September 25, 2023

Dear Chancellor Larive and Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Kletzer:

The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA), an umbrella organization for the Faculty Associations (FAs) at each UC campus dedicated to protecting the best interests of UC faculty, writes to express our concern regarding your response to the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism’s (ICSZ) conference on the movement to oppose the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

We remind you that it is a misappropriation of university resources to use campus legal counsel funds to curtail faculty members’ academic freedom and First Amendment rights. To the contrary, it is campus legal counsel’s responsibility to ensure that the university protects faculty members’ freedom of thought, expression, and speech. We note that campus legal counsel, headed by Chief Campus Counsel Eréndira Rubin, was notified in late July that a faculty member’s scholarship and UC-appointed service work was the target of defamatory attacks by various media outlets because of their role in co-organizing the upcoming ICSZ conference. Rather than dedicating resources to protect this faculty member’s safety and defending their First Amendment rights, the UCSC administration issued a public statement (first on Sept. 5 and then updated on Sept. 8) stating that “UC Santa Cruz does not endorse” the conference. This irregular action sets a worrying precedent for future academic gatherings that might cover topics deemed sensitive in that it suggests that the administration should play the role of an arbiter in condemning or condoning the research activities of its faculty or campus units. Further, this institutional distancing from faculty members is particularly concerning given the ongoing attacks on academic freedom designed to suppress the teaching and study of racism and colonialism in other parts of the country.

In addition to being a highly unusual practice, the UCSC administration’s public repudiation of the ICSZ conference risks conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. We state in the strongest possible terms that criticism of Zionism is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. This conflation has been used at university campuses across the country to attack academic freedom, as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has clearly articulated, and to derail research, teaching, and good-faith debate. A report issued on September 5, 2023, by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism – Violating the Rights to Freedom of Expression and Assembly in the European Union and the UK,” highlights the disproportionate harm that acceptance of the IHRA definition inflicts on Palestinians, Jewish activists, and organizations advocating for Palestinian rights. It concludes: “This suggests the definition is being implemented in a discriminatory manner. Individuals who are targeted suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage.”

Issuing a statement of “non-endorsement” has a chilling effect on the critical study of Zionism at UCSC and on the examination of any subject that administrators deem undesirable. This is a slippery slope. The history of McCarthyism teaches us that while scholars engaged in the critical study of Zionism are being targeted today, this target can shift or multiply at any point and be directed to those who are involved in scholarship on any topic that is in solidarity with the struggles of peoples fighting for their freedom.

For the sake of the academic freedom of UCSC scholars and those from around the ten UC campuses, CUCFA supports UCSC faculty in calling on UCSC’s administration to retract its September 8 statement and publicly affirm the right of faculty, staff, and students to continue their intellectual work without fear of retaliation, defamation, policing, or censorship from their campus administrators.

Sincerely,

Constance Penley,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Professor of Film and Media Studies, UCSB

Wendy Matsumura
Vice President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Associate Professor of History, UCSD

For the CUCFA Executive Board