Nice University You’ve Got There UCLA, Be a Shame If Something Happened to It

"Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans too"

Donald Trump says UCLA needs to pay the federal government ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

That’s the “settlement” price to unfreeze hundreds of science, medical, and research grants at UCLA worth more than half a billion dollars. And that doesn’t count the $172 million the Department of Justice says they want from UCLA to pay students and other individuals impacted by alleged discrimination.

The administration claims the university violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against employment discrimination related to race, color, religion, sex, national origin or shared ancestry, including Jewish and Israeli identity.

News of the federal grants being suspended came the same week UCLA agreed to settle a $6 million lawsuit that asserted the university allowed pro-Palestinian protesters to block Jewish students on campus during demonstrations last year.

The “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” that started at UCLA on April 25, 2024 was a lightning rod. There were attacks by counter-demonstrators, assorted right wing pundits whipped up tensions, and pro-Zionists raised tens of thousands of dollars from celebrity and billionaire donors. There were similar protests and counterprotests at colleges nationwide.

It's certainly true that the conflicts in Israel and Gaza set the stage for antisemitic and Islamophobic reactions. It’s also true that a Trump administration jam packed with extremists has sought to exploit these hateful expressions. The irony of it all is that many of those extremists likely did their fair share of Jew hating on their way up through the ranks.

Public sentiment was directed toward characterizing those speaking up for Palestine as terrorists. The government of Israel has muddled this imaging, as genuine genocide is taking place in Gaza, and those not under the sway of hard core Zionist propagandists are starting to ask uncomfortable questions.

Sadly, for the Palestinians, it’s too little, too late. They have all but been driven into the sea, except that the beach is now off-limits. And it’s sad for the Israelis, too. They’ve become a reflection of what they started out opposing. The so-called two state solution is no longer possible when significant elements of either side can say they envision a “final solution”

Andrew O'Hehir at Slate has broken the silence around that reality on our side of the pond:

• Maybe it’s admirable, on some symbolic level, that France, Britain, Canada and a bunch of smaller Western nations have broken ranks with the U.S. and, several decades too late, want to legitimize the Palestinian Authority, which is at best a dysfunctional pseudo-state and at worst an Israeli subcontractor. Nice try, I guess, but I’m not buying it.

• These fading leaders of the Old World, like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the editorial board of the New York Times and so many others I could name on our side of the ocean, are clinging to the last doctrines of a dying faith whose last bishop, it would seem, was President Joe Biden, tragicomic hero of a poorly-reviewed melodrama.

• Call that faith neoliberalism, call it liberal democracy, call it the Washington consensus or the postwar order or what you will. Those raised within its monastic orders still believe, or pretend to believe, that their version of normalcy is the natural order of things and will somehow be restored, even after a fascist coup in America, after all the death in Gaza, after all the other outrages too painful to list. At least Harold Macmillan understood, to use the parlance of his time, that history was a cruel mistress and was sure to leave him behind.

***

California Gov. Gavin Newsom rhetorically pushed back:

• “I’ll do everything in my power to encourage them to do the right thing and not to become another law firm that bends on their knees, another company that sells their soul, or another institution that takes a shortcut and takes the easy wrong versus the hard right.”

Each institution that’s bent to the President’s will –which always includes payment– has paved the way for others to be targeted by the MAGA right. And, as Columbia University can testify, the government’s asks continue to mount, regardless of any settlement announced.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making bank on one the few forms of discrimination they’re willing to admit exists.

As Harvard University is finding out. Trump’s minions want admissions data, all of it.

The grift part of the Trump administration’s assault on institutions of higher learning is the leading edge of a much larger vision leading to ideological control of every aspect of society. Now there are inquiries concerning the Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) “close” ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Alleged “whistleblower” information provided to the Congress says the University is training “the rising CCP elite who are being prepared for senior Communist Party leadership positions.”

The Trump administration alleged that Harvard has failed to protect against antisemitism, and the government has demanded changes to the university’s curriculum as well as hiring and enrolment procedures that it says promote a liberal political agenda. They have inaccurately portrayed Harvard as rife with crime, suggesting that its international students were the source.

In its demands for UCLA the government is seeking the appointment of a monitor to enforce the settlement’s terms, the abolition of scholarships connected to race or ethnicity and the cessation of diversity statements in hiring. Trust me when I say that restraints and bans on educational content aren’t far behind.

The scariest part of this administration’s demands on higher education is the apparent willingness of some college officials to negotiate concessions with the aim of preserving the institution; concessions that cast doubt on its ability to fulfil its mission(s) in the future.

Already academics, researchers, and scientists are considering leaving the United States. Given the disruptions already taking place, 75% of the 1600 scientists who responded to a Nature poll are considering their options, with Europe and Canada among the top choices for relocation.

Although there are many differences with the rise of authoritarianism in various countries, one commonality is the brain drain that occurs. Many of those involved with higher education and research are unwilling to accept “simple answers to complex questions” and the scapegoating that inevitably accompanies such leadership.

Ultimately what’s going on with academia is an attempt to neuter institutions and beliefs capable of challenging the edicts of our wannabe authoritarian overlords. It is textbook authoritarianism in the mold of Putin’s Russia and Orbán’s Hungary. It embodies the early stages of all the horror stories of 1930s Europe.

‘Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans too’ via Great Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, 6 May 1933 Looting of the Institute of Sexology

How Trump’s War on Higher Education Is Hitting Community Colleges by Ben Austen at The New York Times

• Durham Tech was one of those baby-boomer schools, opening its classrooms in 1961. On the campus this spring, Buxton was eager to clarify to me a fundamental difference between community colleges and the four-year institutions everyone else seemed fixated on. Those other schools, through their rigorous admissions process, he said, “They go out and identify talent. Our job is talent development.”

• By accepting everybody, community colleges were on the front lines of serving students with legacies of exclusion. These schools then had to do the hard part of developing talent — helping their historically un-college-educated students actually catch up. They had to make decisions about tailored supports for their diverse student bodies and the different barriers specific groups faced, about basic academic programming and affordability; they had to figure out whether faculty and coursework and campus life reflected the makeup of the students in ways that helped them succeed. With the sweeping attacks on D.E.I. — the all-encompassing, catchphrase notion of it — that fundamental core of what community colleges do was now in jeopardy.

• “They’re after the Ivy League institutions, but we’re affected by the same legislation, the same executive orders,” George Boggs, emeritus president of the American Association of Community Colleges and also a founding member of Education for All, told me. “Except it can be worse for us, because our students are more diverse, and they need different kinds of support.”

***

Postcard from Israel: Brain Drain by Jonathan Broder at SpyTalk

• Ever since Israeli forces bombed Iran’s nuclear and ballistic program in June and mauled its Middle East proxies —Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis—in response to Hamas’ 2023 attack, Israel today is in its strongest strategic position since its founding in 1948. And a broad majority of Israelis, especially those on the political right, share my friend’s confidence in Jerusalem’s overwhelming military superiority over its foes. But for other Israelis, including a growing number of well-educated young people, the triumphalism has given way to a deep revulsion toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endless wars, the country’s skyrocketing cost of living, and its drift toward a hardline Jewish ethno-nationalism. Sensing no future for themselves in the current political and economic climate, many of these Israelis are either emigrating or preparing to leave in unprecedented numbers.

• Their destinations include the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, many European Union countries, even Germany. They say they’re fed up with the seemingly never-ending war in Gaza, appalled by the government’s deliberate starvation of Gaza civilians, and pessimistic about the prospects of stopping Netanyahu’s longstanding efforts to geld Israel’s judiciary, the only authority that can block the government ‘s plans to annex the occupied West Bank and hold Netanyahu accountable in three trials on corruption charges, which the prime minister has repeatedly managed to postpone for several years.

• According to the Central Bureau of Statistics in Jerusalem, Israel today is experiencing the largest exodus of its citizens to other countries since its founding. The official figures show that nearly 83,000 Israelis emigrated from the country in 2024—more than double the number between 2009 and 2021 and higher than the emigration figures for both 2022 and 2023. The statistics also show the majority of 33,000 new immigrants who arrived last year are Orthodox Jews who are likely to bolster the constituency that has elected increasingly hawkish nationalistic governments for the past three decades.

***

Why you might not know that 2024 was America's safest year since the 1960s by Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby at Popular Information

• Media coverage of crime is not proportionate to actual crime trends. Local news is predominantly filled with crime coverage, and “local stations manipulate crime and violence as a marketing strategy,” according to a report by the Sentencing Project. Studies have estimated that local news coverage “devote[s] one-third to one-fourth of their airtime to crime stories.” Local news also “concentrate[s] on uncommon but sensational incidents of violence.”

• Politicians often utilize crime as a talking point, leading the media to cover crime more frequently. A 2022 analysis by Bloomberg found that, after New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who made crime a major point of his campaign, was elected, coverage of crime in New York City increased dramatically. After Adams’ inauguration, “[t]here were nearly 800 stories per month across all digital and print media about crime in New York City,” compared to “an average 132 stories per month during the eight-year tenure of the previous mayor.”

• Media coverage can also “warp public opinion in ways that set back policy changes shown to improve public safety.” A 2024 Sentencing Project report found that in Baltimore, media outlets “highlighted crimes by young people far out of proportion with their arrest rates.” The report notes that the media coverage “likely contributed to a bipartisan rush to toughen juvenile justice policies that is unsupported by the evidence of what actually works to reduce youth offending.”