University Of California

A whistle-blower lawsuit by two former University of California employees alleges that the university's five medical centers--at UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and UC Davis--billed the government for millions of dollars in fraudulent insurance claims.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee filed suit Wednesday against the University of California Board of Regents, demanding the release of police officers' names removed from a critical report on the controversial pepper spraying of UC Davis students. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, contends that when university officials agreed in a court settlement last month to redact all but two names, they "failed to represent the interests of the press and public," leaving the newspapers with "no choice but to bring this petition to protect the public's right of access to this important information.

The campus residence for the UCLA chancellor bespeaks the power, culture and resources of a great American university. The elegant Florentine-style house, nearly 11,000 square feet, is surrounded by seven acres of lush landscaping. Inside, walls are lined with valuable paintings, including a Picasso and an Utrillo. The wood-paneled library is stocked with books and sculptures, and there are beautiful Oriental rugs throughout. One thing, however, is missing: No chancellor lives there.

Political advocacy corrupts academic institutions. Why? Because the mind-set of a genuine academic teacher is in every important respect the opposite of a political activist's. Academic teachers want to promote independent thought and analytical skills; political activists want conformity. The one fosters intellectual curiosity and encourages opposing viewpoints; the latter seeks to shut it down. This vital distinction is well understood. In California, the state Constitution contains this unambiguous statement: "The university shall be entirely independent of all political or sectarian influence and kept free therefrom.

Coming of age during the 9/11 attacks and war in Iraq, some of the students in UCLA's advanced Arabic class want to launch diplomatic or military careers. Others seek to delve into the Koran and Islamic culture. And some simply love a mind-stretching, tongue-twisting challenge. No matter the reasons, they help fuel a trend that has made Arabic the fastest-growing spoken language of study at U.S. colleges and universities.

University of California President Mark G. Yudof went to Sacramento this week in another valiant effort to convince legislators that they're playing with fire when they shortchange the state's higher-education system. In the course of his presentation, he gingerly mentioned the P-word. The state university, he told them, is a statewide boon, adding: "We do not want to partially privatize it through raising fees." "Privatization" is a crowd-pleasing nostrum for public officials seeking to shed the budgetary cost of programs and services that they nevertheless know to be a public responsibility.

In a victory for archeologists and historians, Gov. George Deukmejian has vetoed a bill that would have returned thousands of excavated human remains and grave artifacts to American Indians. The governor's veto Tuesday was sought by the University of California, which argued that its experts were better equipped to link remains and descendants than the Native American Heritage Commission, the state agency that would have controlled the process.

Manuel Jimenez walks through the steamy greenhouse, pushing past leaves of papaya, guava and litchi. "Do you smell that?" he asks, referring to the trees' fragrant blossoms. "That's a new smell to the Central Valley." Jimenez is nowhere near the tropics, yet the hot-weather plants he's cultivating at the University of California's Kearney Agricultural Center may soon mean that crops currently being imported can be bought fresh from California farmers.

Gov. George Deukmejian, saying California consumers "will not learn to live with higher prices for maggot-infested fruit and vegetables," signed into law Saturday six bills intended to give the state new weapons in its battles against agricultural pests. A key law in the package, designed to crack down on the Mediterranean and Mexican fruit flies, will set up a center for pesticide research within the University of California.

University of California officials told a congressional subcommittee Thursday that uncertainty over a possible change in management at Los Alamos National Laboratory is producing an exodus of scientists from the UC-run nuclear weapons center. And the situation could worsen, the officials said, after Wednesday's announcement that the Energy Department will put the Los Alamos contract up for bid when it expires in 2005.

The son of a railroad worker, Earl Warren came from a family keeping a desperate finger hold on a working-class existence at the turn of the last century. Yet when he left high school in Bakersfield in 1908, there was no question where he was headed: to Berkeley and a free education at the University of California. There he proved an indifferent student scholastically but an enthusiastic absorber of "the new life, the freedom, the companionship, the romance of the university," Warren recalled years later.

Sharply higher numbers of students from other states and countries applied for admission to the University of California this year, following UC's controversial efforts to recruit more such students for the extra tuition they pay, according to a report released Thursday. At the same time, UC administrators said a new policy that reduced the standardized testing requirements for admission appears to have encouraged more Californians than ever to apply to the university system. The number of non-Californians seeking to become UC freshmen in fall 2012 rose 56% over last year to about 33,000, officials said.

State lawmakers grilled University of California officials Wednesday over the controversial pepper-spraying of student protesters at UC Davis, only to be warned by those administrators — however conciliatory — that more protests are inevitable if the Legislature keeps cutting funds for higher education. The university administrators gave a legislative committee the same combination of apology and defense they have offered since the incident sparked nationwide outrage last month and became a rallying point for the Occupy movement.

A contract dispute between one of California's largest health insurers and UCLA could force thousands of patients at the university's medical centers to seek treatment elsewhere if the disagreement is not resolved by the end of December. Executives from Blue Shield of California and the University of California's health system are quarreling over reimbursement rates for medical treatment at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and nearby Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital.

Student protesters disrupted a University of California regents' meeting as the university board asked for more state funds to avoid a tuition increase next year and bolstered its investigation of the recent pepper-spraying of students at UC Davis. Gathering at four campuses and linked by teleconference, the regents Monday first got an earful of criticism from students about the Nov. 18 incident in which UC Davis police doused nonviolent student protesters at close range with the chemical spray.

Members of a University of California faculty group on Wednesday voiced opposition to the hiring of former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton to lead an investigation into the pepper spraying of student protesters at UC Davis, arguing that his background made him an inappropriate choice. The professors also complained that faculty and students were not consulted, and asserted that UC President Mark G. Yudof's involvement in selecting Bratton posed a conflict. "The office of the president should not be investigating itself in this matter, when one thing that needs to be investigated is what role the office had," said UC Santa Cruz professor Robert Meister, president of the Council of UC Faculty Assns.

Even as they struggle with budget cuts, higher tuition and declining enrollment, Moorpark College officials are reveling in one bit of good news that they hope will attract more students. Last school year, 269 graduates of Moorpark had enrolled at one of the 10 University of California campuses, making it the leading community college of its size in UC transfers, officials said.

Los Angeles pharmaceutical billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced plans Wednesday to provide University of California regents with a $100-million guaranty underwriting the county's latest proposal to reopen long-troubled Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital by 2012. County officials have expressed misgivings about Soon-Shiong's efforts to reopen the hospital in the past. But he said the funding from his family foundation comes "with no strings attached" and is intended to reassure university officials hesitant to reopen the hospital.

A land donation announced Thursday will allow the University of California to nearly double its research forests, conserving a swath of the Northern California watershed and offering academics an expanded laboratory to explore forest ecosystems. The university will acquire 4,584 acres of mixed-conifer forests in two locations: 3,100 acres near the Pit River in Shasta County and 1,484 acres in the Lake Spaulding area of Nevada County. Before the donation, the single largest acquisition of forestland in UC history, the university held 5,131 acres in several locations across the state.

The University of California on Wednesday announced a merit increase plan for non-unionized employees that seeks to fend off faculty hiring raids while mollifying critics of high executive salaries during the state's budget crisis. Under the plan, all faculty with good performance reviews will receive 3% raises this year, and nonacademic staff, who have received no increases since 2007, could be in line for larger raises. About 78,000 UC employees will be eligible under the plan, officials said.