California Professors Fight Back Against Violent Repression of Palestine Protest

College from seven College of California campuses took a stand towards the repression of protest over Israel’s warfare on Gaza on Thursday, taking the historic step of submitting a joint unfair labor follow cost towards their employer. The professors from the top-tier California public college system alleged that their colleges focused them for talking out on Israel’s warfare in Gaza and for becoming a member of college students’ pro-Palestine protests within the spring. 

The 581-page labor violation cost, filed with California’s Public Employment Relations Board, largely focuses on the colleges’ crackdowns on the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments, during which college officers referred to as on police to arrest a whole lot of scholars, school, and workers members in Could and June. 

In some situations, police beat demonstrators with batons, fired rubber bullets and pepper ball munitions, and sprayed chemical brokers. Within the aftermath of the crackdown, school and workers have confronted punishment for his or her function within the protests, from suspensions to firings. 

“UC’s actions to suppress speech about Palestine on our campuses, which represents an unlawful content-based restriction of school rights, units an alarming precedent,” stated Constance Penley, president of the Council of UC College Associations, which, together with school associations from the seven campuses, filed the labor cost. “Our unfair labor follow submitting calls for they alter course and observe the legislation, and make entire the college who’ve been harmed.”

Anna Markowitz, a UCLA school affiliation member, stated the college’s crackdown had one objective: “to finish Palestine solidarity activism on campus.” 

“On this ULP cost, we’re saying that this unlawful suppression of speech can not stand, whether or not about Palestine or about different points that college students and college could increase sooner or later,” she stated.

An unfair labor follow cost made to the Public Employment Relations Board, a quasi-judicial company that administers collective bargaining statutes in California, is a proper allegation of lawbreaking. The cost spurs an investigation by the board that may result in a dismissal or pressure a settlement convention; if no settlement emerges, the case goes earlier than an administrative labor legislation decide. 

The UC system refuted Thursday’s cost with a denial and stated the college teams lack standing to make a Public Employment Relations Board criticism on this case.

“The College has allowed — and continues to permit — lawful protesting actions surrounding the battle within the Center East,” the college stated in a press release. “However when protests violate College coverage or threaten the protection and safety of others, the College has taken lawful motion to finish impermissible and illegal habits.”

Penley and Markowitz, together with different representatives from the seven campuses — Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco — gathered Thursday at UCLA to announce the fees outdoors a UC regents assembly.  

Close by the college announcement, pro-Palestine college students staged a protest — the primary of the college yr — towards a latest request by UC police to purchase new drones, robots, pepper balls, projectile launchers, and sponge bullets. Comparable weapons and gadgets have been used on college students and college protesters within the spring.

Thursday’s submitting marked solely the second time the Council of UC College Associations has filed a joint cost for the reason that umbrella group’s founding within the early Nineteen Seventies. The final time they filed an analogous cost was in 1993, when school protested over the denial of benefit raises.

“This Unfair Labor Apply cost is historic, in that it’s the primary time that each one the chapters have come collectively to do a cost round violations of office situations, which entails all of the violations of educational freedom, free speech, freedom of meeting,” Penley stated. 

The cost filed by the college associations, which have been created to characterize the college senates of every campus, builds on separate fees filed by UC workers represented by United Auto Employees, the College Council-American Federation of Academics, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Staff.

Months earlier than the UC encampments went up final yr, within the speedy weeks after October 7, the colleges threatened lecturers with self-discipline in the event that they violated the college’s coverage on prohibiting “misuse of the classroom,” giving the instance of “political indoctrination.” Days later, the college system started to analyze two UCSD lecturers for presumably violating the coverage by educating college students about Palestine.

Shortly after, one other UCSD professor was investigated for advocating on behalf of graduate college students calling for assist of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim college students. The professor despatched an e-mail to highschool directors, echoing the graduate college students’ considerations and likewise expressed “disappointment that the division had not issued a press release on the genocide in Gaza and advocating for the division to take action,” the cost stated. UCSD responded by launching a hostile work atmosphere investigation into the professor.

Then, in Irvine, UCI officers threatened a professor with self-discipline for educating about Israel and Palestine at school and for altering their syllabus. Directors stated they might indefinitely maintain the alleged violation in a confidential file and that “related conduct would end in a proper disciplinary investigation.”

And earlier this yr in April at UCSF, the college banned a medical college lecturer after she spoke about well being challenges Palestinians face at a well being fairness convention. Throughout a 50-minute speak, she devoted solely six minutes to debate trauma-informed look after Palestinians amid Israel’s warfare in Gaza. She additionally decried antisemitism throughout her lecture. Even so, the subsequent month, directors referred to as her speech “biased and antisemitic,” barring her from giving lectures on the division that hosted the convention, the cost stated. The ban was lifted, however the recording of the speak was faraway from the college’s web site.

In the meantime, UC officers have proven favor for Israel and its insurance policies, the labor cost stated. It talked about the UC’s long-standing opposition to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions motion, which goals for tutorial and financial boycotts of firms and establishments with ties to Israel in an effort towards Palestinian statehood. The motion has lengthy been common among the many college’s pupil governments and amongst many school members.

The cost additionally quoted California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a member of the UC Board of Regents, who stated throughout a speech given to pro-Israel foyer group Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, “[w]e need to struggle again and educate our college students (in order that they) perceive the very significance morally and from a nationwide safety standpoint of the existence, celebration and empowerment of Israel.” She additional acknowledged that college students have been caught up in a “wave of misinformation” and that the UCs wanted to determine how it might “go about taking management of our campuses.” 

Because the arrests within the spring — which happened at UCLA, UCSD, UC Irvine, and UC Santa Cruz — the college system suspended school members, denied school members tenure, and fired a lecturer at UCLA. Disciplinary fees stay for professors at a number of colleges, together with UCLA.

Thursday’s labor cost goals to achieve again pay and different prices of misplaced work for school and workers who have been arrested and suspended throughout campus protests, in addition to the reinstatement of UCSF violence prevention advocate Denise Caramagno, who was fired in August after talking in assist of the aforementioned medical college lecturer. College additionally hope that by way of negotiation with the UC, it might shield its members from additional retaliation, in addition to pushing for modifications within the college’s new insurance policies that limit college students’ skill to protest this college yr — together with a ban on encampments, face coverings, and the establishment of so-called free speech zones which severely narrowed the place college students can protest. 

The cost additionally highlights alleged makes an attempt by the UC system to ban school from talking to college students or workers about union actions, together with a strike by educational workers unionized with UAW Native 4811, who walked off in Could in solidarity with the coed protests. The college system’s restrictions quantity to violations of the Greater Schooling Employer-Worker Relations Act, which protects workers from retaliation round advocating for modifications within the office. 

It additional alleges that the UC system failed to guard its college students in Could when UCLA campus officers stood by as a mob of Zionist counter-protesters beat college students at a pro-Palestine encampment, additionally spraying chemical compounds and launching fireworks at them. 

“Each Californian ought to be anxious about this menace to the stature of the College of California,” Penley stated. “You may look to Florida and Texas to see what occurs when a state college system surrenders on defending tenure, educational freedom, and free expression. The ramifications go far past these focused.” 

Among the many restrictive measures taken by UC was the creation of “free speech zones,” which restrict protest to small, noncontiguous parts of campuses. It’s unclear how the faculties will implement such insurance policies. Thursday’s pupil protest outdoors UCLA’s Luskin Convention Middle, which drew a number of dozen, all of whom wore masks, happened outdoors of such designated zones. Scholar organizers stated the college’s pupil affairs workplace had contacted them however didn’t point out the restrictions.

The group marched into the regents assembly and quickly shut down the session with chants of “Free Palestine!” and “Disclose, divest, we is not going to cease, we is not going to relaxation.” In accordance to experiences, the protest continued till officers in riot gear arrived and issued a dispersal warning, prompting the scholars to go away.