some of those details, you may wish to sign up at Stand for UC (open to anyone) for more information and ways to get involved. 

Also, I want to call attention to this helpful webpage from the UCSD Faculty Association, which contains a statement calling on the UC Regents and UC President James Milliken to publicly reject Trump’s demands and has links to many relevant resources.  I’m drawing heavily on their work in this article.

The two points of attack are:  1) the “Demand” letter that the administration sent to UCLA back in August and 2) the “Compact” letter that the administration sent to 9 schools in early October, later broadening its “offer” to all U.S. colleges and universities.  I had originally hoped to discuss both in one article, but just explaining the first of these took a lot of words, so I will try to discuss the “Compact” in a future article.

The “Demand” letter seeks a $1.2 Billion “settlement” from UCLA for allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action.  Now, whatever one thinks of the way UCLA has handled things such as the pro-Palestine protests of last year — and I have my concerns — that amount of money is more than the UC system can absorb without serious damage. Governor Newsom accurately called it “extortion” [1]; President Milliken said it would “devastate UC and inflict real, long-term harm on our students, our faculty and staff, our patients, and all Californians.” 

Importantly, this Demand letter has only recently become public (as of October 24).  The UCLA Faculty Association and the Council of University of California Faculty Associations had to file a lawsuit against the UC administration (yes, you are reading that correctly), who had refused to release the details of the letter.  The UC released the information after a California superior court judge ordered it to do so and the state Supreme Court rejected its appeal (see Monica Stark’s article in the Davis Enterprise for details of the Superior Court’s ruling).

In addition to the monetary demand, the letter makes demands on UCLA that go well beyond addressing the alleged problems.  According to the SF Chronicle, the demands would require UCLA to (and this is not a complete list):

1. Hire a senior administrator to review UCLA’s policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and eliminate “identity-based preferences” in faculty hiring and scholarship programs.
2. Prohibit the use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity as a means to introduce or justify discrimination” in its admissions process.
3. Prohibit the UCLA School of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals from performing gender-affirming surgeries or hormone therapy for patients under 18.
4. Issue a public statement saying that it will comply with Trump’s executive order that recognizes male and female as the only two sexes. 
5. Ban female transgender student athletes from participating in women’s sports.
6. Establish a process so that “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are not admitted to UCLA.
7. Develop training materials to “socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.”

A lot can be said about these, so I’ll just make a few comments here.  Some of them are already prohibited by law (using race and gender in admissions or hiring) or are no longer allowed by UC policy (asking faculty applicants for statements of how one would teach a diverse student body).  #6 and #7 are in direct conflict with one another, in that #6 would cause students not to be admitted based on their beliefs, while #7 claims to promote free inquiry and open debate.  #3, #4, and #5 have no apparent connection to any supposed violation of civil rights.  #4 is a violation of free speech that would affect faculty teaching and student expression.

The administrator named in #1 would have to make “regular reports to a Resolution Monitor,” in principle someone who would be agreed to by both UCLA and the United States; however, if they “cannot agree on a Resolution Monitor within 60 days after a good faith effort, the Assistant Attorney General shall select the Resolution Monitor.”  This Resolution Monitor would have considerable, unprecedented powers and access to data on faculty, staff, and students and is a large and important topic in and of itself.

Perhaps some or all of these sound reasonable to some Davisites.  But the question to ask is not whether these are things that you would like to see, but rather: “Is it the proper role of the federal government to be making such extensive demands on universities, and if this precedent of political interference is set, would you be comfortable with it no matter who was in power?”

At this point, it’s unclear what the UC administration will do in response. It’s shown some tendency to “pre-comply” with the Trump administration. 

According to Stark’s article in the Davis Enterprise, “The University of California has asked for its campuses to turn over personal information of students, faculty and staff as it relates to alleged antisemitism.”  We know that UC Berkeley turned over personal information for ~160 people, but per Stark’s article, it’s unknown if UC Davis has.  In a more recent example of pre-compliance, the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP)— a 40-year old program that sought to “offer postdoctoral research fellowships and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to the diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California” — will no longer help pay salaries for faculty hired from the program [CORRECTED from earlier statement that the program was being ended entirely].

Meanwhile, “A coalition of labor unions representing University of California professors, students and staff members on Thursday asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding in a bid to purge “woke” and “leftist” viewpoints from the university system” (see article here).  Although U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has yet to issue a decision, she stated that “The administration has been very clear that this is not ending with UCLA… Their stated intention is to go after the entire UC system, which gets over $17 billion a year in federal funding” (emphasis added). 

Connie Chan, an attorney for the labor organizations, stated that “The fact of this case shows that the federal government is using the threat of legal and financial sanctions in order to coerce the University of California and to commandeer the University of California in imposing its own ideological and political agenda.”

Indeed.

 

Footnote:

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[1] It’s extortion because, In issuing the demands, the Trump administration initially withheld more than $500 million in research grants to UCLA. But the administration’s leverage remains unclear since a federal judge ordered it to restore nearly all those grants in August and September. [SF Chronicle]