Letter to UCI Chancellor Gillman re disciplining UCI SJP
CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
September 25, 2017
Chancellor Howard Gillman
Office of the Chancellor
510 Aldrich Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-1900
via chancellor@uci.edu
Dear Chancellor Gilman,
We write on behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom (cs4af)* to express our outrage at the August 22 decision to discipline members of UCI Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for alleged violations of the campus speech codes during an event featuring the Israeli soldier group “Reservists on Duty” and cosponsored by the Students Supporting Israel group. SJP received two years of probation, 12 mandatory meetings to discuss free speech, and a requirement to meet with administrators two weeks before hosting any event.
We have watched the video of the event in question and spoken at length with students representing SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (which was also involved in the event along with black, latinx, and other student organizations). We find the decision to punish SJP for “disruption” merely for spontaneously clapping and chanting, after members of the soldiers’ entourage assaulted a student physically, to be completely out of proportion both to the amount of clapping and chanting and to the reality that they were responding to a physical attack on one of their members after administration representatives and police refused to intervene.
We note moreover that this is not the first time your administration has responded by punishing SJP and other students engaged in speech supportive of Palestinian rights. We remind you of the decision to put SJP on probation last year, after a May 18, 2016 showing of an Israeli military film that was protested by SJP and other campus groups, in which only SJP was found to be guilty of intentionally obstructing the gathering. This despite the fact they had several monitors from the National Lawyers’ Guild present who were in regular discussions with the UCI police during the event, and by all accounts the protesters obeyed all police requests and did not prevent anyone from viewing or hearing the film.
Indeed, we further remind you that you wrote an open letter to the campus and surrounding community the day after the event in which you accused SJP of “crossing the line of civility” based on allegations of harassment that you had not investigated and that turned out to be completely unsubstantiated. Yet to this day you have not offered a clarification or apology for the accusation, despite the fact that right-wing groups still cite your letter as “proof” of the dangerous and anti-Semitic climate at UCI.
As bad, after the latest incident, neither you nor any member of your administration has publicly criticized the Israeli Reservists on Duty for its continual surveillance, provocations, religious insults and even physical assaults on Palestinian, Jewish and other students who were engaged in protected speech. How is it that chanting in response to an attack merits punishment but an outside group coming in and harassing and even attacking UCI students doesn’t merit even the faintest comment? You have also refused to explain why you have allowed a foreign military onto your campus.
Your unwillingness to accept responsibility for spreading false rumors, to support UCI students when they are attacked physically and verbally harassed (no mention of which was made in the decision that announced the punishment of SJP), and your refusal to defend pro-Palestine students’ constitutionally protected free speech rights belie your claims to support free speech on campus. Your actions strongly suggest that you seek to foster such an uncomfortable environment for pro-Palestine students on campus (who encompass Jewish as well as Muslim, Arab, black and latinx students) that they simply leave UCI. This is the ultimate goal of the right wing pro-Israel groups that have continuously attacked the campus and its students for being anti-Jewish. This is a clear violation of UCI students’ civil rights and academic freedom.
We therefore call upon you to rescind the punishment of SJP, speak out forcefully for the rights and safety of students engaged in speech criticizing Israeli policies and in support of Palestinian rights, and take sufficient measures to ensure students’ rights and safety are protected, not just in future events but broadly across the UCI campus.
We look forward to the courtesy of a response from you (which you have refused in the past).
California Scholars for Academic Freedom
Contact Persons:
Professor Lisa Rofel
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz
LROFEL@ucsc.edu
Professor Richard Falk,
Albert G. Professor of International Law
University of California, Santa Barbara
Professor Dennis Kortheuer
California State University, Long Beach
(UCI Alumni)
dennis.kortheuer@csulb.edu
**CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM is a group of more than 200 academics who teach in 20 California institutions. The group formed as a response to various violations of academic freedom that were arising from both the post-9/11/2001 climate of civil rights violations and the increasing attacks on progressive educators by neo-conservatives. Many attacks have been aimed at scholars of Arab, Muslim or Middle Eastern descent or at scholars researching and teaching about the Middle East, Arab and Muslim communities. Our goal of protecting California Scholars based mainly in institutions of higher education has grown broader in scope to include threats to academic freedom across the United States, and where relevant, globally as well. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere.
Cc: President Janet Napolitano, University of California, Office of the President
Open Letter re The Extremist Zionist Media Campaign
OPEN LETTER
CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
The Extremist Zionist Media Campaign Gone Too Far
As recently as five years ago Zionist extremists would engage campus speakers or events perceived as pro-Palestinian with substantive questions. Sometimes it was obvious that these questions were prepared in advance by some lobbying group as the student who spoke had a list of questions, was surrounded by several supporters, and usually left the conference hall without even waiting for a response. It was a disconcerting abuse of the discussion dimension of campus treatment of a controversial issue of great importance to the society as a whole.
This pattern of involvement has been abandoned in recent years by Zionist extremists. Instead a more insidious set of tactics has been adopted. Substantive engagement, even of a purely argumentative kind, is no longer even attempted, likely reflecting the reality that both the law and the moral dimensions of the Israel/Palestine relationship overwhelmingly support Palestinian grievances if fairly considered and gives almost no aid and comfort to Israeli claims.
Instead of substantive engagement, the most ardent Israeli supporters smear critics of Israeli government policies, contending that criticism of Israel is ‘the new anti-Semitism,’ a position sadly endorsed by the Obama State Department and the Republican Congress, as well as several state legislatures. From such a standpoint, Palestinian supporters and their undertakings are demeaned and smeared while engaging in highly legitimate political discourse. Even the most qualified speakers are attacked before their scheduled appearances, often reinforced by back channel efforts. Usually stimulated and facilitated by more extremist national Zionist organizations, pressures are exerted on university administrations to cancel events. Additionally, local media is alerted so as to shift the focus of public interest as much as possible from message to messenger. The whole idea is to wound the messenger badly, and by so doing, create enough noise to drown out the message, a technique that often engages a compliant local media.
These tactics also seek a punitive backlash directed at Palestinian solidarity initiatives, especially the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Campaign, a nonviolent approach to ending abuses of the Palestinian people, which organizes advocacy of economic disengagement from commercial relationships with unlawful Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as academic, economic, and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions that serve to prolong the occupation and otherwise defy international law. Such tactics resemble the anti-apartheid campaign of the 1980s that proved so effective in bringing about the collapse of the racist regime in South Africa. What is most relevant to notice is that even those who opposed the South African BDS campaign never sought to ban its demonstrations or degrade and punish its leaders, which is what opponents of the Israel BDS campaign are intent on doing.
What we are describing amounts to a Zionist cultural war of aggression against academic freedom in the United States, but also in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It targets professors, student activists, and campus activities, which has an overall chilling effect1. For every speaker or event that is cancelled, many more are not undertaken for fear of the backlash. These wider, largely invisible repercussions are rarely discussed, but their impact is significant. More junior colleagues are advised to avoid such zones of potentially toxic consequences that could cast a dark shadow over an entire career as has been the case with even such a notable established scholar as Norman Finkelstein, as well as disrupting the academic future of promising junior scholars such as Steven Salaita.
We also take note of the wider reach of these efforts to discredit scholars who undertake public service beyond the confines of the academic community. The National Review in its issue of July 1, 2017 devotes an entire article to showing what a bad organization the United Nations has become because it had appointed an allegedly notorious anti-Semite, Richard Falk, to assess the Israeli treatment of Palestinians living under occupation. In fact, Richard Falk is one of the most highly respected and recognized international scholars of human rights law. He is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton University and has been a Visiting Distinguished Professor and Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2002. He taught international law and politics at Princeton University for forty years. He has served the United Nations in several capacities, including acting as a formally designated advisor to the President of the General Assembly in 2009. He has been a vice president of the American Society of International Law and currently serves as Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The fact that an established conservative magazine would publish an article filled with smears, distortions, mistakes, and malicious cherry picking is of a piece with this concerted wider effort to discredit those who speak truth to power, while warning others to maintain silence or face the consequences.
Under these conditions two things seem imperative. First, calling attention to and seeking to counteract the alarming magnitude and insidiousness of this assault on academic freedom. Secondly, organizing support for and solidarity with those who are victimized, both directly and indirectly, by these Zionist tactics detrimental to academic freedom.
