| 1) CLICK HERE to send an already populated email to UCI administration demanding that they drop conduct charges against this student. Your emails are crucial in pressuring UCI! 2) CLICK HERE to sign the petition demanding all conduct charges be dropped. 3) CLICK HERE to register for a collective phone zap today, Tuesday, November 21, at 3:00 pm PT, demanding our representatives call for a ceasefire. 4) CLICK HERE to take additional action in support of Palestine. |
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On November 14, a group of graduate students staged a peaceful response to a campus event titled, “The Israel-Hamas War: Five Week Update,” featuring Alon Burstein, a visiting professor in UCI Political Science via the Israel Institute. Individuals who were there to express support for Palestine waited until Burstein concluded his presentation before challenging his narrative of neutrality. When the Q&A portion of the event began, a Jewish student stood up to respond to the presentation with a brief statement, which was intended to both contextualize her question, and assert her positionalities in the context of the open dialogue expected at such an event. The student barely had the chance to identify herself as a descendant of Holocaust survivors before faculty members and other attendees in the crowd stood up and began aggressively yelling over the student’s response, and verbally assaulting her and other individuals who were there to support the student’s statement for Palestine. In the midst of this loud reaction to a simple statement, and a few other students peacefully and silently holding up a sign with the names of over 2,500 murdered Palestinian children and distributing informational fliers, the atmosphere of the room became incredibly hostile to these students. One of these students was spit at while distributing an informational flier, and later physically pushed out of the room. Within a few minutes, the police were called on this entirely peaceful demonstration, and the students were escorted out as attendees in the audience chanted, berated them, and called out, “Cowards!” Because of the verbal assault that ensued throughout the duration of what would have been a brief, two minute read statement, and because of the immediate involvement of police and security (who focused exclusively on expelling the student and her peers from the room), the student was prevented from asking her question at all. The Jewish student is now being charged with the following Student Conduct Violations: (1) Disturbance of Peace; (2) Disorderly/Lewd Conduct; and (3) Disruption – “Obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other University activities.” These charges are absurd, unfounded, and deplorable for numerous reasons. Q&A portions of presentations are explicitly devoted to audience engagement, meaning that, in keeping with university policy, no teaching, research, disciplinary procedures, or other activities were disrupted by the student in question. The student intentionally waited until the visiting professor had concluded with his presentation to offer her response, further clarifying that she was by no means disruptive. Instead of listening to the content of her response, both the student and the event were immediately, aggressively, and repeatedly interrupted by Zionists in the room who were shouting the likes of, “you’re not talking,” “shut up,” and “I will not let you talk.” UCI’s Free Speech Policy (Sec.900-01: Free Speech at UCI Policy) clearly states: “Hard thought and difficult debate also are chilled if members of the university or broader community try to silence or interfere with speakers with whom they disagree. Although members of our community are free to criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, UCI is committed to promoting a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation and to protecting that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.” UCI’s charges against the student are in direct contradiction with the University’s explicit commitment to “free[dom] to criticize and contest speakers,” and “freedom of debate and deliberation,” and its condemnation of anyone “obstruct[ing] or otherwise interfer[ing] with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.” Indeed, while the students’ actions engaged in activities aligned with the former, the attendees’ response to them instead falls under the latter. As those who read the statement will immediately be able to tell, the personal and academic content of the student’s response was protected speech by every definition, and the harmful and aggressive response to her statement constituted the “silencing” that the university policy prohibits. Thus, it is unclear on what grounds the university intends to pursue these incredibly biased charges. In light of this, this latest issuance of student conduct charges reaffirms UCI’s horrifying refusal to protect the first amendment rights of students who express solidarity with Palestine. These charges are ironic in light of the fact that UCI’s Chancellor, Howard Gillman, has studied, published, and built his career around free speech. These charges must be understood in the context of a historical legacy of UCI silencing, censoring, and punishing all forms of student activism for Palestinian liberation. The racist collusion with state and federal forces of UCI was made especially apparent during the highly publicized Irvine 11 case, in which eleven Muslim students were arrested, detained, charged with “conspiring to disrupt a meeting,” and sentenced to three years of probation. Specifically, the students were detained, arrested, and charged for attending a UCI-hosted talk by the US Israeli Ambassador, Michael Oren, and verbally condemning Oren’s complicity in genocide. This ended in both the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine facing sanctions from the school. The most recent iteration of this counterrevolutionary commitment to the racialized surveillance and censorship of Palestinian allies is in the ways Chancellor Gillman intentionally misrepresented the UC Chancellor’s statement on “Standing Against Bigotry at the University of California.”As the CUCFA and Irvine Faculty Association have already noted in their statements (CUCFA, and IFA), Chancellor Gillman willfully sent a message to the campus in which he explicitly and intentionally misrepresents UC policy, and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. This dangerous conflation is a longstanding counterinsurgent tool used by the Zionist war machine, as well as political groups such as the ADL, as technologies of surveillance for mostly Arab and Muslim populations. It was the ADL who recently suggested investigating pro-Palestine student groups at a federal level for “links to a foreign terrorist organization,” a preposterous claim by a group that has has been instrumental in surveilling and levying attacks against numerous social justice and decolonial movements, and whose history includes spying on South African anti-apartheid activists, and attacking anti-Zionist Jews. By falsely equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, Gillman and the UC Chancellors are complicit in creating the conditions in which actual incidents of antisemitism can flourish with impunity. Palestine has long been an exception to free speech, and support for Palestinian liberation has been the asymmetrical target of the recent intensification of campus censorship. The circumstances surrounding the charges against this Jewish student should concern and deeply disturb students and faculty across UCI, as well as the other UCs. These circumstances not only signal the continued revitalization of a racist history, but foreshadow what is likely to be an ongoing escalation of UCI’s efforts to silence speech they do not politically agree with. The unfounded and, quite frankly, ludicrous, terms on which this student is being charged should sound an alarm to UCI students and faculty. The charges against the student are occuring within a recent and significant uptick in formal and informal forms of censorship on campus, including but not limited to: students’ access to listservs and departmental communication channels being limited; students being reprimanded, formally sanctioned, and/or threatened with formal sanctions for expressing particular viewpoints; and teaching associates being warned against using “improper political indoctrination” in the classroom. The UC administration pursuing these charges demonstrates their willingness to infringe on the rights of students in order to support the Zionist regime and repress student activism. This case is setting an extremely dangerous precedent for free speech on campus and we must push back! Join us in demanding that UCI drop all of the charges against this student IMMEDIATELY! |
Rank and File Irvine 
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