UC Davis reported on Wednesday that 10 UC Davis students and eight recent graduates have had their F-1 visas terminated, updating the numbers from the weekend (seven students and five recent graduates)… The Council of University of California Faculty Association (a UC-wide advocacy organization with representation at each of the 10 UCs) and UC-AFT (which represents non-senate faculty and librarians) urge UC Office of the President to provide legal support to students whose visas are revoked; allow affected students to stay enrolled and continue their studies remotely; ensure deported students or scholars continue to receive funding until the end of their contracts; let deported faculty or staff work remotely and keep their salaries; and take action in federal court to prevent visa terminations without due process.
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by Monica Stark, The Davis Enterprise.
Posted: April 11th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Pratheepan Gulasekaram of the University of Colorado, said Trump’s Department of Homeland Security “is acting as though they are unbounded by congressional laws and can simply remove people at their discretion. This should scare all Americans — citizens, green card holders and student visitors.” Kevin Johnson, immigration law professor and former dean of the UC Davis law school, said he is concerned the Trump administration’s actions could discourage prospective students from applying to American universities in the future. “It’s going to have an impact on students coming, impact on universities in paying revenues, and that means there’s likely to be fewer foreign scholars who decide to come to the U.S. or stay after they’ve gotten a degree here,” he said.
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by Anna Bauman, St. John Barned-Smith, Bob Egelko, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Posted: April 9th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Berg said the NIH’s justification that it can terminate a grant because it no longer “effectuates agency priorities” will “almost certainly” be litigated. “When a grant is awarded to a university, there are terms and conditions that go with the grant. It’s basically a legal contract,” he said. “The question of whether the rationale they’re giving is actually legal is very much an open question. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that the great majority of the terminations that have been done are in fact legal.” … A federal judge in Massachusetts has also enjoined the NIH’s recent guidance to cap the amount of money it sends to institutions to cover indirect research costs after a cavalry of Democratic attorneys general, institutions and trade associations argued in a lawsuit that the plan is “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the APA.
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by Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed.
Posted: April 2nd, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Every year, maintenance costs for University of California and California State University campuses total a combined $1.5 billion. But those repairs don’t always get made. The unpredictable nature of the state’s budget means there isn’t always enough money to make all the necessary fixes. State revenue has been sporadic, with hundreds of millions some years and no money in others. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed 2025-26 budget does not include any money for repairs, known as deferred maintenance, or other infrastructure projects. Absent a long-term funding plan, the deferred maintenance backlog has grown to an estimated $9.1 billion for the University of California and $8.3 billion for Cal State University as of the 2023-24 school year, driven by aging buildings and increasing costs for labor and parts.
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by Victoria Mejicanos, Matthew Reagan and Mercy Sosa, CalMatters.
Posted: April 1st, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Thousands of University of California faculty and students gathered at UC campuses across the state Wednesday to condemn what they say is the Trump administration’s “assault on higher education” and to demand action from university and state leaders… “American universities are the lifeblood of American democracy. If we are not free to do the teaching and research that sustains public life, democracy in America is lost,” said James Vernon, a UC Berkeley history professor. “We are concerned absolutely for the safety of our students and our ability to be able to teach sensitive subjects and politically controversial subjects. We’re not here to teach our students what to think. We’re here to teach our students how to think.”
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by Molly Gibbs, The Mercury News.
Posted: March 20th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Facing state budget cuts and threats to federal funding by President Donald Trump, the University of California announced an indefinite systemwide hiring freeze Wednesday. The 10-campus university will also eliminate diversity statements in any hiring processes following direction from the federal Department of Education to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs… Davis Faculty Association Chair Jesse Drew said that the university is already critically understaffed and that the hiring freeze will affect every aspect of the university — including research, class sizes, cuts to class offerings, infrastructure and the availability of teaching assistants. ”It affects every single aspect of how we can fulfill our obligation to enhance higher education in California,” he said.
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by Nicole Nixon, Jennah Pendleton, The Sacramento Bee.
Posted: March 20th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of the K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction. “All of President Trump’s executive actions are lawful, constitutional and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said.
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by Hurubie Meko and Troy Closson, The New York Times.
Posted: March 13th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The U.S. Department of State has released a small portion of frozen funding that has imperiled key international education and exchange programs like the Fulbright and Gilman scholarships. Some funding is “trickling through,” a month after the State Department quietly suspended all grant payments, said Mark Overmann, executive director for the Alliance for International Exchange. Overmann, whose organization represents groups and providers that run exchanges and support global-education programming, estimates that about 15 percent of pending payments have begun to be disbursed over the last few days… Overmann said that it is unclear if the payments signal a regular resumption of funding, nor is there any indication about why specific spending has been restored. He also noted that the money that has been coming in does not cover operational or staff costs for the groups that administer many of the State Department programs.
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by Karin Fischer, The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Posted: March 12th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
Monday, UCLA announced a new campuswide initiative to combat antisemitism, with Chancellor Julio Frenk saying the university is at an “inflection point” that compels it to “end hate however it manifests itself.” UCLA was not among the California universities that received the Education Department letter, but it is under multiple federal investigations by the Trump administration into alleged anti-Jewish incidents. Pro-Palestinian students, staff and faculty accused UCLA of prioritizing efforts to tackle antisemitism while avoiding equal focus on reports of racism and bias against Arab Americans, Palestinian Americans and Muslim Americans, saying the university was overreacting in fear of the Trump administration’s threats to cut funding. Roughly $1.1 billion of UCLA’s $11 billion budget comes from federal sources. UCLA officials denied the allegation, saying the university is working to address all reports of discrimination and has been planning its antisemitism initiative since January…
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by Jaweed Kaleem and Daniel Miller, The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: March 11th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
The USDA told its employees Monday to “temporarily no longer issue any payments or authorize any other releases of funding” to the University of Maine System while the department evaluates whether it should “take any follow-on actions related to prospective Title VI or Title IX violations,” according to a letter obtained by the Portland Press Herald. The agency began investigating Maine’s university system for gender-related civil rights violations the day after President Donald Trump and Gov. Janet Mills got into a public confrontation over the state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls sports.
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by Kay Neufeld and Riley Board, Portland Press Herald.
Posted: March 11th, 2025, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.
