State universities are not private, but belong to the public. They were built and funded by our tax dollars, and are accountable to the state’s democratically elected representatives, and to the people themselves.
That’s why it’s so outrageous that the University of California, Los Angeles refuses to provide public access to the teaching materials and pay of Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, a lecturer at the university.
Her personal website describes her: “tiny (lisa) gray-garcia aka ‘PovertySkola’ is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama Dee, and the co-founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork.”
She certainly has a First Amendment right to her views, and I’ve always been amused by some of the more eccentric left-wingers on college campuses. But as a lecturer, she’s working on the public’s dime, like a high school teacher or a cop.
What we do know of her UCLA teaching comes from the website of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, founded in 2016. The institute “advances research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world. Working in alliance with social movements and communities on the frontlines of struggle, the Institute seeks to abolish structures of inequality.”
That is, it’s a left-wing activist group built into a public institution. Its bio page for Gray-Garcia lists her as an “activist in residence” and repeats the description quoted above from her web page. And it links to a YouTube of hers, “Stolen Land Hoarded Resources UnTour through so-called Pacific Palisades Occupied Tovaangar.” The video describes the unfortunate treatment of Native Americans with such Marxist jargon as “fetishizing and stealing, misnaming and commodifying.”
In her position at the university, Gray-Garcia’s role seems to go beyond expressing the usual left-wing, socialist economic concerns into outright indoctrination of students. On April 4, 2024, the New York Post reported, “under the medical school’s woke curriculum,” first-year UCLA medical students were required to listen to a two-hour harangue by Gray-Garcia under the title, “Housing (In)justice in LA: Addressing Unhousing and Practicing Solidarity.”
She mandated the students listen to a lecture by Hamas supporters, led cheers of “Free, free Palestine” and attacked “white science.” She also required students to pray to “mama Earth,” an obvious violation of the First Amendment right to the “free exercise” of religion.
The actions led to a complaint filed by the university’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group. The complaint, the Post reported, noted how one student failed to stand during a second prayer. An unidentified UCLA faculty member then “asked for the pupil’s name, sparking concerns they could face repercussions.”
On March 24, the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank in Arizona, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County against the Regents of the University of California.
“This is a lawsuit to enforce the right to inspect public records,” it began. It cited Article I, Section 3 of the California Constitution, which stipulates, “The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business.” And it cited the California Public Records Act, which guarantees “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.”
The Goldwater lawsuit referenced UCLA’s refusal “over several months” to hand over requested documents, including Gray-Garcia’s “contractual relationship” and course materials. The lawsuit is being led by Bradley A. Benbrook, who is based in Sacramento. “We’re happy the court is processing the case quickly,” he told me. “We hope to get to a hearing on the merits by the fall, or the end of the year at the latest. In today’s legal machinery, that is fast.”
He said UCLA hasn’t actually denied the Gray-Garcia materials are public records, or claimed the legal right to withhold the records, but just keeps delaying their release. “They tell us they will produce in 30 days. Then another 30 days comes, and they say, ‘Oh, we need another 30 days.’”
Californians should keep UCLA’s secretiveness in mind when the Regents come seeking higher funding. Until the school complies with the law and basic transparency, the whole UC system shouldn’t get another dime.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board