Israel’s bombing of Gaza is “genocidal,” according to the home page of the Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Such a statement would be considered political and banned, according to a new proposal by the regents of the University of California.
Under the proposal, academic departments would be prohibited from publishing political statements on their home pages. And any political statement issued by a department – in any venue – would have to meet stricter guidelines.
The regents are set to vote as early as Wednesday on the plan, which would apply to the 10 schools in the UC system, including Santa Cruz, UCLA and Berkeley.
Higher education abounds in opinions on current events, from Black Lives Matter to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, universities have come under pressure to draw stricter boundaries around speech, sometimes in ways that have alarmed advocates of academic freedom.
The state’s progressive politics have generally insulated the University of California from some of the conservative attacks on colleges. But the regents’ proposal, some professors and students worry, could represent a turning point at a time when the very language used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hotly contested.
Many Jewish students, faculty and alumni accused some pro-Palestinian protesters and professors of turning to anti-Semitic discourse. At Berkeley last month, an event featuring an Israeli speaker was canceled after a crowd of protesters broke down the doors, which the chancellor, Carol Crist, described as “an attack on the university’s fundamental values.”
A Berkeley political science professor, Ron Hasner, staged a sit-in at his office to protest what the administration says is inaction on campus anti-Semitism. And more than 400 professors signed a letter decrying how the university system’s ethnic studies departments published material on their home pages that “vilifies Israel, rejects Hamas’ characterization of the carnage as terrorism, and calls on the UC administration to “support the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions”.
On Tuesday, Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, sent a letter to university officials requesting documents and information about Berkeley’s response to anti-Semitism on campus.
To Jay Sures, the regent who developed the proposal, banning such statements on a department’s home page does not limit academic freedom. Faculty and students have many other forums to express themselves, he said, but their views on department homepages could be misconstrued as representing the University of California.
“Faculty can have their Twitter accounts,” Mr. Sures said at a regents’ meeting in January. “They can do social media. They can publish peer-reviewed studies. There are so many other ways.”
Some universities have already tightened their rules.
There has also been heated debate over whether universities should adopt the University of Chicago’s famous policy of “institutional neutrality,” meaning the university does not take a position on issues that are not central to the university’s operations.
The debate at the University of California is not exactly that. The president, board chair and others who speak as the university’s official voice will not be affected by the regents’ proposal.
In fact, a statement from the university sparked a row between Mr. Sures and the ethnic studies professor.
On October 9, Michael V. Drake, the president of the University of California, and Richard Leib, the chairman of the board of trustees, issued a statement condemning the Hamas attack as “terrorism” and “degrading and incomprehensible.”
A week later, the university’s ethnic studies council, which represents hundreds of faculty members across the system, objected, writing in a letter that the official statement lacked a “full understanding of this historic moment” and contributed to anti-Muslim and anti-Muslim — Palestinian sentiments.
“We call on the UC administrative leadership to withdraw its charges of terrorism, strengthen the struggle for Palestinian freedom and stand against Israel’s war crimes against and ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people,” the council said.
Mr Sures called the letter “disgusting and repulsive”.
He replied that he would do everything in his power “to protect our Jewish students, and for that matter, everyone in our extended community from your inflammatory and ignorant rhetoric.”
The UC system had already addressed the issue of political statements. In 2022, an academic freedom committee supported the department’s ban on political statements.
The departments, the report said, should instead create guidelines about when to issue statements, be transparent about whose views are represented and also consider whether they could relax the speech of those who disagree.
Currently, political statements are allowed as long as they do not deviate from electoral politics.
But the regents’ proposal would limit the department’s home pages to day-to-day operations, which include course descriptions, upcoming events and the launch of new publications.
Opinions will be allowed on other university websites. But any political statement would need a disclaimer, stating that the views are not necessarily those of the university.
The regents’ proposal adopts other recommendations of the 2022 academic freedom report. It would require faculty members to vote before issuing a policy statement, with ballots collected anonymously to protect dissenting views. Departments should create and publish guidelines on the process.
The proposal did not allay the concerns of several faculty members, who say it was politically motivated.
The regents’ proposal “delegitimizes the work we do in ethnic studies,” said Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, the department chair at Santa Cruz.
The ethnic studies department’s statements, he said, “are based on the academic expertise of almost all of us in the department and especially our faculty working on Palestine.”
James Steinrager, the president of the university’s academic senate, worried that the proposal is an invitation for outsiders to police academia.
“It’s not just about clear political statements about certain world events,” he said in an interview, “but also about things like climate change, vaccine science, things like that.”
But Ty Alper, a Berkeley law professor who chaired the academic freedom committee in 2022, was pleased the proposal adopted its recommendations. Mr. Alper said he was less focused on the department’s homepage rules.
“I am more concerned,” he said, “with ensuring that the faculty has the individual and collective right to issue statements on matters of interest.”
