At the start of the semester, the University of California stopped funding a hiring initiative under the President\u2019s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, or PPFP, citing severe budget constraints.<\/p>\n
The program was established in 1984 and has paid $85,000 toward each fellow\u2019s salaries for the first five years of their participation since 2003. The university has spent a total of $162 million to support PPFP faculty hires, according to UCOP spokesperson Stett Holbrook.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The funding cuts sparked outrage from faculty members across UC campuses who jointly authored a letter<\/a> demanding that the program be restored.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTargeting PPFP is an assault on the values of the University of California and a pre-emptive concession to the federal attack on our institution and higher education more broadly,\u201d the letter reads.<\/p>\n The letter has no named signatories, instead being signed \u201cconcerned UC Faculty, administrators, staff, professorial colleagues, and constituents.\u201d It demands that the university reaffirm its commitment to the UC\u2019s stated core values \u2013 including excellence, integrity, equity, diversity and inclusion as stated in Regents Policy 4400.\u00a0<\/p>\n The letter also demands that the university \u201crespect shared governance\u201d and consult the Senate before making such changes, as well as \u201cuphold and protect\u201d PPFP\u2019s faculty hiring incentive and waiver of open recruitment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is financially irresponsible to undermine an effective UC program that hires and retains top talent at the University of California,\u201d the letter says.\u00a0<\/p>\n The PPFP was initially founded to attract women and minority Ph.D. recipients to pursue academic careers at the UC system.Critics speculate that this defunding is the next in a series of UC capitulations to demands for anti-DEI actions<\/a> from the federal administration.Last week<\/a>, UC Berkeley cut their Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and opened a new Office of Culture and Inclusive Excellence. \u00a0Campus also turned over<\/a> 160 student and faculty\u2019s information to the federal government back in September to comply with a federal antisemitism investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Campus currently hosts six Ph.D. candidates under the PPFP that were awarded this year. Their research topics span a wide range of departments including ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, education, chemistry and math.\u00a0<\/p>\n Several candidates are conducting research in areas often condemned by the Trump administration. Chris E. Vargas is researching \u201cTrans Futures in 101 Objects: Exploring Speculative Futures\u201d and Beshara Kehdi is researching \u201cDiasporic Dreaming: The Organization of Arab Students and Educating the Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n UC campuses will still be able to hire fellows through PPFP, but the university will no longer offer financial contributions through the programs. However, postdoctoral fellowships, networking and mentorship, and faculty research support will continue, according to Holbrook in the email.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDespite these challenges, the University remains committed to hiring and retaining world-class faculty members whose teaching and research benefit the entire UC community,\u201d Holbrook said in the email.<\/p>\n Campus declined to provide any comment on the topic, directing all questions to UCOP.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of the semester, the University of California stopped funding a hiring initiative under the President\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,26887,32134,32131,32133,32132,26885],"class_list":["post-49622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-office-of-culture-and-inclusive-excellence","tag-office-of-equity-diversity-and-inclusion","tag-presidents-postdoctoral-fellows-program","tag-regents-policy-4400","tag-stett-holbrook","tag-ucop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}