California Professors Fight Back Against Violent Repression of Palestine Protest
Pro-Palestinian protesters rebuild the barricade surrounding their encampment at the University of California Los Angeles on May 1, 2024. Photo: Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images
For the first time in more than 30 years, the Council of UC Faculty Associations filed a formal complaint against the UC system.
by Jonah Valdez
Faculty from seven University of California campuses took a stand against the repression of protest over Israel’s war on Gaza on Thursday, taking the historic step of filing a joint unfair labor practice charge against their employer. The professors from the top-tier California public university system alleged that their schools targeted them for speaking out on Israel’s war in Gaza and for joining students’ pro-Palestine protests in the spring.
The 581-page labor violation charge, filed with California’s Public Employment Relations Board, largely focuses on the universities’ crackdowns on the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments, in which school officials called on police to arrest hundreds of students, faculty, and staff members in May and June.
In some instances, police beat demonstrators with batons, fired rubber bullets and pepper ball munitions, and sprayed chemical agents. In the aftermath of the crackdown, faculty and staff have faced punishment for their role in the protests, from suspensions to firings.
“UC’s actions to suppress speech about Palestine on our campuses, which represents an illegal content-based restriction of faculty rights, sets an alarming precedent,” said Constance Penley, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which, along with faculty associations from the seven campuses, filed the labor charge. “Our unfair labor practice filing demands they change course and follow the law, and make whole the faculty who have been harmed.”
Anna Markowitz, a UCLA faculty association member, said the school’s crackdown had one goal: “to end Palestine solidarity activism on campus.”
“In this ULP charge, we are saying that this illegal suppression of speech cannot stand, whether about Palestine or about other issues that students and faculty may raise in the future,” she said.
An unfair labor practice charge made to the Public Employment Relations Board, a quasi-judicial agency that administers collective bargaining statutes in California, is a formal allegation of lawbreaking. The charge spurs an investigation by the board that can lead to a dismissal or force a settlement conference; if no settlement emerges, the case goes before an administrative labor law judge.
The UC system refuted Thursday’s charge with a denial and said the faculty groups lack standing to make a Public Employment Relations Board complaint in this case.
“The University has allowed — and continues to allow — lawful protesting activities surrounding the conflict in the Middle East,” the school said in a statement. “But when protests violate University policy or threaten the safety and security of others, the University has taken lawful action to end impermissible and unlawful behavior.”
Penley and Markowitz, along with other representatives from the seven campuses — Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco — gathered Thursday at UCLA to announce the charges outside a UC regents meeting.
Nearby the faculty announcement, pro-Palestine students staged a protest — the first of the school year — against a recent request by UC police to buy new drones, robots, pepper balls, projectile launchers, and sponge bullets. Similar weapons and devices were used on students and faculty protesters in the spring.
Thursday’s filing marked only the second time the Council of UC Faculty Associations has filed a joint charge since the umbrella group’s founding in the early 1970s. The last time they filed a similar charge was in 1993, when faculty protested over the denial of merit raises.
“This Unfair Labor Practice charge is historic, in that it’s the first time that all the chapters have come together to do a charge around violations of workplace conditions, which involves all the violations of academic freedom, free speech, freedom of assembly,” Penley said.
The charge filed by the faculty associations, which were created to represent the tenured and tenure-track faculty of each campus, builds on separate charges filed by UC employees represented by United Auto Workers, the University Council-American Federation of Teachers, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
Months before the UC encampments went up last year, in the immediate weeks after October 7, the universities threatened lecturers with discipline if they violated the school’s policy on prohibiting “misuse of the classroom,” giving the example of “political indoctrination.” Days later, the university system began to investigate two UCSD lecturers for possibly violating the policy by teaching students about Palestine.
Shortly after, another UCSD professor was investigated for advocating on behalf of graduate students calling for support of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim students. The professor sent an email to school administrators, echoing the graduate students’ concerns and also expressed “disappointment that the department had not issued a statement on the genocide in Gaza and advocating for the department to do so,” the charge said. UCSD responded by launching a hostile work environment investigation into the professor.
Then, in Irvine, UCI officials threatened a professor with discipline for teaching about Israel and Palestine in class and for changing their syllabus. Administrators said they would indefinitely keep the alleged violation in a confidential file and that “similar conduct would result in a formal disciplinary investigation.”
And earlier this year in April at UCSF, the school banned a medical school lecturer after she spoke about health challenges Palestinians face at a health equity conference. During a 50-minute talk, she dedicated only six minutes to discuss trauma-informed care for Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza. She also decried antisemitism during her lecture. Even so, the next month, administrators called her speech “biased and antisemitic,” barring her from giving lectures at the department that hosted the conference, the charge said. The ban was lifted, but the recording of the talk was removed from the school’s website.