March 18, 2016
University of California Regents
Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents
1111 Franklin St.,12th floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Dear Regents,
I write you as President of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, which represents the faculty on all UC campuses.
Attached, please find a copy of a letter we sent to what was then called the UC Regents’ Working Group to Develop New UC Principles Regarding Intolerance last October about the impossibility of carving out a bright line redefinition of freedom of speech that allows unfettered expression yet enforces some standard of tolerance and civility. We send this letter to you now because the Regents are once again asked to vote on this issue.
We believe that the Regents should decline to adopt the report of the Regents Working Group on Principles Against Intolerance because the report continues to single out anti-Semitism as the primary focus of university’s concern about intolerance on its campuses. We believe it is wrong to privilege this form of discrimination over other, equally objectionable forms. It is essential that the university take no steps that might limit our community’s freedom of speech and the free and respectful exchange of ideas. For the reasons we laid out in October, we continue to urge the Regents to reaffirm the university’s commitment to enforcing existing internal university policies and state and federal laws to protect the free speech rights of all students and other members of the University community while ensuring that they all have recourse when the object of intolerant behavior.
If we can be of further assistance in this matter, please contact our Executive Director, Eric Hays, at info@cucfa.org or 888-826-3623.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best wishes,
Stanton Glantz
President
On behalf of the Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations