We write to you, our University of California faculty colleagues, as a group of more than 50 faculty at UC Irvine who are deeply concerned about recent attempts by UCI administrators to repress legitimate student protest and political speech regarding Palestine.. We invite you to sign this open letter, to be delivered to UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman and the UC Regents, and join us in demanding that the UCI administration publicly affirm their commitment to freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the right to assembly, and that they reverse actions that involve unlawful censorship of or discrimination against students.

In recent weeks, multiple students at UCI have been subject to intimidation, harassment, and attempted silencing of speech when they have expressed criticism of Israeli policies and support for Palestinian rights. Some of this intimidation has come directly from UCI administrators. Six students at UCI (both undergraduate and graduate students) are currently facing student conduct allegations that they have violated campus policies against “Disorderly/Lewd Conduct,” “Disruption,” and “Failure to Comply.”  Because the processes for adjudicating these allegations are non-transparent, they are being used as a punitive tool for suppressing free speech and political dissent.

Multiple faculty members at UCI attended the peaceful walk-out and rally organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as part of a national day of action on November 9th and have affirmed that this event proceeded without any disturbances or complaints: at no time did any administration official or UCI police officer approach student organizers to tell them that they were not allowed to hold their event, that they were being disruptive, or that they were ordered to cease their protest. UCI faculty were also in attendance at a November 14th event featuring invited speaker and Israel Institute Fellow Alon Burstein. Burstein gave a 50-minute lecture, which proceeded smoothly and without any interruptions. When the Q&A began, a graduate student attempted to read a short, two-minute statement about genocide in Gaza, framed via her own experience “as a Jewish American and descendant of Holocaust survivors.” Several audience members---most of them community members unaffiliated with the UCI campus---began yelling at her to “shut up”; one audience member spat at a silent student protestor, while another charged a student protestor from behind and slammed a pile of flyers on her head. Not a single act, word, or gesture on the part of the students themselves could be sincerely described as lewd, disorderly, or disruptive. Students did not block access to the event and did not prevent the speaker from delivering his lecture nor prevent the Q&A from taking place. Yet the student speaker, as well as other students who participated in the silent protest, are also facing student conduct allegations for “disturbance of peace” and “disorderly and lewd conduct," while those in the audience who verbally and physically assaulted them are facing no consequences whatsoever. 

Both the rallies and the students’ engagement with the visiting speaker were peaceful and constructive expressions of legitimate political speech. In this context, the filing of student conduct complaints appears to be a targeted attack on the free speech rights specifically of students critical of Israel and of U.S. involvement in Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza. 

These are not isolated incidents, but instead fit a long-standing pattern on our campus of silencing any speech by or for Palestinian people by conflating it with antisemitism. We share the Irvine Faculty Association’s (IFA’s) concern about UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman’s misrepresentation of UC policy on tolerance and his efforts to manipulate important prohibitions against discrimination by falsely associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, an association which is already being used, we believe, to repress the speech of student activists and to create a chilling effect across the campus.