Earlier this week, the University of California boasted its latest efforts to defy President Trump: sending UC President Janet Napolitano to Mexico City. Napolitano’s office basically said her visit to Mexico was a direct response to Trump’s border wall plan; to “send a very strong and loud message… that we believe it is wrong to isolate and antagonize this important neighbor.”
Yesterday from Mexico City, Napolitano announced the start of a partnership with the Mexican Secretariat of Energy which will funnel $10 million from UC funds, essentially California taxpayer dollars, to research in Mexican universities.
The UC suggests one vague requirement for Mexican research projects to be eligible for partnership funding: they should have “active participation from UC researchers.” The research partnership will work to promote clean and efficient energy in California and Mexico, Napolitano says, adding the initiative is part of “Mexico’s and California’s common long-term goal of finding solutions to the biggest challenges that humanity faces.”
Yes– in addition to committing over $25 million in financial aid to illegal students and giving them preferential treatment in admissions and internship programs, establishing UC campuses as ‘sanctuary cities‘, and ordering UC Police to defy federal law enforcement officials to protect criminal aliens, the UC will give away millions of taxpayer dollars to Mexico for no reason other than to spite Trump.
If you think Trump might be mad about this, you know who’s even more upset? California taxpayers and students. Those are the people who are paying tuition and funding your school through some of the highest tax rates in the country — they will be the ones to feel the burden.
Eric Lendrum, a fourth-year political sciences student at UC Santa Barbara, tells Red Alert Politics he thinks Napolitano is trying to appeal to leftists angry about the deportations that occurred during her former post at the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is clearly an effort at appeasement to the far-left, at the expense of American citizens and taxpayer dollars,” Lendrum said, adding it is “not surprising, considering that she has zero experience in leading institutions of higher education and previously never lived in California, so of course she wouldn’t understand the value of proper allocation of UC funds OR how to properly handle public funds.”
Carlos Ivan Serna, a student at UC Riverside and a member of PragerFORCE, thinks donating to research in Mexico is a waste of money.
“There are plenty of top notch research universities in the US that could partner with the UC system to find a more sustainable energy alternative,” he says. “Wanting healthy international relations is all well and good but, in this case, funding research in the US or bettering the UC system as a whole should take priority.”
“It is still a matter of great government intrusion by essentially stealing money from hard-working Californians,” said Becca Ruiz, another PragerFORCE member living in California. In the past, Napolitano has instructed students to refrain from describing “hard work” as an American ideal, as it is a ‘microaggression’.
Gambling with Californian resources to make political statement is nothing new for the UC president, but draining out valuable research funding just to piss the president off is a new low.
