by Claire L-Y
On January 8th, nearly 200 people joined the UC Unbowed campaign team at a virtual town hall about the ongoing threat to the University of California, the ways that advocates are fighting back, and what they can do to help defend the University. The town hall featured a number of speakers and was followed by a Q&A session.
The first speaker was Dr. Nupur Agrawal, an assistant professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at UCLA where she advocates for improving delivery of health care to patients and communities.
Dr. Agrawal discussed the complexity of the UC hospital system and the multiple roles it plays, including trainee education, advocacy, academic medicine, research, innovation, patient care and administration. She noted that the Trump regime’s interference has stressed an already stressed system in several ways.
For example, in the early days of the Trump administration, the DOGE team created a list of words that would be used as criteria for eliminating grants. These included: disability, breast feeding, women and accessibility. When the New York Times published this list, UC researchers immediately started trying to remove these words from their grant proposals – simply listing the words had the effect of a ban.
Dr. Agrawal also discussed the administration’s recent attempt to defund any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding if they provide gender affirming care to their patients. All UC hospitals are heavily dependent on federal funding for research and patient care.
The next speaker was Claudia Polsky, a Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, and the founding Director of Cal’s Environmental Law Clinic.
Professor Polsky spoke about the lawsuit she and a team of lawyers have filed on behalf of faculty from across the UC system to restore the funding that the federal government terminated. The faculty filed a class action lawsuit with the help of multiple attorneys who worked pro bono. Because the suit was filed as a class action, relief will extend to all affected faculty if successful. So far, the suit has been successful in restoring all “terminated” grants systemwide from eight federal agencies. UCLA has also had all of their NSF and NIH grant suspensions reversed. A ruling is still pending on DOE terminations systemwide.
The next speaker was Professor Anna Markowitz, an Assistant Professor in the Human Development and Psychology division in the School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Anna serves as president of the UCLA Faculty Association, which represents campus faculty on employment and academic freedom issues.
Professor Markowitz spoke about the lawsuit that the UC unions, faculty associations, and the American Association of University Professors brought against the Trump administration claiming that the demand letter sent by the federal government to UCLA is using coercive tactics to shape UC policy and that they are violating the first and tenth amendments of the Constitution. The UC administration was invited to join the lawsuit but declined. A preliminary injunction has been granted which prevents the administration from enforcing the demand letter.
The final speaker was Donna Graves, one of the founding members of UC Unbowed.
Donna noted that the UC Unbowed team wants to harness the tremendous untapped power in the thousands of alumni and supporters of UC to pressure UC to stand up to the federal government’s demands. She discussed some of the efforts that UC Unbowed has already initiated and what we can all do to help.
Take these actions now:
- Sign the petition if you haven’t already (UC Unbowed Petition)
- Join UC Unbowed to stay informed (UC Unbowed Website)
- Recruit organizations to join an organizational sign on letter that will be presented to the UC Regents at their March meeting. (Sign-on letter)
If you missed the Town Hall, you can watch the recording here!
