As Students Return to School, a Proposed Law Targets Campus Protests
Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, on May 23, 2024. Photo: Qian Weizhong/VCG/Getty Images
The ACLU is ringing the alarm bell over S.B. 1287, which the group believes will chill free speech on California campuses.
by Jonah Valdez
A bill making its way through California’s legislature would stifle free speech on public university and college campuses, specifically around protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestine, according to civil rights advocates.
As state lawmakers head back to Sacramento for the final stretch of the year’s legislative session, which often ends in a flurry of last-minute votes in mid-September, the American Civil Liberties Union in California is ringing the alarm bell on Senate Bill 1287, saying that it will “set a dangerous precedent of chilling speech on campuses across the state.”
The bill, introduced in February by Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer, would require schools to adopt and enforce rules against harassment, discrimination, or any behavior that “creates a hostile environment on campus.”
Glazer and the bill’s supporters, which include a host of pro-Israel advocacy groups, say the bill protects all students’ safety and free speech, regardless of their positions. Glazer has defended his bill from critics who view the measure as a part of a larger effort to curb free speech of the student activists who voice support for Palestine, and has amended it to remove some of its most targeted language.
Still, Glazer’s approach to the issue of protests against Israel is clear, even if he argues it has nothing to do with the bill. “I’m not trying to hide my opinion, I just haven’t said a lot about it because I know why people want to make this be about pro-Palestinian, anti-Palestinian bill,” Glazer told The Intercept. “I would argue, pro-Hamas, anti-Hamas,” Glazer continued, referring to how he would frame the debate, before immediately disavowing the idea that he was framing the debate at all.
“Whatever framing you want to use to make your case, people are doing that — I’m not,” Glazer said.
The original version of the bill was bluntly aimed at criminalizing pro-Palestine protests when it was drafted, said Leena Sabagh, an advocate and a policy manager with the Council on Islamic-American Relations.
The original bill included a proposed ban on a “call for or support of genocide,” which Sabagh took as a direct attempt to prohibit the common protest slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The “genocide” language was eventually cut from the bill after pushback by free speech advocates and state assembly members who were concerned the ban would violate First Amendment rights.
“It was very clear who this bill was targeting,” Sabagh said, pointing to the original “genocide” provision. Students who support Palestine have already been met with intense pushback from schools, including police violence, arrests, and suspensions. The bill would give universities even more tools to punish students who are protesting in support of Palestine, she added.
“There’s both aspects — it’s generally unconstitutional, and on top of that, we know what the application of this bill would lead to,” Sabagh said. “We see who’s currently being targeted and suppressed by universities: It’s the Palestinian students, it’s Arab students, it’s Muslim students, and the Jewish students who support Palestine, and all other students who are protesting in support of Palestine.”
Among the bill’s most vocal detractors has been ACLU California Action, which said in a letter sent last week to Glazer’s office that the amended bill would still suppress free speech. In the letter, obtained by The Intercept, the ACLU highlighted areas of the bill that are “overly broad” and vague, such as leaving terms like “harassment,” “discrimination,” and “hostile environment” with no clear definitions that may allow institutions to apply them in ways that prohibit students’ free speech.
Glazer’s bill would also require students to acknowledge the new set of rules as a condition of their enrollment at a school. It also institutes a training program that would “educate students on how to exchange views in an atmosphere of mutual respect and civility.” If the bill passes a vote in the state Assembly and is signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it would apply to the state’s community colleges, California State University’s 23 campuses, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system, which together enroll more than 2.6 million students each year.
“We foresee this mandate being applied in ways that unnecessarily restrict protected speech,” the ACLU wrote, “resulting in both indefensible censorship and administrative discipline.” The group also anticipated costly lawsuits as a possible outcome from uneven enforcement of the policy across the dozens of state campuses.
Apartheid Then, but Not Now
The state Senate passed the bill with a near-unanimous vote in late May, as student encampments and demonstrations calling for institutional divestment from Israel sprouted on campuses across the U.S. How schools have responded to campus protests — some promised to consider divesting, others called in police raids in which hundreds of students and faculty faced violence, arrest, and suspension — has been the subject of widespread debate and scrutiny over free speech rights of students. Reports of antisemitic incidents at schools have also raised questions around free speech and double standards.
When advocating for his bill ahead of the vote, Glazer mentioned his own record of activism, having led a movement against South African apartheid while a student at San Diego State University, advocating for schools to divest from banks that had investments in South Africa. Advocates for the ongoing divestment movement against Israel’s government have drawn inspiration from the South Africa divestment movement of the late 1980s. The United Nation’s top court recently declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank illegal and said that it amounts to apartheid of the Palestinian people.
However, Glazer in his interview with The Intercept was quick to shoot down any suggestion that he was drawing a connection between South Africa and Israel.
“I brought up my own activism to show that I’m not immune to seeing injustices in the world — I’ve been very active in my own life in trying to advance justice,” Glazer told The Intercept, “but we didn’t do it by denying other students their free speech rights. We didn’t do it with intimidation and harassment and violence against those who had a different view.”