• Home
  • Chapters
  • Donate
  • BDS
    • SJP West BDS Campaigns
SJP WEST

Letter to University of California President Advising Him of Need to Protect Protect Pro-Palestinian Speech on Campus

December 4, 2012 by sjpwest

Link to CCR Article

Download the CCR Letter

Today, CCR and other civil rights groups submitted a letter to University of California (UC) President Mark Yudof, pressing him to consider the chilling effect of efforts to target Arab, Muslim and other students advocating for Palestinian rights on UC campuses, and to take affirmative steps to protect pro-Palestinian speech on campus.  In particular, the letter points to the rash of baseless legal complaints that have increased scrutiny of student activism on Palestine, to a UC-initiated “campus climate” report that labels Palestinian rights advocacy as anti-Semitic and threatening to Jewish students, and to numerous public statements by UC officials that disparage such activism as “bad speech” and compare it to truly anti-Semtic and racist incidents on campus, such as noose-hangings and graffiti disparaging Jews, Muslims and the LGBTQ community.

The letter details ways that students have been affected by these negative depictions of their activism, including an increased fear of harm to their professional careers, immigration status, and for their safety;  intimidation, threats and vandalism by other groups; and a sense that the University’s mis-characterization of their message reflects its efforts to undermine their free speech rights.

The civil rights groups are urging the UC President to take affirmative steps to ensure that students who advocate for Palestinian rights are equal members of the university community whose viewpoints are recognized as valuable contributions to an issue of great public concern.  It also urges the President to renounce efforts to taint all student activism on Palestine as anti-Semitic, and to correct the mischaracterizations of these students’ nonviolent and anti-racist advocacy.  CCR and the other signatories will continue to monitor attempts to intimidate Palestinian rights activists on college campuses, and to advocate on their behalf.

Posted in: Solidarity Tagged: campus climate, felber v yudof, hr 35

Search

Archive

Recent Posts

  • University of California must allow faculty to boycott Israel in academia
  • Open Letter to the University of California taskforce: the Intersections of Policing and Divestment
  • UC Irvine Repeatedly Failed to Protect the Rights of SJP Members
  • Associated Students of UC Davis Pass Resolution Condemning Cyberbullying Website Canary Mission
  • California State University – East Bay passes divestment resolution

Categories

  • Activism (67)
  • Anti-Divestment Materials (12)
  • News (73)
  • Solidarity (30)
  • Support (5)
  • Uncategorized (1)

Tag Cloud

academic boycott aipac aish international amcha anti-semitism bds berkeley boycott brandeis center california scholars for academic freedom california state university campus climate canary mission claremont department of education divestment felber v yudof free speech hasbara fellowship hate speech hr 35 intolerance irvine irvine 11 irvine divests jvp Kenneth Marcus legislature napolitano regents sabra san jose state university SDSU stanford student government title VI uc berkeley uc davis ucla uc riverside ucsa uc san diego uc santa barbara uc santa cruz Yudof

Copyright © 2023 SJP WEST.

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall