But the University of California may slow that momentum. At a Board of Regents meeting Tuesday in San Francisco, a proposal meant to curb harassment of Jewish students at UC’s 10 campuses was unveiled. It declares “anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California” and that university officials must “challenge speech and action reflecting bias, stereotypes, and/or intolerance.”

This is significantly stronger language than a previous proposal unveiled last year — and quickly rejected — that was more generally worded without a specific reference to anti-Zionism. UC regents are expected to vote on the language at their meeting next Wednesday in San Francisco.

But that vote will only come after they hear sharp protests from students and faculty who see this policy as damaging their speech rights and exonerating Israeli for its treatment of Palestinians.

Professor: Criticizing Israel not equal to bigotry

UC Berkeley literature professor Judith Butler told the Los Angeles Times that the language of the policy allowed for arbitrary definitions of what is unacceptable speech:

[She] questioned who would define that term or decide what crossed the line into discriminatory speech.

 

And although the statement provides no sanctions, calling on university leaders to “challenge” bias, Butler wondered whether those singled out as criticizing Zionism would be denied faculty research funds, promotions or other benefits.

 

“To include anti-Zionism as an instance of intolerance and bigotry is actually to suppress a set of political beliefs that we actually need to hear,” she said. “It saddens me and strikes at the heart of the task of the university.”

UCLA student Eitan Peled, a member of the liberal Jewish Voice for Peace group, blasted the proposal in an interview with the Associated Press. “As a student who considers my work advocating for Palestinian human rights as an expression of my Jewish values, I am surprised to see that criticism of a modern nation-state that regularly violates international law is so centered in a report against intolerance,” he told AP. “Debate over Zionism and the abusive policies of the state of Israel absolutely should be debated vigorously, not silenced by accusations of discrimination.”

Ex-UC president: ‘Microaggression’ against Jews common

Meanwhile, former University of California President Mark Yudof is also speaking out about the BDS movement and the treatment of Jewish students at some universities. He’s joined the advisory board of the Academic Engagement Network, which seeks to “bring together faculty members and administrators to address issues related to Israel.” Its members include Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard president.

In a December essay published by Inside Higher Education, Yudof depicted the BDS movement as trying to shut down discussion of issues involving Israel while linking Zionism to other issues, including police violence toward African Americans. “In age of exquisite sensitivity on some campuses to microaggression, or language that subtly offends underrepresented groups, the ironic toleration of microaggression against Jews often goes unnoted,” he wrote.

It was while Yudof was UC president that the UC system suffered perhaps its most notorious display of anti-Israeli sentiment. Eleven UC Irvine and UC Riverside students were arrested in February 2010 after they interrupted a speech at UC Irvine by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and refused to let him complete his remarks. The incident triggered vast reaction.

July 22, 2013

By Steven Greenhut

SACRAMENTO — With its 10 campuses, nearly 200,000 staff and $20 billion annual budget, the University of California system is emblematic of the state government that pays a portion of UC’s bills: enormous, unruly, overly expensive, steeped in politics, dominated by unions and other special-interest groups and plagued with controversy.

California voters in 2010 turned the reins of government over to Jerry Brown, who has — despite his whimsical rhetoric — governed as the ultimate status-quo politician, protecting the state bureaucracy from reform.

Likewise, the UC regents have decided to choose a status-quo candidate as president, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Regent Sherry Lansing said in a statement that some might find Napolitano to be an “unconventional choice,” but that’s incorrect. Napolitano is as conventional a choice as you could make to run a large bureaucracy, even if she has no serious academic experience.

Based on her tenure in the federal government, she will be an advocate for higher spending, expanded unionization and more of everything that has undermined the university system.

Just when the UC system needed someone who might implement competitive reforms and focus on cost-cutting, the regents turn to a Washington insider more apt to keep federal funds flowing and student aid primed than to stretch the large budget already in place.

The University of California has been embroiled in many scandals in recent years. In one case, administrators enriched themselves, their friends and lovers, even as they were hiking tuition rates for students.

Academic mansion

According to a 2010 article in the Bay Citizen, when outgoing President Mark Yudof took the helm amid a financial crisis, he “moved with his wife into a 10,000-square-foot, four-story house with 16 rooms, 8 bathrooms and panoramic views.” It cost UC more than $13,000 a month. While Yudof is credited for reducing the system’s massive pension problems, he was widely criticized for significantly increasing the living standards of UC leaders and for imposing large tuition hikes on students while he spent his time lobbying at the state Capitol for more money.

One of the common threads in the UC scandals is the sense of privilege and elitism exhibited by those who run the system, combined with their desire for more taxpayer cash and to evade accountability. The Yudof situation came after a 2007 episode, in which “UC President Robert Dynes and the governing Board of Regents … handed out more than $1 million in extra pay and perks to about 70 top executives,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

The university system also has struggled with ethical problems involving doctors accused of performing unauthorized brain research on dying patients and UC fertility doctors who used stolen human eggs and embryos. The University of California system seems to endure more of these things than other large universities.

The Sacramento Bee noted that Napolitano’s selection “marks a shift from academia to politics.” That’s almost right. UC has always been deeply involved in politics, but now it dispenses with the veneer of academic priorities.

As Republican Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Hesperia put it, “After failing to secure the border, ignoring the Fast and Furious scandal that killed one of the agents serving under her command, and leading the invasive and ineffective Transportation Security Administration, it’s honestly hard to imagine what Janet Napolitano thinks she can do for California’s UC system.”

He’s missing the point. Napolitano will do nothing for UC, which is why she was chosen. She will handle UC’s problems in the same way she handled the scandals within her department in the federal government. She will dodge, weave, stonewall, attack critics and lobby for more money.

Thrilled

That’s why the UC establishment is so thrilled to have her. And it’s why Napolitano and the UC leadership — not to mention the state’s Democratic leaders — have not said anything of substance about the university’s problems as they announced her selection. According to all the speeches, this is about Napolitano being an incredible leader whose love of education will help her lead an even more incredible institution.

It’s also unsettling to have someone with “Big Sis’s” authoritarian background running an educational institution that is supposed to value open debate and free speech. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, touched on Napolitano’s “poor record on civil liberties and government transparency” and expressed fears about her “authoritarian management style.”

His points about civil liberties are well taken given the UC system’s own problems on that front after a UC Davis police officer nonchalantly pepper-sprayed students and Occupy protesters in 2011. The officer no longer works for the university, but UC was less than forceful in the way it handled this matter.

If the system were looking for someone to maintain the status quo, it would have been better at least to go with an accomplished educator. Napolitano is not such a person, which is bad news for taxpayers, students and the state of California.

Out of a potential pool of more than 300 candidates, Department of Homeland Security Secretary and former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano was unanimously nominated to fill in the shoes of retiring UC President Mark Yudof. The UC Board of Regents will vote Thursday on her appointment. If approved, Napolitano will be the 20th president of the UC system and first woman to lead in its 145-year history.

UC Regent Sherry Lansing chaired a 10-member special search committee, by which Napolitano was recommended in a unanimous vote. In a statement, Lancing called Napolitano “a distinguished and dedicated public servant who has earned trust at the highest, most critical levels of our country’s government. She has proven herself to be a dynamic, hard-working and transformative leader.”

California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice W. Harris issued a statement echoing similar sentiments of praise:

“The nomination of Secretary Napolitano to become the next president of the University of California is a truly inspired choice worthy of this great system of higher education. Her focus on education as governor of Arizona and the skills and leadership she has demonstrated as Homeland Security secretary make her uniquely qualified to lead the University of California.”

Even Gov. Jerry Brown said Napolitano had “strength of character and an outsider’s mind that will well serve the students and faculty” and that it would be “exciting to work with her.” Which is rather interesting, considering he criticized the trend of hiring out-of-state presidents in 2011, and wanted UC and CSU officials to specifically seek out Californians.

Napolitano’s lack of academic experience

Contrast that with the reaction of former state senator and education reformer Gloria Romero, who said she was “stunned” upon hearing the news. Romero told me the nomination was a “political placement” and “not wise for the UC system.” The University of California system, she said, is a “premiere institute of research scholarship and faculty.”

“I admire her for what she’s done,” Romero said of Napolitano. “She was a governor and did oversee the University of Arizona system, but this is the UC system.”

Romero questioned Napolitano’s credentials and said the UC president should be someone that would be qualified to oversee “the collaboration and development of curriculum, the training and appreciation for research, and equipping the next generation of scholars.”

She pointed to Charles Reed, the former chancellor of the California State University system, whose tenure, she said, was “always very contentious” because of his minimal ability to “understand or appreciate the role of faculty in the development of curriculum.”

When I asked former UC Regent Ward Connerly of the American Civil Liberties Institute if he thought Secretary Napolitano was qualified to oversee the UC system, he simply said, “Doubtful.”

“There is no evidence that she has any academic experience,” he said of Napolitano. “Faculty often insist on someone that has academic experience.”

Indeed, Napolitano’s credentials fall far short of current UC President Mark Yudof and those before him.

Yudof came to the UC system after being chancellor of the University of Texas system from 2002 to 2008. Before that, he was president of the four-campus University of Minnesota system during 1997-2008. He was also a faculty member and administrator at the University of Texas at Austin for 26 years and dean of its law school from 1984 to 1994, as well as the university’s executive vice president and provost from 1994 to 1997.

Robert C. Dynes, the UC president before Yudof, was a professor of physics at the UC Berkeley during his tenure from 2003 to 2008. He was also the chancellor for UC San Diego from 1996 to 2003, and had been a part of the UC system since 1990.