1. http://mondoweiss.net/2016/10/california-scholars-academic/
Contact persons for Cs4af:
Sondra Hale, Research Professor
University of California, Los Angeles
sonhale@ucla.edu
Manzar Foroohar, Professor of History
CSU San Luis Obispo
manzarforoohar@gmail.com
Claudio Fogu
Associate Professor Italian Studies
University of California Santa Barbara
Nancy Gallagher, Research Professor
Department of History
University of California, Santa Barbara
gallagher@history.ucsb.edu
Katherine King, Professor of Comparative Literature
University of California Los Angeles
Dennis Kortheuer
History, Emeritus
California State University Long Beach
David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside
Lisa Rofel, Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Vida Samiian
Professor of Linguistics & Dean Emerita
California State University, Fresno
**CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM (cs4af) is a group of over 200 scholars who defend academic freedom, the right of shared governance, and the First Amendment rights of faculty and students in the academy and beyond. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere. California Scholars for Academic Freedom investigates legislative and administrative infringements on freedom of speech and assembly, and it raises the consciousness of politicians, university regents and administrators, faculty, students and the public at large through open letters, press releases, petitions, statements, and articles.
Letter to Dr. Leslie Wong, President of SFSU about suit against Professor Rabab Abdulhadi and others
Open Letter
CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM
June 28, 2017
Dr. Leslie Wong, President
San Francisco State University
CSU Board of Trustees
Dear President Wong and CSU Board of Trustees:
We write on behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom (cs4af)* to express opposition to the ongoing defamation, intimidation, and assaults against the academic freedom of SFSU faculty members by the right-wing Zionist organization, The Lawfare Project. We are troubled by the absence of a clear public statement from President Wong to offer a principled defense of Professor Rabab Abdulhadi who has been repeatedly and unfairly targeted by such attacks as has the College of Ethnic Studies and Dean Kenneth Monteiro.
The Lawfare Project filed its lawsuit against SFSU in federal court on June 19, 2017. The suit conflates criticism of Israel and its denial of Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism, and on that basis charges SFSU with violating the constitutional and civil rights of Jewish students and community members. The intent of the lawsuit is clear: to silence researchers and advocates for Palestinian rights and to ensure that they are punished.
The Lawfare Project describes itself as “the legal arm of the pro-Israel community.” Its director, Brooke Goldstein, has appeared several times on Fox News and other media and has made explicit Islamophobic statements, for example, discrediting the word “Islamophobia” as a “made-up term propagated by the Muslin Brotherhood.” She has dismissed concerns around the growing hate speech against Muslims as a “dangerous phenomenon”. She has denied the very existence of Palestinians, stating, “Why are we using the word Palestinian? There’s no such thing as a Palestinian person.” Furthering its agenda, the Lawfare project has also attacked human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The Lawfare Project suit references the protest in April 2016 by SFSU students of a SF Hillel event featuring Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. The impetus for the student protest was Barkat’s history of home demolitions and racism against Palestinians. When students protested the talk, SF Hillel broadcast false allegations of anti-Semitism and nonexistent physical threats towards Jewish students. SFSU then conducted its own investigation and determined that these allegations were unfounded.
This independent investigation commissioned by President Wong and conducted by the Van Dermyden Maddux Law Firm on the “April Event” concluded that:
“The protest was directed towards the Mayor of Jerusalem based on his politics, and not towards any of the audience members based on the audience members’ protected characteristics. The record tips in favor of concluding that the protestors’ attention, comments and conduct were directed at the Mayor. This finding is bolstered by the fact that the protestors left the Event shortly after the Mayor exited the room.” And further that “While some audience members were deeply hurt, even frightened, by the protest, in this specific circumstance there were no direct threats of imminent violence that would have justified police intervention, specifically arrest and removal from the area.”
The SFSU report found that while disruptive of the Mayor’s talk, the protest posed no safety risks and was focused on the mayor because of his racist policies, and not the attending students for their Jewish identity.
The lawsuit falsely accuses Prof. Abdulhadi of anti-Semitism and of having links with terrorist organizations; the entire College of Ethnic Studies (COES) is targeted in repeated statements throughout the lawsuit; and SFSU is portrayed as “the most anti-Semitic campus in the nation.” These outrageous and insulting accusations demand a clear, strong and immediate response to vindicate the academic reputations of the faculty at SFSU and to repudiate the racism implicit in them.
Yet, instead of citing the results of SFSU’s own investigations and reassuring the campus community and the public at large that the allegations in the lawsuit are false, President Wong’s statement erroneously conceded that the disruption of the Mayor Barkat event was an “ugly reminder” that “anti-Semitism … is real and our community has work to do.” To be perfectly clear, there was nothing anti-Semitic in the protest that was entirely directed against certain policies promoted and implement by Mayor Barkat.
The conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism has become a standard tactic by Zionist organizations, which seek to censor criticism of the Israeli state. That tactic itself is fundamentally anti-Semitic because it associates with Jewishness an unending list of well-documented racist policies and crimes against humanity committed by the state of Israel, and it ignores the many Jews who actively oppose those crimes. Far from the worthy goal of fighting real anti-Semitism, this lawsuit serves the propaganda aims of the government of Israel, at the expense of academic freedom and the constitutionally protected rights of California residents.
Public universities have a special responsibility to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech. Academic freedom allows professors to conduct and disseminate scholarly research, to design courses and teach students in the areas of their expertise, and to enjoy First Amendment protections for extramural speech. These are essential activities for any institution calling itself a university.
We strongly urge President Wong to uphold and defend the academic freedom of Professor Rabab Abdulhadi and all faculty members at San Francisco State University, and to publicly stand against false accusations by outside organizations with racist agendas. And do so with the same resolve he expressed in his June 16, 2016 message by extending to Professor Abdulhadi
and the College of Ethnic Studies his declaration that, “No person in our community should feel disrespected or unsafe and we must all work together to ensure this is not the case”.
We look forward to receiving your response,
California Scholars for Academic Freedom
Contact Persons:
Sondra Hale, Research Professor, Anthropology and Gender Studies, UCLA Sonhale@ucla.edu
Nancy Gallagher, Research Professor, Department of History, UCSB Gallagher@history.ucsb.edu
David Klein, Professor of Mathematics, CSU Northridge Dklein8@gmail.com
James Quesada, Professor and Chair Department of Anthropology, SFSU jquesada@sfsu.edu
cc. Chancellor Timothy White
**CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM is a group of more than 200 academics who teach in 20 California institutions. The group formed as a response to various violations of academic freedom that were arising from both the post-9/11/2001 climate of civil rights violations and the increasing attacks on progressive educators by neo-conservatives. Many attacks have been aimed at scholars of Arab, Muslim or Middle Eastern descent or at scholars researching and teaching about the Middle East, Arab and Muslim communities. Our goal of protecting California Scholars based mainly in institutions of higher education has grown broader in scope to include threats to academic freedom across the United States, and where relevant, globally as well. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere.
A Representative List of cs4af Members:
Hatem Bazian
Asian and Asian American Studies
UC Berkeley
Judith Butler
Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory
University of California, Berkeley
Anne-Marie Debbané,
Department of Geography
San Diego State University
Gary Fields
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
Manzar Foroohar
Professor of History
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Jess Ghannam
Professor of Psychiatry
School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Alessandro De Giorgi
Associate Professor, Justice Studies
San Jose State University
Claudio Fogu
Professor of Modern Languages
University of California, Santa Barbara
Nancy Gallagher, Research Professor
Department of History
University of California, Santa Barbara
Farah Godrej, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
University of California, Riverside
Sondra Hale, Research Professor
Anthropology and Gender Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
Gillian Hart
Professor Emerita
Geography and Gender Studies
University of California Berkeley
Sang Hea Kil, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Department of Justice Studies
San José State University
Ivan Huber
Research Scholar
Professor Emeritus of Biology
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Katherine King
Professor of Comparative Literature
University of California, Los Angeles
David Klein, Professor of Mathematics
California State University, Northridge
Dennis Kortheuer, Emeritus
Department of History
California State University, Long Beach
Mark Levine
Professor of Modern Middle East History
School of Humanities
University of California Irvine
David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California Riverside
Afshin Matin-asgari,
Professor of History and Middle East Studies
California State University, Los Angeles
Ahlam Muhtaseb
Professor of Communication Studies
Interim Director of the Center for Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies
California State University, San Bernardino
David Palumbo-Liu,
Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor,
Stanford University
David Pellow
Dehlsen Chair and Professor of Environmental Studies
University of California Santa Barbara
Susan Presswood Wright
Professor of Politics
University of California, Santa Cruz
James Quesada, Professor and Chair
Department of Anthropology
San Francisco State University
Vida Samiian
Professor of Linguistics & Dean Emerita
California State University, Fresno
Susan Slyomovics
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
University of California, Los Angeles
http://www.anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/susan-slyomovics
Howard Winant
Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Stephen Zunes
Professor of Politics & Coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies
University of San Francisco
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