Some University of Southern California journalism professors are raising questions about a proposal for the USC Annenberg School for Communication to sign a $3 million contract to help the American University in Dubai create a journalism and communication school in the Middle Eastern nation.

Critics are concerned that the Arab nation could discriminate against non-Muslims, especially Jews. They also don’t approve of past support by the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, for movements dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Among them is the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Professor Jonathan Kotler, who was joined by a half dozen colleagues, first raised the questions. Kotler told me he was concerned about UAE support for the PLO and its “civil rights record…in its treatment of foreigners, women, children and gays…” And he noted that Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has been sued for forcing young boys into slavery to serve as jockeys in the popular sport of camel racing.

He said the proposal “besmirches the name of the university and the Annenberg school.”

Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson told me that he understands the faculty concerns. The journalism school, he said, “has a culture of skepticism.” But the proposal offers chance to train journalists who will be gathering and distributing information to the Middle East and beyond, he said.

“All institutions are trying to find new ways to engage with the world because the world is engaging with us,” Wilson said.

Wilson said the proposal was initiated by the American University and its Mohammed bin Rashid School for Communication, which is named for the nation’s ruler. He said the Dubai university made the proposal during the administration of his predecessor, Geoffrey Cowan.

Under the proposal, Annenberg would receive $1 million a year for three years to provide the Rashid school with curriculum advice and faculty assistance. Annenberg would also work with its Dubai partner to set up an international conference center and think tank there.

A memorandum of understanding declares that neither USC nor the Rashid school would “discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, color, age, physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status, marital status or any other category protected by law in employment or in any of its programs and/or acitvities.”

Professor Ed Cray said the proposal is “contradictory, vague and fatally flawed.”

He said it appears “the contract was drafted by an AUD lawyer. It lacks the specificity that a competent American lawyer would insert in a contract of this sort.”

Cray particularly objected to a clause in the proposal declaring that “all disputes arising under this agreement that cannot be resolved between the parties shall be brought before a proper court in the UAE.”

Dean Wilson said this was “a legitimate question that has been raised by faculty members and I respect that.” He said that one possibility would have disputes could be resolved “in a third country.”

He said that he and the faculty will discuss the Dubai proposal and Annenberg’s participation in overseas programs at a meeting Monday.

Wilson said he would like a discussion about Annenberg participation in such programs. It could include talking about: the goals of the projects; whether they are consistent with USC, Annenberg and professional “norms;” the type of governance of the overseas partner; source of funding; whether it advances Annenberg’s interests and “if we go there, do we honestly think we can do some good.”

He said former Dean Cowan had gone to Dubai and worked on the agreement. Wilson said he had also visited the university and saw “women wearing short skirts, women covered from head to toe and mixed classes. Drawing on my experience of 30 years of going around the world, Dubai is more open than many other countries in the region.”

Here’s my report of two days and 320 miles of being a political reporter in Southern California

My goal, beginning on Monday when the stock market plunged and the temperature soared, was to examine Riverside County for my column in Truthdig. I thought that by looking there, I might get a line on how Middle America feels about the presidential election.

Riverside county, unlike the more populous coastal California, is Republican. Neighboring San Bernardino, more blue collar, is Democratic—but certainly is no Westside L.A. or San Francisco. Heading north from these counties—known as the Inland Empire—a traveler encounters the moderate to conservative Central Valley. From San Bernardino to the counties north of Sacramento, color California purple. While California is expected to go for Barack Obama, these purple counties represent a swing vote, probably undecided between him and Sen. John McCain.

On Monday, I met my friend and former Times colleague Deane Wylie for lunch at Ciao Bella, an excellent restaurant near the University of California Riverside. We were joined by Patricia Barnes, a former editor on the Times Ontario edition and an ex Riverside Press Enterprise staffer, and David Glidden, a UCR philosophy professor.

They filled me in on the basics: Riverside County, which reaches south to the rich desert communities in the Palm Desert area, is Republican with a few Democratic enclaves. Foreclosures have hit the area hard, but not hard enough to shake the Republicans.

