UCLA to reject $3M pledge from Donald Sterling, will return $425K donation received

UCLA will return a $425,000 donation that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling gave the university for kidney research, saying his recent comments are “racist and extraordinarily repugnant.”

UCLA will also reject the remainder of the total $3 million pledge Sterling promised to the UCLA Division of Nephrology, according to a statement.

Sterling has come under fire for a recording in which the Clippers owner makes racist comments about black individuals. He has been denounced by prominent officials, including President Barack Obama and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. On Tuesday, the National Basketball Association banned Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers and fined him $2.5 million.

TMZSports.com reported Tuesday that two NBA lawyers have confirmed the recording to be of Sterling’s voice.

“Mr. Sterling’s divisive and hurtful comments demonstrate that he does not share UCLA’s core values as a public university that fosters diversity, inclusion and respect,” UCLA said in the statement Tuesday.

UCLA recently received several inquiries about an ad that was placed in the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times, in which it appears UCLA is thanking Sterling and his wife Shelly for their donation to the nephrology division.

The ad claims that a gold-colored plaque will be placed in the main lobby of UCLA’s nephrology building in honor of the Sterlings. It also claims UCLA plans to name a research lab in their name, “The UCLA Donald T. Sterling Structural Biology Kidney Research Laboratory.”

However, UCLA said it did not place the ad in the paper. It said the ad falsely suggests the university is publicly thanking Sterling for the donation.

UCLA said it thinks Sterling placed the ad in the paper.

Documentation concerning the donation does not address any signage or naming of a research laboratory, according to a UCLA statement.

The Daily Bruin could not reach Sterling or a spokesman for comment.

Compiled by Kristen Taketa, Bruin senior staff.

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10 Comments

  1. Good job UCLA! I also wish UCLA would stop advocating for affirmative action, which many Asians find to be, “racist and extraordinarily repugnant.”

      1. So a couple of Uncle Tom Asians are seeking to screw over their fellow Asians for personal advancement and self-benefit. I’m not impressed.

        1. wow. First of all its coalition of 24 different groups so its quite a few people. Secondly as the article points out asians are actually helped by affirmative action. Instead of posting reactionary things how about you use your intellect to read the article if its missing a point I’d be glad to hear it.

          1. “Asians are actually helped by affirmative action”. That is the funniest joke I’ve heard all day. From one study: “Public universities in California, Texas and Florida showed uniform
            gains in their Asian American populations after removing racial factors
            from their admissions policies, the study found, indicating that Asian
            Americans are hurt most by affirmative action in education.”

            Another recent UCLA study: “According to Sander’s analysis, there is a much higher percentage of
            black and Hispanic students who are offered admissions than Caucasian
            and Asian students, among students who are assigned the same
            “mid-range” holistic score”.

            How about you stop posting foolish ‘progressive’ talking points and look at the facts? And who cares whether some starry-eyed ‘progressive’ students like to act like Uncle Toms to to their own race. SCA-5 was recently defeated to due to an outrage from the Asian-American community in California, particularly Chinese-American parents. There will always be Uncle Toms, and most will be present at universities like this.

          2. You can’t have a conversation with an idiot. I posted an article by the The Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA not liberal talking points. What you posted was a web forum that has no creditably and no citations to back up its claims. Furthermore it makes misleading claims such as the fact that at two universities Asian populations increased but overall they decreased at 5 of 8 UC campuses. I’m honestly starting to wonder if your an aspiring student or perhaps a freshman? Its hard to believe that you could fail to recognize such bad scholarship and be a Bruin. Or perhaps you’re aware that your argument is not only bad but unsubstantiated. In either case you ought to be smart enough to know that just because someone posted it on the internet and it conforms to your preconceived notions doesn’t mean its true. Where as what I posted has statistics that are drawn from CARE (National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education) which is a very well respected research organization.

            Once again I suggest you check out the article instead of crying. If you have any sincere interest in learning about the issue instead of exposing dogma I suggest you also read this: https://www.nyu.edu/projects/care/do-asian-americans-benefit-from-race.html

            And lastly since you clearly just resorted to google instead of reading the article and finding fault with it I’ll re-post the relevant portion that disproves your entire argument.

            Through the implementation of Proposition 209, race-blind admissions have been detrimental to all communities of color. Additionally, after Proposition 209 passed in 1997, admission rates of Asian Pacific Islanders actually decreased at five out of the eight UC campuses with race-blind admissions.

            It is imperative to continually clarify that Southeast Asians, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders – who all fit under Asian American racial categorization – are groups that experience some of the lowest college attendance rates. Some of the misconceptions of affirmative action are maintained by the lack of disaggregated data, which masks these disparities.

            Furthermore, the low representation of African American and Latina/Latino students at our higher education institutions is especially disturbing. As concluded by a 2012 study by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, underrepresentation of minority communities creates a detrimental effect on campus climate, which has salience in daily activities. At UCLA, we have experienced the consequences from a lack of diversity through the continuance of racialized hate crimes on campus.

            This is the last I’ll be commenting on this since you seem incapable of rational contemplation on this issue.

  2. $3 million for kidney research lost. From the American Kidney Fund website: “African-Americans are more at risk for kidney failure than any other race. Nearly 1 in 3 kidney failure patients living in the United States is African-American. That is nearly 200,000 people!” What a shame. Wouldn’t it have been better to let this repugnant man’s money go to help African-Americans?

  3. Education.
    UCLA can easily make up the rejected $3 million gift from Sterling by bringing in another 5 or 6 convicted Japanese “yakuza” mobsters who need to jump the Organ Donor list for a kidney transplant.

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