Only USC Suing? Where is UCLA?

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Screenshot from YouTube video. USC recently sued "pranksters" who make YouTube videos disrupting classes. See below. It took me about one minute to find a similar disruption at UCLA on their YouTube channel. So, why isn't UCLA suing? And in fact, why aren't criminal penalties being pursued. No requests to YouTube to shut down the channel? From USC Annenberg Media:

USC has filed a lawsuit in hopes of temporarily banning two YouTubers from campus after they disrupted a Holocaust lecture to make a prank video on March 29. Students stormed out of the classroom following the incident in Mark Taper Hall, and Los Angeles Police Department officers arrested two of the suspects at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit. The university cited dangerous and reckless conduct targeting students and faculty while taking over lectures as the main reason for the suit. USC is asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would prevent the defendants from entering all campuses, medical centers, residences and all other university properties in the county, according to the suit. The university is also asking for compensatory damages, attorneys’ fees and other compensation for the cost of the lawsuit.

The defendants, Earnest Kanevsky, who goes by Eric Kanevsky on his YouTube channel, and Yuoguo Bai, have filmed several prank videos on the University Park Campus and disrupted classes beginning in 2021, according to the lawsuit. At least two videos of Kanevsky interrupting other classes in Taper Hall seem to have been deleted, including one named in the lawsuit where he dressed up as a character from “Squid Game” and another included in a “FUNNIEST PRANKS OF 2021″ recap video. The suit also states that, in the class, Bai pretended to be a student, while Kanevsky walked in later dressed in all black with a silver briefcase, pretending to be a Russian Mafia member attempting to take money from Bai. Kanevksy then asked if anyone named Hugo Boss was in the room, leading Bai to say that he was Boss, according to the suit.

A voice on Kanevsky’s phone yelled expletives at Bai, further interrupting the lecture and causing students to panic, the suit stated. Students began fleeing the classroom in fear when Kanevsky moved to the front of the classroom and told Bai that his father owed him $50,000, according to the suit. The class’s professor, Benjamin Ratskoff, said in the suit that he was worried during the prank by the defendants’ references to Hugo Boss, a Nazi supporter and fashion designer. In an email to students previously obtained by

Annenberg Media, Ratskoff said that he is in touch with the university about ensuring a similar disturbance doesn’t happen again.

“While it appears that the event was a part of some kind of prank, the intrusion naturally created panic, as lectures on the Holocaust, antisemitism, and racism have previously been targets for harassment and violence,” Ratskoff previously wrote in an email to Annenberg Media. “I myself made the split-second decision that it was better to follow those fleeing students rather than to wait and see if this was indeed a prank.”

Source: https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2022/04/07/usc-files-lawsuit-againstyoutube-prank-personalities/.

I should note that this story was covered in the LA Times and other media outlets. It's hard to imagine that DA George Gascón, LA City Attorney Mike Feuer, and LA Police Chief Michel Moore (or at least their staffs) are unaware of what happened at USC. LA Mayor Eric Garcetti's State of the City address last Thursday was devoted to public safety. Just saying...

Watch Jennifer Doudna at the Regents Special Committee on Innovatio...

Sunday, April 17, 2022

The Regents had an off-cycle meeting of the Special Committee on Innovation Transfer & Entrepreneurship last Thursday. Nobody signed up for public comments. As always, we have preserved the recording since the Regents - for no particular reason - delete their recordings after one year.

Nobel Prize winning UC-Berkeley faculty member Jennifer Doudna - known for her work on the CRISPR gene editing process - spoke about that process, her institute at Berkeley, and a company she started. She noted that there is testing going on for a cure through gene editing of sickle cell disease. Indeed, it has already been done. Currently, it costs on the order of $2 million but she described work which she hopes will bring down the cost to something like $100,000. Her presentation and subsequent Q&A runs from minute 6:20 for a little over an hour. Blog readers will find that presentation of special interest.

The concluding session featured a group of student entrepreneurs - most from UCLA describing their activities.

You can see the video at the link below:

https://archive.org/details/regents-special-committee-on-innovation-transfer-andentrepreneurship-4-14-22.

Or direct to:

https://archive.org/details/regents-special-committee-on-innovation-transfer-ande n t r e p r e n e u r s h i p - 4 - 1 4 22/Regents+Special+Committee+on+Innovation+Transfer+and+Entrepreneurship+4-1422.mp4.