After lunch, I drove to the UCR campus to interview Professor Martin Johnson, who helps run the school’s growing polling center. I got his name from Kris Lovekin, the UCR director of media relations.He provided a copy of a survey that showed great worry about foreclosures—and hostility to the banks, information that backed up House of Representatives reluctance on the Wall Street rescue bill.

The next day, I headed back to Riverside County from my home in West Los Angeles. I drove through residential subdivisions in Moreno Valley, a city adjacent to Riverside. Moreno Valley is a solidly Democratic city.

I had read about the foreclosures that have hit the area and seen television reports on them. But nothing I had seen or read prepared me for six houses for sale in a .4 mile stretch of a street, two of them now owned by banks. Disaster has struck in a random manner. Some blocks had no for-sale signs. Some just had one or two. Then I came across one with a big “Auction” sign, reminiscent of scenes from movies and books about the Great Depression. In some houses without for sale signs, neglected yards and generally shabby appearances suggested the owners had left and the occupants were renting.

I talked to a couple of volunteers in the local Democratic headquarters, Radene Hires and Cherylynn Glass. They confirmed the economic and emotional impact of the foreclosures, but didn’t want to guess how they would influence the presidential election.

I drove back to Los Angeles. I had been invited to introduce Millicent (Mama) Hill, at an event marking the 13th anniversary of Project Acorn, a liberal community activist group I occasionally write about. Hill, an English teacher at Crenshaw High School before she retired in 2000, runs a program in her South Los Angeles home designed to help young women and men avoid the gang life and crime. A lender foreclosed on her mortgage, but ACORN intervened to save her home and program.

I was early, so on the way I stopped at a famous L.A. political hangout, the Pacific Dining Car, for a drink. At 5 p.m. none of the lobbyists, lawyers and politicians who frequent the place were there. The man next to me was drinking a sidecar over ice. He explained to me that it was an old fashioned drink made of brandy, triple sec and lime or lemon juice but he liked it. I said I knew. I told him I’d enjoyed sidecars when I started drinking but had to quit them because they made me crazy as well as drunk.

The Project Acorn event was at the headquarters of Local 721 of the Service Employees Union. It hadn’t started so I walked around the Virgil Avenue neighborhood, a few miles west of downtown. It’s a neighborhood of apartments, probably affordable for working families (if they double up) but they will be out of range if building ever resumes. At the union hall, I ran into Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, and interviewed him on the closed Martin Luther King Jr. hospital for a story I plan to do for LA Observed on his race with Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks. Then I introduced both Mama Hill and a short video about her and about how she faced foreclosure.

I had dealt with hard times ranging from foreclosures in the Moreno Valley to foreclosures and bad health care in South L.A, traveling many miles as the temperature rose and my car radio provided a background of bad news. I’d had days like that when I wrote for the Times. It was fascinating then, as it is now.

With banks crashing and credit becoming almost nonexistent, it didn’t seem to be the best day to hold a rally boosting an affordable housing plan that will require considerable borrowing. But the national financial crisis did not daunt the enthusiasm of supporters, led by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and including more than 100 union members and community activists.

The basement auditorium of UNITE-HERE Local 11 was packed with men, women and small children Saturday, some the folks being too low paid to hire baby sitters. They listened intently as speakers told stories of high rents, low pay and long commutes. At one point when I chatted with a friend briefly, a woman told us to be quiet. She wanted to hear the speakers.

One speaker, Donna Rodriguez, told how she worked as an account manager for a Westside business management firm with wealthy clients. Her salary is more than $42,000 a year and half of it goes for a small one room apartment in Silver Lake, where she shares a queen sized bed with her eight-year-old daughter. The proposal would require developers to include low and moderate priced housing for people like Rodriguez—and build it close to her job on the Westside, whose residents proudly embrace the principles of NIMBY.

Los Angeles, said Villaraigosa, “has the smallest percentage of people who can afford a medium priced home in the United States. “ He also said Los Angeles “has the largest homeless population in the United States.”

“I know budgets are tight,” he said. He added, “I know that credit is almost nonexistent.” But he added that he will move ahead with the plan and “we’re going to reject the cynics and naysayers.”

A draft of his proposal, as reported in the Downtown News, calls for new buildings with 20 or more residential units to reserve up to 22.5 percent of them for low or moderate-income households. As an alternative, developers of property in expensive areas could finance separate apartments for low and moderate- income people as long as those units are in the high rent neighborhoods, on public transit routes and near work places.

The financing is complicated but could be helpful to developers, now scrambling like mad for loans. They could obtain government money from a city housing trust fund of about $200 million, and use it as a base to borrow more money from banks (when the credit crisis eases) and combine it with state housing funds and federal money, if it ever becomes available. Villaraigosa said the $200 million from the housing trust fund could help make more than $1 billion available for new housing here.

The influential Central City Association and some developers want more of an incentive to build affordable housing. Someone who was involved in meetings on the subject told me some of the mayor’s aides urged him not to take on the developers. But Villaraigosa decided in favor of the proposal, which will be announced Monday.

Asked after the meeting about those who fear such a proposal will permit low-income people to live in their high priced neighborhoods, Villaraigosa said, “There is a small group of people…who create a climate of fear that somehow these kind of initiatives will undermine and erode the social fabric of our community and it is just not true.”

A big test of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s commitment to liberal causes will be how hard he pushes for his plan to require developers to make room in their high- end projects for low and moderate income Los Angeles residents.

As reported by Anna Scott in the Downtown News, Villaraigosa, in his Mixed-Income Housing Policy, is contemplating major steps to require long-reluctant developers to include working people in the apartments and condos they hope to build when the housing and financing slump ends.

This would definitely mix the affluent with the less prosperous, which is counter to long-standing practice in a city long—although unofficially—segregated by class and race.

Scott reported that developers of rental projects could choose between reserving 12.5 percent of their units for very low income households earning less than $35,000 a year, 17.5 percent for households earning $35,000-$47,000 annually or 22.5 percent for those with incomes of $47,000-$60,000 per year. Condo developers would face similar requirements. But the plan draft offers developers a huge out: They could build the low income units in another place in the community, provide land for affordable housing or pay the city to buy land elsewhere and build the units.

Even this loophole isn’t enough for the builders, developers and other real estate interests who have clout at city hall. With the Central City Association taking a major role, developers will take their fight to Villaraigosa’s office, where the various parties will decide the outcome behind closed doors.

California liberals will watch this as they assess Villaraigosa as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010. Low and moderate income Californians are facing increasing difficulty in finding housing around the state. The issue hasn’t risen to a hot-button level at this time, but it is one that is high priority for many activists who are beginning to think about the governor’s race.

Villaraigosa’s liberal record—all important in a Democratic primary—has been spotty, particularly on the affordable housing issue, where the mayor, a big building booster, has boasted that the construction crane is Los Angeles’ municipal bird. That’s why his new housing policy will be important to his statewide political future.

The big mystery in our Westside neighborhood is how the pre-dawn burglar, who has hit 15 houses, so unerringly finds his chosen victims-- older women living alone in single story homes. He’s been working the area since late May.

The Los Angeles Police Department has a task force assigned to the burglaries and says there are at least 30 officers working the investigation at any given time.

Crimes often tell something about a neighborhood, and these are no exception.

Although the Westside has grown to mean affluence, conspicuous consumption and rude drivers tearing through boulevards and streets in their SUVs, some of the area reflects an older, more modest and largely forgotten way of life.
Before and after World War II, single story, fairly modest homes were built on the flatlands south of Santa Monica Boulevard from Sepulveda eastward toward the Cheviot Hills-Rancho city park. Young families moved in. Children grew up there and eventually moved away. Today, while new two story homes are changing the neighborhood, many of the old one-story homes remain. Older women, often widows, live in some of them, gardening, visiting, keeping up a slower and lonelier version of a life pattern they and their families established many years ago.

These are the victims. In all but one case, the burglar entered the home between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. He enters through locked and unlocked windows. He appears at his victims’ bedside and says give me your valuables or I’ll kill you. He goes through every door and closet looking for valuables. He picks on the old and the weak, those least likely to resist. He carries a flashlight and screwdriver and wears dark clothing, dark gloves and ski mask. Victims describe him as an African American man, about six feet tall and weighting between 200 and 220 pounds.

The mystery is frightening and intriguing. How does he know his victim is an older woman living alone? How does he know she has enough possessions to make a burglary worthwhile?

He’s a pro, police say, and familiar with the neighborhood. How did he learn about the neighborhood? Does he live in the area? Did he become familiar with the homes by working for one of the fund raising groups who send frequently send people door to door? Could he be someone who blends in so well that we never give him a second look—a postman, a paramedic or even someone whose job it is to protect the neighborhood?

Or does he work with one of the utilities that serve the neighborhood? We had a couple of such workers who spent a long time in our house one day, going through every room looking for the source of the problem, which they never found. Soon after their visit we were burglarized and lost a couple of computers plus jewelry. We were away from the house a short time. The burglars worked speedily and knowledgeably. Several weeks later, a family nearby had exactly the same experience—a visit from the same utility and days later a burglary.

In the current case, the police seem to give some credence to the roaming charity or utility worker theory. After a briefing by the LAPD, the Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association e-mailed a “crime update” with a number of warnings, including “Do not open your door to a stranger. If someone claims to be from a utility or other agency, ask for photo ID.”

The break-ins have people on the Westside, especially the elderly, on edge. The eeriest part is that in this most anonymous of cities someone knows so much about where these women live and what they have in their homes.

Unless you own an international airline or perhaps ride on one, don’t expect much relief from the much-heralded Los Angeles airport modernization plan.

That’s the news I took away from a Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum lunch where Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl was the speaker. He represents the district and is one of the architects of the modernization.

I hate to be negative about anything Rosendahl says. As he began his speech at the luncheon, he complimented me hugely for my performance as a journalist and as a guest on his cable television show. But duty calls.

What I hate most about LAX are the food outlets (I wouldn’t call them restaurants) and the marginally maintained bathrooms. Second on my hate list are the lack of a variety of shops, found in other airports, and the generally dreary look of the place—not to mention the crowded terminals.

Rosendahl promised us a terrifically improved Bradley international terminal. But that’s no help to us poor domestic travelers.
And he didn’t mention the food outlets, shops and bathrooms in the domestic terminals.

The populist outspoken Rosendahl is an outsider on the council. He’d really be an outsider if he talked about the true reason for the sorry conditions of airport concessions. Being too much of a truth teller doesn’t help you with the council crowd.

Big companies want these concessions and are giving big contributions and hiring hot lobbyists to help them win a franchise. This is a gold mine for council members and their campaign treasuries and for the lobbyists who have such enormous clout at city hall. None of them want to shut down the gold mine.

Our airport should be as good as San Francisco’s. There, travelers find good if not great restaurants and pleasant shops that sell the city’s signature products like sourdough French bread and Ghirardelli Chocolate. There is also an excellent bookstore.

Why not have an open competition for restaurants and shops here? We love food and shopping in LA. Let’s have a tasting and shopping contest for the concessions, with the prizes going to the best cooks and retailers instead of to a bunch of tasteless backroom operators.

There was a story on page B-1 of the Los Angeles Times a while back which showed what great things the paper can still do, and what it will miss as it is being destroyed.

David Zahniser, reporting from city hall, told on July 20 how a politically connected firm, the Bond Companies, got two city pension boards to invest $30 million in Los Angeles projects that need city financial help to be profitable.

In seeking a subsidy from the City Redevelopment Agency, the firm’s chairman, Lawrence Bond, boasted in writing of his ability to get taxpayer subsidies, lenient parking requirements and approval for high -density projects. Bond told the city pension board, Zahniser reported, that it has proven ability and resources to capitalize on government subsidies.

The company and its employees have given more than $82,000 in contributions to city politicians and ballot measures.

This is a prime example of how the inside city hall game works. Nobody has ever heard of this company. Journalists and bloggers write much about the mayor, but it took David Zahniser to uncover one of the real players, the company chairman.

People like Bond really run city hall.

