[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Many see it as an issue of education from pre-school through higher education and as an investment in the future of our state

By Frank D. Russo

They came by the busloads to Sacramento from all across the length and breadth of the state of California and marched to the state Capitol for a rally. Not only were there numbers large—perhaps as large as 2000 in Sacramento in addition to those taking part in rallies in other locations—but they were loud and energized. Folks working inside their offices three blocks away could hear students chanting as could those inside the Capitol.

The Governor was out of town, but the message was clear. After the rally and throughout the day, students roamed the hallways of the legislature talking to their representatives. They represented 3.2 million students—who have registered to vote in record numbers—and will be looking closely to see what is done after the May Revise of the budget is available in about three weeks. There will be a huge backlash if the cuts go through.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

Probably the most noteworthy thing about last week's appointment of Mark Yudof as the next president of the University of California is not his impressive record as chancellor of the University of Texas system or his $828,000 compensation package.

It's the fact that he comes from outside the system, the first outsider to get the job since the 19th century. And that, as UC Regents Chairman Dick Blum implicitly acknowledged, is an unmistakable sign of a new era at UC – not quite a revolution but close to it.

And as Blum also acknowledged, an outsider is what the board was looking for. Effecting institutional change, Blum said, "is very difficult to do from within."

Blum, who'd spent more than a year wrestling with UC's administrative mess, described the meeting at which Yudof was named as "the best Board of Regents meeting of my life."

Mostly he sounded like the relieved father in an Italian opera who'd just married off his ugliest daughter.

David Gardner, who got the president's job 25 years ago, came from the presidency of the University of Utah, but he'd spent many years before that as a senior UC administrator. Before Yudof, who was a law professor and president of the University of Minnesota system before going to Texas, no real outsider had become UC president since 1899.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

The University of California is a big, complex operation, so maybe you shouldn't be surprised at the regularity with which one or another part shoots itself in the foot.

No sooner had the Board of Regents, following reports of extensive administrative disarray, nudged UC President Robert Dynes into an early semiretirement than came the on-off-on appointment of Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of a new law school at the University of California, Irvine.

Was Chemerinsky's contract abrogated because he was a well-known liberal and had drawn opposition from conservatives, or because, as a future dean, he was writing Op-Ed pieces on controversial subjects? Or was it all, in fact, one and the same?

At almost the same time came the regents' even more embarrassing disinvitation of Larry Summers as a speaker at their dinner last week. Summers, who had been President Clinton's treasury secretary and president of Harvard, had been forced to resign from Harvard following faculty pressure prompted by his remarks suggesting that women might be underrepresented in the sciences because of some genetic insufficiency.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By John M. Simpson
the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR)

Meeting in a special session, UC Berkeley’s faculty senate struggled with parliamentary procedures to reject resolutions that would have asked Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to delay signing a $500 million deal with oil giant BP to create an alternate energy research institute.

With the faculty's failure to stand up, the UC Board of Regents needs to prevent Cal Berkeley from becoming Big Oil U.'s next campus, UCBP.

An article by Richard Paddock in the Los Angeles Times lays out what's at stake. He writes: