Faculty from across the UC system — long synonymous with the Free Speech Movement — have organized to fight a systematic, illegal campaign to repress academic freedom 

Los Angeles, CA – Today, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and faculty associations from seven University of California (UC) campuses filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge against the UC administration with the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB).

This systemwide ULP filing builds on a filing by the UCLA Faculty Association this spring. It asserts that UC violated the law, its own policies, and both the state and U.S. constitutions in sweeping efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian speech on campuses this spring. Previous  ULPs have been filed against the UC administration around these issues by the UAW, UC-AFT, and AFSCME.

“UC’s actions to suppress speech about Palestine on our campuses, which represents an illegal content-based restriction of faculty rights, sets an alarming precedent,” said CUCFA President Constance Penley. “Our unfair labor practice filing demands they change course and follow the law, and make whole the faculty who have been harmed.”

University faculty in California have rights under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act (HEERA) to protected concerted activity, including speaking on campus and organizing to change university policies. Under this law and UC policies, faculty rights to academic freedom are protected to promote the open exchange of ideas and the creation of knowledge, the university’s core mission.

Yet, this spring, when faculty engaged in protected free speech to raise workplace demands and to help protect faculty, staff, and students’ free speech rights through participating in rallies, encampments, and teach-ins, they were met with a campaign of systematic retaliation, including:

• Arrest for exercising rights to free speech and assembly

• University investigatory and disciplinary proceedings based on these arrests

• University investigation or sanctions for social media posts in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza

• Bans from campus, despite the ongoing necessity of teaching classes

• Surveillance by university agents while conducting protected, concerted activity

• Gag orders restricting faculty from speaking with graduate students from UAW 4811 who were on strike, or even other faculty about the strike, both protected activities

• Orders to not use their classrooms for “political indoctrination,” a vague charge that is highly susceptible to political interpretation

UC argues that they took these actions in the name of safety. Yet, at every moment this spring, UC made choices that endangered its students and faculty. When a mob armed with bear spray and wood and metal projectiles marauded across the UCLA campus in April, beating students and faculty, UC held back police from intervening to protect them, and ambulances were prevented from treating the injured. The next day, the same officials called for a brutal police crackdown on students and faculty still tending their wounds from the night before, leaving dozens of additional students with head injuries and rubber bullet wounds.

“From the brutal predawn arrests ordered by university leaders to the vague and threatening notices of investigation, the university’s goal is clear: to end Palestine solidarity activism on campus,” said Anna Markowitz, Associate Professor of Education at UCLA. “In this ULP charge, we are saying that this illegal suppression of speech cannot stand, whether about Palestine or about other issues that students and faculty may raise in the future.”

UC’s actions were followed by policy changes over the summer designed to further suppress faculty and student speech and organizing. These changes included the designation of limited, specific free speech zones and billing event organizers for police surveillance. These changes will reverberate for years, curtailing faculty and student speech on UC campuses on every issue, from labor organizing to student safety to curriculum reform.

“Every Californian should be worried about this threat to the stature of the University of California,” Penley said. “You can look to Florida and Texas to see what happens when a state university system surrenders on protecting tenure, academic freedom, and free expression. The ramifications go far beyond those targeted.”

“At a time when politicians are urging universities to embrace ‘neutrality,’ the hypocrisy of those demands becomes clear when universities like UC so clearly privilege the rights of sometimes violent counter-protesters over those of peaceful dissenters, most obviously because those universities are in no way really ‘neutral,’ but instead favor one side over the other,” says Henry Reichman, past Vice President of AAUP and former chair of AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom. “That tenured and tenure-track faculty in the country’s largest public research university system are taking action to stand up for academic freedom and free speech is more than welcome. The UC Regents and PERB must take due notice.”

The ULP with exhibits is available as a 581 page PDF here.