It was excellent public service reporting and it’s great that the Times has Zahniser in city hall. Hopefully he’ll survive, remain and prosper. But the paper is taking a direction away from such serious, digging reporters. This is really important local news, but is it hot enough —in the sexy sense—for the new Times? It was on B-l. Why wasn’t the story where it should have been, on A-1, the front page?

The story took time and energy—and a reporter with a lot of knowledge about how Los Angeles works. Do such reporters have a place in the Times? Or will their departures continue to be noted in endless wakes, as Jim Newton’s was?

The unspoken question in the supervisorial election between Bernard Parks and Mark Ridley-Thomas is how much influence the winning candidate will allow the unions in negotiating the reopening of Martin Luther King Jr. -Harbor Medical Center, which once served thousands of poor people.

Getting King functioning again is the most important issue in the race for the 2nd Supervisorial District seat. The hospital in South Los Angeles County has been closed for 10 months after it failed federal inspections. It’s criminal that it remains closed, but that’s what happens in the do-nothing behemoth, Los Angeles County government.

The unions representing county workers, including those from the shuttered hospital, are supporting Ridley -Thomas. They have donated at least $4 million to an independent expenditure committee campaigning for him. A total of $980,000 of it came in during the last two weeks of the primary campaign, which ended with Ridley-Thomas finishing ahead of Parks but short the majority needed for victory. The runoff will be held in November, on the same day as the presidential election.

Both have pledged to restore the hospital. But no matter who wins, the unions will be the real power in shaping the contracts and civil service rules that will govern the nurses and other medical personnel at a reopened King and the other county hospitals.

Union reps, county bureaucrats and supervisors and their aides will resolve these matters in secret, as is the custom for big issues in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, even though they involve major questions of public policy. In this instance, the county imposes secrecy because of its lawyers’ broad interpretation of an exemption from the state open meeting law for anything dealing with personnel. The way the county sees it, that could be most anything.

Nobody wants to talk much about this aspect of the King issue, not even someone unconnected to the county, like Robert K. Ross, president and chief executive of the California Endowment, a private foundation interested in improving access to health care.

Last month, Garrett Therolf reported in the Los Angeles Times that when Ross contacted county officials to help find an institution to take over King, his letter “did not address another issue that many said was a stumbling block [to opening King]: whether an operator would be required to employ members of the county’s public employee unions and be bound by county personnel rules that make it difficult to discipline or transfer workers who harm patients.”

Of course the unions will insist on such a requirement, and make their feelings known in the closed-door meetings with supervisors, supervisorial aides and bureaucrats.

Ridley-Thomas and Parks proposed solutions that shed no light on how they will handle the union issue. Parks wants King and the other hospitals run by a new authority “sufficiently insulated from political vagaries.” Ridley-Thomas wants the hospital to be run by “an administrator and governance structure that operates outside L.A. County’s political authority and its health services bureaucracy.”
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who is not up for re-election, said in a Times op-ed piece that he wants the hospital turned over to the University of California, which would be “unencumbered by the county’s human resources and hiring rules.” He did not address the union issue.

In bringing up the unions and civil service rules in his story, Times reporter Therolf raised an important question. It deserves to be answered in the campaign, especially by Ridley-Thomas, the recipient of union financial support.

The dream of home ownership has long been part of life on 92nd Street and similar South Los Angeles working class neighborhoods. But making the dream come true has never been easy-- not more than a half century ago when the area was mostly white and not today when it is African American and Latino.

The dream was the topic Saturday May 30 when ACORN, the community activist organization, held a press conference-demonstration in front of a small house at 755 East 92nd Street, a home headed for foreclosure, its owner one of the many casualties of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

The street is broad with bungalows on either side. It was quiet at midday, with most of the activity occurring at the bungalow owned by Millicent (Mama) Hill, who was an English teacher at Crenshaw High School before she retired in 2000 and set up a program in her home to help young women and men avoid the gang life and crime. ACORN volunteers, most of them older men and women, gathered in Mama Hill’s front yard, all of them wearing the organization’s bright red t-shirts.

Mama Hill has been operating the program on her pension, small donations and with the help of friends and supporters who assist her with tutoring, mentoring, anger management and other services needed in a neighborhood that is pretty thick with gang action despite its peaceful appearance on a Saturday.

With expenses exceeding income, and house prices rising fast, Hill refinanced her house. “I needed a loan quickly,” she said. She was promised one at 7.5 percent interest but before she signed the final papers, she was told the interest would be 10 percent “but they promised it could be renegotiated.” When she obtained the loan, the house was appraised at $405,000 but has since dropped far below that. She fell behind in her payments, and the mortgage holder is now foreclosing.

One of her supporters, Cedric R. Brown, president of Youth Incentive Programs Inc said Hill got the loan at a time when housing prices were exploding, even in this modest neighborhood, and mortgage brokers flooded the area with tempting refinance offers. “The predatory lenders took advantage,” he said. Some of borrowers were hard-pressed, like Hill. Others were tempted by the chance to pay off debts and improve their living conditions. Houses once valued at $450,000 recently dropped to $385,000 to $360,000.

Hill spoke to supporters and the two or three journalists who showed up. Then the ACORN volunteers walked the neighborhood, going door to door to urge support for Isadore Hill, a Compton city councilman running for Assembly in the area and for others who support bills pending in Sacramento designed to crack down on predatory lenders. Given the power of the financial business in the Capitol, I’d say those bills face a rough future.

Afterward, I drove a few blocks east to 1233 East 92nd Street, a brown stucco home with a tile roof and an excellently tended front yard. It is an unmarked monument to working class L.A.’s dream of home ownership.

In 1942, an African American family, the Laws, bought this very house. The neighborhood was then predominantly white. But the house deed included a restrictive covenant banning a sale to a racial minority. Such covenants were common in those days. Henry Laws and his family were African Americans, The Laws family fought the covenant. Charlotta Bass, the fiery editor of the California Eagle, espoused their cause. A judge ordered Mr. and Mrs. Laws and daughter jailed. Their sons returned from service to find their parents and sister in jail. The Laws eventually prevailed and courts began overturning the covenants.

The saga of the Laws family is a great inspiration to ACORN and its volunteers as they fight predatory lenders who, in their own way, are as vicious as the segregationists of 60 years ago

Whether Bernard Parks or Mark Ridley-Thomas wins the Los Angeles County 2nd supervisorial district election June 3, one point is certain: The sleepy board may actually wake up.

Years ago, I used to cover the supervisors. In recent times, I have been spared that duty. All I know is what I read in the papers and what I am told by various reporters who have been sent to the county building to report on the five enigmatic supervisors.
From those observations, I surmise that the supervisors go through their paces every Tuesday, voting on matters that have been previously approved by their staffs in sessions held somewhere out of the public’s eyes. The meetings are pretty boring unless Gloria Molina yells at an unfortunate department head. The board’s main accomplishment this year is keeping Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital closed, denying hospital care to Los Angeles’ poorest and sickest residents.

Neither Parks, a Los Angeles city councilman, nor Ridley-Thomas, a state senator, are get-along, go-along types who will blend into the present board’s way of doing things.

Ridley-Thomas is a challenge to reporters and colleagues. He likes to argue. He always thinks he is right. And he’s rough on those who disagree with him.

When he was pushing the Staples arena project through the City Council, I was writing columns demanding public disclosure of the lease. He didn’t like those columns. At the height of it, he came up to me and said I was just trying to revive my failing career. Later on, after I was promoted to city editor, I sought him out. “It worked,” I said.

When Parks was police chief, he’d go after any reporter who crossed him. In his mind, trying to dig out a story amounted to crossing him. We had long arguments, once in public , another time in his office. He’d never conceded he was wrong. In his mind, he never was.

I enjoyed arguing with both Ridley-Thomas and Parks. They never backed down and neither did I. That was OK. They had a right to complain. I had an obligation to listen, and the right to reply in kind.

From my experience, neither is cursed with the supervisorial state of mind—a peaceful somnolence more suited to a retirement home than the governance of LA County. I hope the winner never adopts it and retains his testy, argumentative ways. And I truly hope the new supervisor figures out how to re-open Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital..