“I am an immigrant, and I didn’t come here to do anything bad,” Mejias said. “They think that anybody who comes here, that is not from the U.S., has bad intentions. People don’t immigrate just because they want to leave their country. They immigrate because they want to change their future. They want to work and have a different life.”
Mejias’ goal is to transfer to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo following the completion of the required computer science transfer courses at Saddleback College. Then Mejias wants to find remote work and return home to Venezuela.
“I really miss my country, my people,” Mejias said. “I will see if I come back,” he added, because the changing social climate and attitude toward immigration in the U.S. has contributed to Mejias’ hesitation about a future visit to the states.
He also feels more comfortable in California. “I’ve been to different states, and there you see people (who are possessive of) their territory. They carry guns and everything. I’m like, ‘Oh, I am going back to California,’” Mejias said. “I think because I am here in California, I feel way way more safe than being in any part of the U.S.”
Trump hates Harvard. It refuses to follow his orders. Harvard’s President Alan Garber flatly refused to let the Trump goons take control of the university. Trump wants to show Harvard who is in charge. He said Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status. This is an unprecedented show of force. The president is not allowed to interfere with IRS decisions. But he appointed a new IRS leader. Nobody says no to Trump. But Harvard said no.
When Harvard’s President, Alan Garber, resolutely refused to accept the Trump administration’s demand to oversee its curriculum, its admissions, and its hiring practices, Trump was furious. He lashed out and threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. By law, the President is not allowed to direct the IRS to investigate anyone. But lo and behold, the IRS commissioner absurdly claimed that it was already investigating Harvard, the nation’s most prestigious university. Sure.
Academic freedom hangs in the balance. Big government wants to control what universities teach, who they admit, and who they hire.
This is the worst attack on the independence of universities since the McCarthy era. it is actually more dangerous than McCarthy, who picked out individual professors. This is the President of the United States declaring war on America’s universities.
The Internal Revenue Service is weighing whether to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, according to three people familiar with the matter, which would be a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s attempts to choke off federal money and support for the leading research university.
President Trump on Tuesday publicly called for Harvard to pay taxes, continuing a standoff in which the administration has demanded the university revamp its hiring and admissions practices and its curriculum.
Some I.R.S. officials have told colleagues that the Treasury Department on Wednesday asked the agency to consider revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, according to two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
An I.R.S. spokeswoman declined to comment. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal law bars the president from either directly or indirectly requesting the I.R.S. to investigate or audit specific targets. The I.R.S. does at times revoke tax exemptions from organizations for conducting too many political or commercial activities, but those groups can appeal the agency’s decision in court. Any attempt to take away Harvard’s tax exemption would be likely to face a legal challenge, which tax experts expect would be successful.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the I.R.S.’s scrutiny of Harvard began before the president’s social media post.
“Any forthcoming actions by the I.R.S. are conducted independently of the President, and investigations into any institution’s violations of their tax status were initiated prior to the President’s TRUTH,” Fields said in a statement, referring to Mr. Trump’s website Truth Social.
In a statement, Harvard said there is no legal basis for rescinding its tax status.
“Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission,” the university said. “It would result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs, and lost opportunities for innovation. The unlawful use of this instrument more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America.”
Even an attempt at changing Harvard’s tax status would signify a drastic breach in the independence of the I.R.S. and its historic insulation from political pressure.
The Trump administration has cleared out much of the agency’s senior leadership in the last few months, installing allies to temporarily serve as the commissioner and its top lawyer. Its newest acting commissioner, Gary Shapley, was an I.R.S. agent who has said that the investigation into the taxes of Hunter Biden, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, was not aggressive enough.
A new Assembly bill aims to swap a voluntary curriculum with academic standards that would direct what should be taught.
The focus would remain teaching the triumphs, struggles and perspectives of Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and Black Americans.
The bill would restrict an alternative Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum, which focuses on the power of white supremacy and condemns Israel as an oppressive colonial state.
Thirty-one legislators, led by the Legislative Jewish Caucus, are calling for a do-over on teaching ethnic studies after a half-dozen years of strife.
The authors are convinced that flaws in a voluntary model curriculum have led to complaints and lawsuits alleging that some districts are using biased and antisemitic course content and instruction. Therefore, they propose starting again by creating academic standards that would direct what is taught in the course and how.
Assembly Bill 1468 would require the State Board of Education to restart a curriculum process that was highly contested six years ago. It resulted in multiple drafts and an uneasy compromise of language and goals reflected in a nearly 700-page California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. Since its adoption in 2021, school districts have had the responsibility to create their own curriculum based largely on interpretations of ambiguities of what constitutes an ethnic studies course.
“When California believes in something, we write standards for it,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis, D-Morro Bay, a former teacher. “Whether it’s English language arts, English language development, history, social science — there are different sets of standards. It creates a common understanding of what kids are supposed to be able to learn and do, and what teachers are supposed to teach.”
“What’s happened in our schools is, one, antisemitism. But two, it’s tearing a lot of communities apart over something that is supposed to be really beneficial to children when done right.”
In addition to creating academic standards, the bill would create new disclosure and oversight measures that don’t apply to the current model framework or academic standards for other subjects. They would require:
school districts to submit ethnic studies curricula to the California Department of Education for review
the Instructional Quality Commission, which advises the State Board of Education, to recommend a framework and instructional materials aligned to the new standards;
the California Department of Education to report annually on compliance with state laws;
providers of content and standards trainers to submit their materials to the state to ensure compliance with the standards.
Opposition will likely be intense.
“The bill’s push for increased oversight and censorship is deeply concerning, restricting students’ ability to engage in critical discussions on human rights, globalism, and social justice,” said Tricia Gallagher-Geursten, a lecturer in ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. “Furthermore, it diminishes the intellectual integrity of ethnic studies by dismissing the foundational theories and pedagogies that define all academic disciplines, violating the principle of academic freedom.”
“AB 1468 is driven by those seeking to regulate educational content by silencing perspectives they oppose,” she said. “At this crucial moment, the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council stands with California students and our diverse communities in urging legislators to oppose AB 1468 and protect the integrity of ethnic studies.”
Last year, the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) ethnic studies faculty and the California Teachers Association led the opposition to a less sweeping bill that would have required more disclosure of a proposed ethnic studies course and a review by a committee of teachers and parents. The California Teachers Association and UC and CSU ethnic studies faculty members criticized it as unwarranted and unprecedented interference with instruction.
Addis and Assemblymember Rick Zbur, D-Los Angeles, introduced the bill late in the session and withdrew it because of a lack of support. This year’s 32 co-authors include legislators outside the 18-member Jewish Legislative Caucus, including Assemblymembers David Alvarez, D-San Diego, and Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton.
“Jewish students are facing a very difficult environment in the community at large, certainly on college campuses,” said Alvarez. “It’s important that we acknowledge that and that we have curriculum that’s standards-based, as we do with other curriculums, reflects California’s values and steers away from antisemitism.”
Targeting Liberated Ethnic Studies
The legislation would curtail districts that have adopted Liberated Ethnic Studies, although it doesn’t name the curriculum or the consortium identified with promoting it. UC and CSU ethnic studies professors and instructors developed the Liberated version as an alternative after the State Board largely rejected the first draft of the model curriculum, which they had written, as ideological and biased against Jews.
The state’s final version of the model curriculum presents a multiperspective exploration of the culture, achievements and struggles, past and ongoing, of the four primary racial and ethnic groups in California. They are Native Americans, Black Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans.
The Liberated version takes a perspective that stresses the ongoing oppression of people of color through white supremacy and capitalism. It directs students to examine their own self-identities as to how their race, ethnicity, sexuality, and wealth and privilege intersect with others. Ethnic studies teachers say students find the courses uplifting, not pessimistic.
To date, the state has kept no records on curricula that districts have adopted, but more than two dozen districts have contracted with groups affiliated with Liberated trainers and leaders.
Charges of antisemitism
Legislators made an explicit reference to that first draft when they passed Assembly Bill 101, which established the as-yet unfunded mandate for districts to offer a one-semester ethnic studies course in high school starting in fall 2025 and to require taking it for a high school diploma starting in 2029-30.
They wrote, “it is the intent of the Legislature that (districts) not use the portions of the draft model curriculum that were not adopted by the Instructional Quality Commission due to concerns related to bias, bigotry, and discrimination.”
Both Attorney General Rob Bonta and Brooks Allen, executive director of the State Board of Education and an adviser to Gov. Gavin Newsom, have sent separate memos reminding districts to follow that prohibition. Nonetheless, proponents of the Liberated curriculum point to references to oppression and “intersectionality” included in the final framework to argue that their approach is consistent with the state framework.
The Liberated curriculum also emphasizes solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against domination by Israel, a modern “settler colonial state” oppressing people of color.
The slaughter of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas fighters in communities bordering Gaza in October 2023, followed by more than a year of fighting and bombings that have displaced hundreds of thousands of Gazans and caused the deaths of an estimated 40,000, have heightened tensions in the classroom. Jewish organizations and parents have complained that one-sided lessons against Zionism and the Israeli government have blended into overt antisemitism.
The federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating discrimination allegations against Berkeley Unified. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has filed complaints against Fremont High School, Santa Clara Unified, and, in its latest filing, against Etiwanda School District in Rancho Cucamonga. It alleges that a seventh grade girl’s middle school failed to intervene to stop physical abuse and repeated antisemitic slurs, including a Hitler “joke,” by other students. Last month, Santa Ana Unified agreed to discontinue three Liberated-affiliated ethnic studies courses after a lawsuit over public meetings violations revealed antisemitic bias and slurs by staff members.
The proposed bill does not prohibit discussions of the Israel-Palestine issue, avoiding a trespass on free speech. However, it calls for ethnic studies to “focus on the domestic experience and stories of historically marginalized peoples in American society.”
Like Assembly Bill 101 before it, the bill would ensure that ethnic studies “remains true to its original intent — promoting inclusivity, respect, and historical accuracy for all communities with a domestic focus,” said Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park.
The 2016 law that authorized the creation of a model curriculum framework called for a committee consisting of faculty members of university ethnic studies departments, K-12 teachers, and administrators experienced in teaching the subject. The committee members whom the State Board appointed ended up writing the disputed first draft. AB 1468 also calls for a similar advisory committee, the majority of whom would be experts in ethnic studies.
Wouldn’t that possibly lead to standards similar to those in the model curriculum’s first draft — and a repeat of the animosities of the first process?
Bill author Zbur disagrees. The governor, not the State Board of Education, would name the members, and the language of the bill’s intent would make clear that the experts would be more “traditional” and not proponents of the Liberated curriculum. The advisory committee would also include representatives of communities most frequently targeted by hate crimes, thus assuring a voice from the Jewish community.
Newsom would appear sympathetic to the effort. In April 2024, he pledged in his Golden State Plan to Counter Antisemitism that he “will work with the Jewish Caucus and Legislature to pursue legislation strengthening the guardrails established by AB 101.”
His administration has not commented on the new bill.
With virtual learning more relevant than ever, we at Wowzers are working hard to release a variety of new features for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year. As more schools make the move to virtual learning, our goals are to better support the diverse needs of students, provide more automation and adaptive features to personalize content, and encourage student accountability over their own learning. Here’s a rundown of what to expect in the coming months:
Automated Personalized Learning Paths
Soon, Wowzers will be able to automatically generate a personalized curriculum for all students. After completing our comprehensive pre-assessment, your students are assigned a curriculum path that meets them at their individual needs. As students work seamlessly across grade levels, they receive exactly the right content to accelerate their learning and engagement. This new feature is in addition to our integration with NWEA, which gives each student a personalized learning path based on their MAP Growth assessment results. Now, even schools that don’t use NWEA assessments will be able to automatically generate a personalized curriculum for all their students.
Offline Mode for the Wowzers App
Available on Chromebooks, iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS, our new app can be downloaded on almost any device. Because each student’s progress is stored in the cloud, they can switch devices whenever needed and pick up where they left off in the curriculum. With new optimizations, the app downloads up to four times faster than when students access Wowzers via a browser window.
Even when an internet connection isn’t available, the Wowzers app will soon be able to work offline, which allows students to work on Wowzers anywhere. Their progress is immediately retrieved when they sign in where there is an internet connection. The app is a perfect solution for students living in remote areas of the US, and the rest of the world, who don’t have internet access at home. When using the Wowzers app offline, it also requires very little time to load and uses less battery power.
K-2 in Spanish
The kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade content in Wowzers will soon be available in Spanish! Both the text and the voiceover can be switched to Spanish to support our younger ELL students.
New Student Dashboard
The new student dashboard allows students to more easily track their own progress. They will be able to easily see their latest scores and usage, encouraging them to remain accountable in their education journey.
New Remediation Videos
We’re also adding brand new remediation videos to the kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade content, just like the ones found in the older grades. These 100+ videos target exactly where students are struggling and help get them back on track with a short whiteboard lesson.
Additional Adaptive Features
When a student doesn’t quite pass the cumulative assessment at the end of a section, we’ll now move them backward in the curriculum to review the content. Teachers no longer need to manually adjust students’ curriculum paths when they’re struggling and not quite ready to move forward.
Our hope is that these features will make all our users’ lives easier, from students and their parents to teachers and administrators.
How many of you are living at your classroom, trying to find ways to create a new and inviting space for your new students arriving in a few days? This year I found some new items for the classroom that I had to share. I am so excited to begin using these in my classroom this upcoming school year.
Items for the Classroom
Mini Chalkboards
I found these small chalkboard signs at AC Moore for a dollar. I wanted to use these to label each of my literacy centers. I allow my students free choice centers. They choose which center to attend each day as long as by the end of the week they have attended each center at least once (for students who finish centers early they are rewarded). To manage my centers, I only allow 4 students in each center at a time. I have tried many different ideas to help students show they are in the center. I have use the library card pockets and had students put popsicle sticks in with their names to mark the 4 students in the center. I have tried using clips and having them clip to a card describing the center. This year I will be having my students clip to this sturdier chalkboard. I will be able to clearly see who is in each group and that only 4 students are there at a time. Also, the chalkboard allows me to quickly change a center for the following week.
Really Good Stuff Bins
When our budget was due last year, I thought about what items for the classroom I truly needed for my classroom. We use guided math centers in our district and I wanted a way to better organize my math centers and provide multiple activities and differentiated activities in each center. I found these chapter book and picture book bins from Really Good Stuff. They have two dividers that separate the bins into 3 compartments. This will be perfect for my math centers. There will be three different activities students can complete and I can also differentiate during the different compartments or colors.
Flexible Seating
As I previously wrote, I had a project funded on Donor’s Choose for flexible seating last year. This summer I found these great stools at HomeGoods. I am in the process of spray painting them to match my room. This will provide almost every child with a flexible seating choice in our classroom. With a growing class, I am hoping to find a few more ideas for seating before the school year starts so that everyone can have their own seating. The flexible seating last year was amazing. My students were able to concentrate longer and produce more quality work. They loved the choice of working in centers with different flexible seating and using one of the seating for the rest of the day.
Dry Erase Dots
One of my biggest problems is having students work with whiteboards. We have whiteboards for math but they are huge. Having 5-6 kids in a small guided math group, the boards cannot fit at our table with us. Also, the time it takes to get the boards, make sure the markers work, and make space for everyone would also take away so much time from my actual lesson. This year I purchased Dry Erase dots from Amazon. I am so excited to use these items for the classroom this year. The dots adhere to the table so there is no set up each day. It also helps mark off each child’s space at our small group table. Students will be able to use their dry erase dot to solve math problems or write sight words. Even if we are not using the markers, they dots will help show students where their personal space is when sitting at our table.
David Sanger wrote an article in the New York Times about Trump’s “Experiment in Recklessness.” His plan is no plan at all. His approach is no more than “burn-it-down-first,” figure what to do later. His article appeared on Wednesday, before Trump announced a 90-day pause in his incomprehensible plan to tax every nation–even uninhabited islands–but exempt Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Cuba. Even desperately impoverished Lesotho–where the average pay is $5 a day–was subject to Trump’s tariffs.
Our government is run by a cabal of people who are either evil or stupid or both. Probably both. People will die and are dying now because of their actions. Government agencies are being ripped apart. A generation of scientists has been ousted from important jobs in the government and in universities, where their federal grants have been terminated. All federal efforts to address climate change have been cancelled.
Where Trump goes, chaos , destruction and death go with him.
Sanger writes:
As the breadth of the Trump revolution has spread across Washington in recent weeks, its most defining feature is a burn-it-down-first, figure-out-the-consequences-later recklessness. The costs of that approach are now becoming clear.
Administration officials knew the markets would dive and other nations would retaliate when President Trump announced his long-promised “reciprocal” tariffs. But when pressed, several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.
And officials have yet to describe the strategy for managing a global system of astounding complexity after the initial shock wears off, other than endless threats and negotiations between the leader of the world’s largest economy and everyone else.
Take the seemingly unmanaged escalation with China, the world’s second largest economy, and the only superpower capable of challenging the United States economically, technologically and militarily. By American and Chinese accounts, there was no substantive conversation between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, or engagement among their senior aides, before the countries plunged toward a trade war.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s hastily devised formula for figuring out country-by-country tariffs came up with a 34 percent tax on all Chinese goods, everything from car parts to iPhones to much of what is on the shelves at Walmart and on Amazon’s app.
When Mr. Xi, predictably, matched that figure, Mr. Trump issued an ultimatum for him to reverse the decision in 24 hours — waving a red flag in front of a leader who would never want to appear to be backing down to Washington. On Wednesday, the tariff went to 104 percent, with no visible strategy for de-escalation.
If Mr. Trump does get into a trade war with China, he shouldn’t look for much help from America’s traditional allies — Japan, South Korea or the European Union — who together with the United States account for nearly half of the world economy. All of them were equally shocked, and while each is negotiating with Mr. Trump, they seem in no mood to help him manage China.
“Donald Trump has launched a global economic war without any allies,” the economist Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council wrote on Tuesday. “That is why — unlike previous economic crises in this century — there is no one coming to save the global economy if the situation starts to unravel.”
The global trading system is only one example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, only to reveal it has no plan for how to replace it.
State Department officials knew that eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, the nation’s premier aid agency, would inevitably cost lives. But when a devastating earthquake struck central Myanmar late last month and took down buildings as far away as Bangkok, officials scrambled to provide even a modicum of help — only to discover that the network of positioned aid, and the people and aircraft to distribute it, had been dismantled.
Having dismantled a system that had responded to major calamities before, they settled on sending a survey team of three employees to examine the wreckage and make recommendations. All three were terminated from their jobs even while they stood amid the ruins in the ancient city of Mandalay, Myanmar, trying to revive an American capability that the Department of Government Efficiency — really no department at all — had crippled.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unapologetic about the paltry American response when he talked to reporters on Friday: “There are a lot of other rich countries, they should also pitch in and help,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do our part, but it’s going to be balanced with all of the other interests we have as a country.”
Similarly, there was no plan for retrieving a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a notoriously dangerous Salvadoran prison, a move a judge called “wholly lawless” and an issue the Supreme Court is expected to take up in the next few days. A Justice Department lawyer in the case was placed on administrative leave, apparently for conceding that the man never should have been sent to the prison.
Mr. Trump has appeared mostly unmoved as the knock-on effects of his policies take shape. He has shrugged off the loss of $5 trillion in the value of the American markets in recent days. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, he said: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”
To finish reading the article, click here. It should be a gift article.
Friends, we are in a whole lot of trouble. Trump is not a businessman. He played one on TV. He is a performer. He is in way over his head. He called Elon Musk a “genius.” Musk called Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro “a moron.” Trump allowed Musk to tear almost every federal agency apart, destroying vital programs and firing essential personnel.
We have to push back as hard as we can. Trump and his minions have retreated on some of their stupid actions (like purging Harriet Tubman and the Jnderground Railroad of its role in helping slaves escape). Little victories like this should encourage wider protests against the chaos that Trump has unleashed. Is he doing it for Putin’s benefit? Does he suffer from dementia?
The presidency of the University of California has long been considered one of the more challenging positions in American higher education. It requires overseeing nearly 300,000 students, 10 campuses, $8 billion a year of premier research, six medical centers and three federally funded national energy laboratories.
Now, UC’s board of regents is looking for the next person to fill the role and replace President Michael V. Drake, who plans to step down at the end of the academic year. But in the months since the search began, the job has only grown more complicated and pressured as a result of Donald Trump’s election and his policies affecting funding, racial diversity, student protests and many other aspects of higher education.
“I think the university is dealing with more significant challenges all at the same time than they probably have in the last 50 years, 60 years,” said John Pérez, the former state Assembly speaker who served on the university’s board of regents for a decade, including a stint as chair, before stepping down last year. “My friends on the regents have a difficult task to find the person to lead through this moment.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating, among other things, allegations of discriminatory admissions practices and complaints of antisemitism at several UC campuses.
The federal threats are on top of issues that existed even before Trump took office, such as the likelihood of a nearly $400 million cut or 8% to UC’s state funding this year. Even with that probable budget reduction, the next president will be expected to increase graduation rates — especially among Black and Latino students — and to keep enrolling more California residents.
And there are the perennial questions of how to deal with the many and sometimes conflicting constituencies within the state and university, including the state’s governor and legislators, faculty, alumni, student leaders, labor unions, political activists and parents.
“We need a UC president that can be ready to advocate and fight back on any reduction of potential federal funds, and then also be ready to figure out what to do in case we do incur those losses,” said Assemblymember Mike Fong, D-Alhambra, who is chair of the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee. He said some legislators have floated the idea of another tuition hike for out-of-state students.
University presidential searches often raise the questions of whether to get someone from inside the university or someone with fresh, outside experience, and whether to hire someone with experience in academia or from another background, such as in business, government or philanthropy. UC has tried different routes in its most recent presidential hirings.
It’s unlikely that the next president will have every desirable skill and experience, said Hironao Okahana, a vice president at the American Council on Education, a national organization that lobbies on behalf of universities.
What’s most important, he said, is that the president be prepared for a constantly evolving job. He noted that in the past five years, college leaders have had to navigate a pandemic, a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and now the many federal threats. “Higher education leadership is never static, especially for a place like the University of California,” he said.
The search for the next president was launched last summer after Drake announced he would step down. Drake, who earns a base salary of $1.3 million after getting a raise last year, entered the job in 2020 and had to deal with many of the issues arising from the pandemic, including a temporary switch to online classes.
The university’s website for the search says the regents are seeking “an individual who is an outstanding leader and a respected scholar who has successfully demonstrated these abilities in a major complex organization.”
At the most recent regents meeting last month, board chair Janet Reilly said the special regents committee in charge of finding the next president “has been working diligently” but did not say when the search would finish. The committee’s work is being tightly held: It has met only in closed session and has not released the names of any potential finalists.
UC also hosted three town hall meetings in January to gather public feedback. Assisting with the process is SP&A Executive Search, a national search firm specializing in higher education and nonprofit sectors.
Drake’s final months on the job have been marked by policies and actions responding to the Trump administration, a reality with no end in sight.
Last month, his office announced UC would no longer require faculty job applicants to submit statements about how they would promote diversity. That move came after the Trump administration threatened to withhold funding from universities with programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier that same day, Drake announced a systemwide hiring freeze in anticipation of those potential funding cuts.
In February, UC also filed a declaration of support when California and 21 other states sued the Trump administration over billions in proposed National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding cuts. The judge in the case has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making those reductions.
UC gets about $6 billion annually in federal funds for research and other program supports, with NIH being the top source. Cuts to that funding would be felt across the immense system, which comprises nine undergraduate campuses and one graduate-only campus, UC San Francisco. All 10 campuses have R1 status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the highest tier for research universities.
Also potentially at risk if the White House and Congress decide to pursue deeper, broader cuts is the $8 billion in Medicare and Medicaid that UC receives for patient care at the medical centers at its Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and San Francisco campuses. So far, Trump says he will not reduce those.
UC’s next president could be squeezed from two sides: trying to preserve federal funds while also facing pressure from students and faculty not to succumb to any potential demands from Trump. Last month, Columbia University agreed to change its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department to keep $400 million that the Trump administration threatened to cut.
Students are “extremely concerned” that a similar scenario could play out at UC, said Aditi Hariharan, a fourth-year student at UC Davis and president of the systemwide UC Student Association. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating UC’s Berkeley, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara campuses for possible Title VI violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” Separately, the Department of Justice is investigating Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine for potentially considering race in admissions, which UC has denied doing.
Hariharan said she was disappointed to see UC stop requiring diversity statements, which she viewed as a concession to Trump.
“I’m hoping to see the next UC president push back stronger,” she said.
To navigate the many federal complications, UC might consider hiring someone with government experience this time, said Adrianna Kezar, director of the University of Southern California’s Pullias Center of Higher Education.
She pointed to Janet Napolitano, who was UC’s president from 2013 to 2020 and took the job after stints as the U.S. secretary of homeland security and governor of Arizona.
“Someone like that will understand how to navigate all the executive orders, how to navigate shifts in the agencies,” Kezar said. “Over the next four years, this is going to be a landscape where, if you lack that kind of experience, I think it’s going to be really challenging.”
It would also help if the next president has philanthropic acumen, Kezar added. If UC loses significant federal dollars, the university will need to look for new funding sources, she said.
Napolitano was succeeded by Drake, who had a much more traditional academic background. He served as president of Ohio State University and, before that, was UC’s vice president for health affairs and later chancellor of UC Irvine. Napolitano’s predecessor, Mark Yudof, also had an academic background. Before serving as UC’s president from 2008 to 2013, he was the dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s law school, president of the University of Minnesota and chancellor of the University of Texas system.
Pérez, the former regent who chaired the board when Drake was hired, said he’d prefer UC to hire another president who has headed a large public research university, especially if they have experience overseeing academic medical centers.
Despite the many threats and challenges UC faces, Pérez added that he’s confident “in the strength of the institution to weather these storms.”
“But having the right leader means that we will weather the storms more easily and that folks will have confidence that we won’t lose sight of all that’s essential in the university,” he said.
Hi there, Education Coffee Break readers! I’m excited to share a special update with you. As you know, I’ve been focusing mostly on primary grade education here on the blog, but we’re about to branch out into something new!
I’d like to introduce my husband, Joshua, who will be joining me as a contributor to the blog. He started teaching in August 2023 at Dauphin County Technical School, a Career Technical Education (CTE) high school, where he teaches Web Development & Design. He’ll be bringing his experience and insights from working with high school students and his love for technology to add a new perspective here.
Joshua will focus on high school education, especially around preparing students for real-world careers through practical, hands-on learning. His background is quite different from mine, but that’s what makes this so exciting! You’ll be able to find content and ideas that span from elementary classrooms all the way up to high school settings.
I’m really excited to have him on board, and I think you’ll love hearing from him, too. Keep an eye out for his first post soon!
One of my biggest problems is having students work with whiteboards. We have whiteboards for math but they are huge. Having 5-6 kids in a small 
