U. of California Faculty File Free Expression Unfair Labor Practice

BY HANK REICHMAN

At this time, because the UC Regents have been finishing their assembly on the UCLA campus, the Council of College of California School Associations (CUCFA), a accomplice of the AAUP, and the school associations at UC Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Cruz filed an amended unfair labor follow (ULP) grievance towards the College of California with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).  The advocacy teams symbolize tenured and tenure-track school members.  The grievance supersedes a June 3 submitting by the UCLA School Affiliation-AAUP, which charged that campus’s administration for its “failure to uphold, and their option to intervene with, school’s legally protected rights throughout and after the latest UCLA Palestine Solidarity Encampment.”  Earlier ULPs had been filed towards the UC administration by three campus unions, the UAW, UC-AFT, and AFSCME.

On Might 20, graduate staff represented by UAW Native 4811 started an unfair labor follow strike to protest UC’s illegal actions, together with its interference with worker rights, discrimination towards workers making office calls for, and unilateral adjustments to working circumstances that impacted educating, work obligations, security, and tutorial freedom.  The strike ended on June 7, after UC, which had did not get aid from PERB, obtained a short lived restraining order from an Orange County choose.

The CUCFA ULP costs UC with suppressing free speech and meeting actions associated to the Gaza conflict.  Citing a sequence of “imprecise however threatening communications warning school that they could possibly be disciplined” for “indoctrinating” college students, the school associations allege that the college “has engaged in a relentless marketing campaign to sit back school’s train of their tutorial freedom and to discourage them from educating in regards to the conflict in a manner that doesn’t align with the College’s place.”

The grievance costs UC directors with failing to defend school members “experiencing threats and harassment from anti-Palestinian counter-protesters, in addition to these experiencing precise violence on many campuses,” most notably at UCLA the place campus safety stood apart for hours as protesters have been violently assaulted.   When the graduate staff went on strike, UC “issued new, overbroad restrictions that prohibited school from chatting with any college students or workers in regards to the strike or different union actions, no matter whether or not there was a supervisory relationship.”

The grievance factors out that administrations on the Berkeley, Davis, and Riverside campuses efficiently negotiated with protesters to resolve the protests peacefully and didn’t use legislation enforcement to violently evict their encampments or arrest protesters.  These efforts counsel that the repressive actions taken at UCLA and elsewhere might have been averted.  At Davis, an settlement negotiated by Chancellor Gary Might with protest leaders was peremptorily rejected by UC Regents Chair Richard Leib and Vice Chair Gareth Elliot, who barred the chancellor from additional conferences with the scholars.

The extremely detailed 55-page (single-spaced) grievance, supplemented by a whole bunch of pages of documentary and photographic displays, particulars many incidents that, the school associations cost, exemplify a harmful sample of disregard for educational freedom and free speech rights of these protesting the Gaza conflict.  These embody an intensive account of the horrific sequence of occasions surrounding the Palestine Solidarity Encampment at UCLA:

“A number of school have been subjected to vile verbal harassment and sexual harassment—together with violent, transphobic, racist, and sexist slurs and threats—by counter-protesters at or close to the UCLA encampment. No less than one member of the school was bodily pushed by counter-protesters making an attempt to enter the encampment.  Counter-protesters filmed [a] UCLA-FA member . . . after which doxxed her, posting her telephone quantity and e-mail deal with on-line.  [She] acquired a whole bunch of emails and calls, together with callers that acknowledged her right deal with and made sexualized threats.  UCLA directors didn’t intervene and, predictably, the harassment intensified.”
Though college directors steadily attraction to time, place and method restrictions to restrict the flexibility of protesters to make use of sound gear, UCLA allowed anti-Palestinian counter-protesters to erect a stage and sound system and maintain a rally adjoining to the encampment. “At this rally, counter-protesters . . . broadcast at excessive quantity graphic movies of killings, violence, and sexual violence which have occurred through the Israel-Palestine battle onto a jumbotron.  The College allowed the jumbotron to proceed enjoying these movies on loop on the plaza for days, solely eradicating it . . . after the encampment had been forcibly evicted.”  School members stated the loud quantity interfered with their skill to show in surrounding buildings.
“Beginning at roughly 10:00 pm on April 30, anti-Palestinian counter-protesters . . . assaulted college students with metallic pipes, mace, bear spray, and pepper spray, whereas others tore down barricades surrounding the encampment and launched fireworks into the encampment. Campus safety and legislation enforcement have been stationed roughly 200 toes away from the encampment however allowed the assault to proceed unchecked for 4 hours.
“A bunch of UCLA-FA members, . . . together with different school, did their finest to guard the scholars.  As a result of nobody else intervened, at one level they lined as much as bodily protect college students from the counter-protesters.  School tended to college students’ accidents.  School requested assist from non-public safety however acquired no help. . . .
“School additionally pleaded with the administration for assist. . . .  However, UCLA officers stood by whereas the violence unfolded.  The administration waited till 12:30 am, two and a half hours after counter-protesters started their assault, to request help from the California Freeway Patrol.  Some school who sought shelter of their places of work have been denied entry to their very own buildings by non-public safety personnel, and as a substitute left to courageous the counter-protesters assault. . . .   It was not till roughly 2:45 am on Might 1 that officers lastly intervened to separate the counter-protesters from the encampment.  Throughout all the assault and its aftermath, emergency medical providers have been current at UCLA’s campus however weren’t allowed by campus officers to return to the encampment to deal with the accidents of scholars or school.”

Within the wake of this monstrous assault, the grievance continues, the College on Might 1 invited legislation enforcement onto campus to forcibly evict protesters.  A number of UCLA-FA members have been arrested and/or assaulted by police.  “School have been saved in detention in squalid circumstances for practically 12 hours.  Legislation enforcement informed school they have been held for added time on the College’s request, reasonably than being processed and launched on website.”

The grievance paperwork subsequent occasions on Might 23 and 26, throughout which scholar protesters and college supporters have been additional abused by police and personal safety officers employed by the college.  On June 3, the UCLA-FA filed the preliminary ULP grievance, which led, 5 days later, to the initiation of college disciplinary actions towards school members arrested on Might 1.  Then, on June 10, UCLA arrested some 25 college students, school members, and workers making an attempt to revive the encampment.  On June 21, the College issued disciplinary costs towards 4 UCLA-FA members arrested through the encampment eviction and the June 10 protest.  On July 1, a UCLA-FA member who had been arrested was denied promotion, with out clarification, despite the fact that he had been really helpful enthusiastically by his division.

Taken as an entire, the grievance argues at nice size, these actions quantity to illegal habits underneath California legislation.

Related occasions transpired at different UC campuses.  At UC San Diego, the grievance alleges, “administration overtly surveilled and intimidated school engaged in protected exercise;” “used police to violently clear the encampment and arrest college students and college;” and “subjected two school members to disciplinary investigation for taking part within the encampment.”

At Santa Cruz, “UC police raided the UCSC Gaza Solidarity Encampment and arrested peaceable protesters, together with school who have been supporting college students and protesting office points;” a school member was investigated for the “crime” of retweeting a broadly shared and mocking portrayal of the campus provost; and three school members have been summarily banned from campus with out due course of and in violation of campus insurance policies and procedures.  Because the grievance argues, the banned school members “didn’t pose any menace of disruption, or hurt to individuals or property, so there was no foundation for banning them from campus.”

At Irvine, the grievance contends, the administration dealt disparately with disruptive expression by pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli advocates.  The college “overtly surveilled school and protesters however didn’t intervene towards counter-protester aggression and harassment.”  In a single incident, “a pro-Israeli UCI professor and an unknown affiliate harassed and bodily intimidated a scholar, however UCI dismissed the grievance” even when introduced with a video of the incident.

The sample was repeated as properly at UC San Francisco, a medical faculty.  There, nevertheless, one incident stands out:

Beginning in October 2023, one SFFA member repeatedly spoke out towards the conflict, together with by means of teach-ins on the UCSF encampment, by means of social media posts, and in at the very least one broadly seen Substack article that protested racist, anti-Palestinian statements made by UCSF physicians.  In response, UCSF opened an investigation towards the professor.  Then, in April 2024, UCSF despatched a plain-clothes police officer to an instructional panel to watch a presentation given by the SFFA member with out informing the SFFA member or panel organizers.  Throughout the panel, the officer flashed his badge at college students and informed attendees he was on the panel particularly as a result of the SFFA member requested he be there.  The SFFA member had by no means made such a request.  The SFFA is unaware of any police officer beforehand monitoring an instructional panel, and college students and college have been intimidated and shaken by the officer’s presence.  After the professor realized what had occurred, she requested the administration why the officer was there and utilizing her title.  UCPD acknowledged the officer was current to assist make sure that school, workers, and college students pursue their work and actions at UCSF in a “secure and welcoming method free from disruption.”  The SFFA member objected to this characterization, expressing concern about police presence. . . .  When the professor’s colleague requested extra questions in regards to the uncommon presence of police through the panel, UCPD and the administration merely didn’t reply.

Maybe essentially the most regarding costs contain the UC Workplace of the President (UCOP) and the UC Regents.

“On April 5, 2024, UCOP introduced that it had proposed revisions to the College Coverage on School Conduct and the Administration of Self-discipline that might allow the administration to impose a no-fault pause on any present or future tutorial personnel determination . . . of any school investigated for alleged misconduct, if the administration discovered that the alleged misconduct was related to the evaluation standards for educational personnel evaluation actions.”
“On Might 9, after numerous campuses had ordered the arrest of dozens of scholars, scholar workers, and college, UCOP issued “guiding rules” for campus self-discipline. This doc states that any ‘member of the college group who’s arrested for illegal habits or cited for a violation of college coverage should undergo the relevant evaluation course of, comparable to . . . [the] worker disciplinary course of.’  On Might 16, the UC Board of Regents endorsed UCOP’s Might 9 pointers.”
After the graduate staff represented by the UAW voted to strike to protest the college’s repressive actions, UCOP circulated an FAQ for school. It acknowledged, “School, Instructors of Document, and/or Principal Investigators mustn’t touch upon the strike to college students and workers—even college students and workers they don’t advise/mentor/train, or supervise—besides to direct represented workers to their union for any questions they’ve, together with questions in regards to the strike, union membership, or the College’s place on the strike.  Nevertheless, nothing prevents participating in regular conversations with college students and workers regarding topics unrelated to union membership, union actions, or strike actions.”  Such a restriction quantities to a transparent violation of school and scholar speech rights.

Briefly, the school associations conclude that UC “has made clear that it favors pro-Israel speech and that it’s going to silence pro-Palestinian speech, together with speech by teachers within the context of their programs.”

These actions by the College of California and the response by CUCFA and the campus associations come within the context of an alarming “wave of administrative insurance policies meant to crack down on peaceable campus protest” lately condemned by the AAUP.  Because the AAUP famous in its assertion, “Establishments of upper studying ought to intention to foster an setting wherein school, graduate workers, college students, and different members of the campus group are free to debate and debate tough subjects, inside and outdoors the classroom.”

To make certain, the battle over Israel and Palestine evokes passions that may be tough to manage.  But when any establishment ought to be capable of direct these passions towards constructive dialogue, universities needs to be.  One needn’t help all of the calls for of protesters nor approve of their predictably heated rhetoric—I, for one, usually don’t—to help their rights to free expression.  At a time when universities are being urged by politicians to embrace “neutrality,” the hypocrisy of these calls for turns into clear when universities like UC so clearly privilege the rights of generally violent counter-protesters over these of peaceable dissenters, most clearly as a result of these universities are on no account actually “impartial,” however as a substitute favor one facet over the opposite.

I can recall when the College of California spent a small fortune to defend the rights of the bigoted provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to talk at Berkeley when a violent mob attacked.  Why not prolong these protections to UC’s personal college students and college?

That tenured and tenure-track school within the nation’s largest public analysis college system are taking motion to face up for educational freedom and free speech is greater than welcome.  The UC Regents and PERB should take due discover.

Contributing editor Hank Reichman is professor emeritus of historical past at California State College, East Bay; former AAUP vice-president and chair of the AAUP Basis; and from 2012-2021 Chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Educational Freedom and Tenure. His e-book, The Way forward for Educational Freedom, primarily based partially on posts to this weblog, was printed in 2019.  His Understanding Educational Freedom was printed in October, 2021; a second version can be printed in March 2025.