University of California Regents Meeting

Hat tip New University


I am posting an article from this week's (UC Irvine paper) New Uinversity regarding the UC Regents meeting, which was held at UCSF January 22-23. I am highlighting the part which refers to Jewish complaints about the recent speaking appearances of Omar Barghouti at UC Riverside, Davis and UCLA.

http://www.newuniversity.org/2014/01/news/first-2014-uc-regents-meeting-recap/

The University of California’s Regents and its committees met for their first meeting of 2014 on Wednesday and Thursday, Jan. 22 and 23, at the University of California, San Francisco.

Notable events that occurred during the meeting included a discussion between UC President Janet Napolitano, California State University Chancellor Timothy P. White and California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice W. Harris; a voicing of complaints from several Jewish organizations; news of a possible strike vote by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299; and pay approval of two new executive hires.

In the discussion between Napolitano, White and Harris, the three voiced their desire to “break through some of the walls set up by the state’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The three systems hope to streamline transfers and have more transparency between the systems.

White believes the greatest challenge for the three public higher education systems is to plan “for the new economy for the next 50 years.”

Several members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community complained to UC Regents about the recent lectures by Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian scholar who has voiced support of boycotts of Israeli universities. He has held lectures at the UC Davis, Los Angeles and Riverside campuses. They claimed that his speeches violated UC policy and contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish students. The Regents did not respond to allegations during the meeting but have recently stated that they oppose a boycott of Israel, while at the same time supported Barghouti’s  right to free speech.

AFSCME Local 3299 said Wednesday that they were considering raising another strike, the third one in a year. They will be scheduling membership votes regarding this possibility in February.

On Thursday, the Regents approved two new hires: Jagdeep S. Bachher as the chief investment officer and vice president of investments, and Claude Steele as UC Berkeley’s provost and second in command.

The regents approved a $615,000 base salary for Bachher after a short public discussion. Officials stated that this money comes mainly from investment returns instead of tuition and tax revenues.

Steele’s salary was under relatively more scrutiny. Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom and Regent Norman Pattiz voted against the proposed $450,000 annual salary for Steele. The salary is below Steele’s Stanford salary but higher than the salary of many UC campus chancellors.

“My concern is self-evident,” Newsom said. “It’s more than any other provost in the entire system.”

UC regents ultimately approved Steele’s package.

Here is the comment I added in the reader thread:

"I was present at the Barghouti speaking appearance at UCR. What is troubling about it is not Barghouti’s anti-Israel stance, but the sponsorship of his appearance by the Humanities and Ethnic Studies departments, as well as the fact that students were given course credit to attend. That clearly implies that the university was putting its imprimatur on the content and message of Barghouti’s speech. When I raised this issue during the q and a and asked the faculty if that was the official position of their departments, I got a non-responsive answer and was told that the question was “preposterous”.

What is preposterous is that we have so many faculty members in the UC system who, instead of educating their students, are trying to indoctrinate them with their own world view."