Former UC President Richard C. Atkinson served before Dynes from 1995 to 2003 and had been chancellor of UC San Diego for 15 years. He was also the former director of the National Science Foundation, past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former chair of the Association of American Universities, and a long-term member of the faculty at Stanford University.

These picks were all clear-cut academics. But the closest that Secretary Napolitano comes to these UC presidents is that she has a law degree. She has no research under her belt, no experience overseeing any academic systems, never taught a college class and isn’t even a native of California, even though proponents of Napolitano’s nomination say that, as governor of Arizona, she was focused “extensively on education.”

Playing politics with UC nomination

What we’re actually seeing, said Ward Connerly, is a “revolving door with academia and Democrat institutions.”

“If you go back and look at the Clinton era, for example,” he told me, “a number of academics were appointed in the second term of Clinton’s administration to prominent university positions.”

And it’s no secret the UC regents and faculty have been very supportive of Obama and his academic policies.

In fact, UC Regent Sherry Lansing, former CEO of Paramount Pictures and head of the search for the incoming UC president, had donated $1,000 to Barack Obama as early as 2004. She’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democrat Party, its candidates and its PACs.

The nomination looks like a win-win for the Obama administration, as Napolitano, who has become entrenched in scandals on sexual discrimination, immigration enforcement, the Boston bombings and downplaying terrorism, steps down from her post in the Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, Politico notes, her resignation gives Obama “major leeway” to pick a new DHS secretary without needing any Republican support, if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid follows through with his threat to go ‘nuclear’ and change filibuster rules.

It makes you wonder, asked Gloria Romero, “What is she doing? Who called whom? Who negotiated what and how did they place her? With these scandals brewing, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Ward Connerly told me it was “hard to say if faculty would oppose” such a nomination, or if the academic senate would respect her at all. “UC needs someone adept at bringing outside financial support,” he said. “While we seem to have turned a corner on the economy, UC is not out of the woods yet.”

The special session to vote on Secretary Napolitano’s nomination occurs Thursday, July 18, at 1:45 pm.

(Katie Hillery contributed research to this article.)

By Michael Poliakoff and Andrew Gillen

From coast to coast, discontent rocks the great flagship universities. State funding is declining and institutions are responding with ever rising tuitions. But the response is far from inevitable. Remedies are already in hand, but for the will to take them.

California’s public universities are holding out for a tax increase, which, if approved, would spare them a further quarter-billion dollar funding cut, threatening even greater tuition increases should the ballot initiative fail.  Meanwhile, University of Virginia faculty and alumni are pushing back as the governing board raises concerns about whether the university president is controlling costs.

Strangely absent is any discussion of the basic mathematics of college finance.  We spend more than twice the average of any industrialized nation, but are trailing in terms of results.

University of California President Mark Yudof blames state disinvestment in higher education for tuition increases and claimed in the Wall Street Journal that UC has “laser focus on efficiencies.”  But the inconvenient truth is that higher education in the United States is not underfunded.  Rather, it uses its ample resources badly.

One crucial — and neglected — solution involves greater teaching loads and efficient use of classroom space.

In 1988, the average professor at major research universities taught 2.9 classes each term. By 2004, that number fell to 1.8. Surely, the teaching capabilities of California’s distinguished professorate didn’t decrease in that short time. Consider the impact of a small change in the beleaguered University of California system, with more than 8,700 tenure or tenure-track faculty. If the 10 campuses of the UC system increased the average teaching load of the faculty by just 10 percent, it would be the equivalent, cost-free, of another 870 full-time faculty at work in the classroom, generating substantial additional tuition revenue.

Is this an unreasonable expectation?  In 2003, the University of Maryland System, under budgetary pressure, took this proactive course. It worked.

Capacity

But what about capacity; would there be space for all these new students?  Here is another unpleasant truth about higher education.  It loves to build buildings — digital age be damned.  What it doesn’t do very well is use those classrooms and labs, especially not on Friday afternoons or during the summer.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office observed that the University of California’s summer enrollments were only 23 percent of their fall enrollments. Flagship institutions, moreover, have been notoriously slow to embrace online instruction, with its vast potential for high-quality, lower-cost delivery, despite the huge investments they make in technology.  The University of California’s degree-granting online offerings number only a few dozen.

The conclusions are unavoidable.  There is space and there is expert, human capital to educate the students of this nation — without an infusion of dollars drawn from new taxes or increased tuition.  We need university governing boards willing to demand that the institutions for which they have fiduciary responsibility put students first, in reality, not just rhetoric.  They must change the reward system to recognize that dedicated, effective teaching is as important as published research. A modest increase in faculty productivity in the classroom will not unduly harm higher education research: rather, it will cause institutions to be more discerning about how they invest dollars in faculty research projects.

College leadership regularly claims that America has the finest higher education system in the world.  That boast will no longer hold water if we don’t have dramatic changes, and soon.

Andrew Gillen, Ph.D. is Senior Researcher at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Michael Poliakoff, Ph.D. is Vice President of Policy at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni