This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.
Hosted by the Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET)
Speaker: John Aubrey Douglass (Senior Research Fellow, Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California, Berkeley
Whether to Fight or Not — that is the question for the University of California as it faces Trump’s attacks, the first on a major public multi-campus university system
What may determine the fate of America's public research universities is whether the University of California will fight in the courts the Trump administration's demand for a $1 billion "fine" for disingenuous charges of antisemitism and supposed violations of Trump's agenda at UCLA.
Paying the "fine" that Trump personally and magically conjured will then release millions of research funding to UCLA impounded by the White House — at least that is the promise from a mercurial Trump administration. Any decision about UCLA affects the entire ten campus system and must involve Governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom has correctly identified Trump’s demands as “extortion,” has emerged one of Trump’s most vocal critics, and who has presidential ambitions.
UC's choice will influence the response of other major public universities when they are in the frying pan of Trump's autocratic impulses. The path UC takes may prove more important than the Harvard case as it involves the nation's most prestigious public multi-campus university system in a state with the 4th largest economy in the world. The political pressure and stakes are huge for UC’s Board of Regents, a new UCwide president, the campus chancellors and faculty leaders — and the state of California.
I will discuss the context of this dilemma, and provide an update to my previous Substack article on the pros and cons of UC negotiating a deal or fighting the Trump administration, and possibly the outcome. UC has until September 2 to respond to White House demands.
