June 27, 2025
Sasha Renée Pérez, Chair
Senate Education Committee
1021 O Street, Suite 6740
Sacramento, CA 95814
Subject: Oppose AB 715
Dear Chair Pérez and Members of the Senate Education Committee:
The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) writes to express its strong opposition to AB 715. We respectfully urge you to oppose this bill. If passed, this legislation will have a severe chilling effect on what California public school teachers are allowed to teach, and what our students are allowed to learn in K-12 classrooms. AB 715 threatens to suppress educational materials about global issues of critical importance generally, and about Palestine, the Palestinian people, and the state of Israel specifically.
The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) is an umbrella organization for the Faculty Associations (FAs) at each UC campus. Each FA is dues supported and therefore completely independent, representing all ranks of UC Senate faculty. We believe that AB 715 poses a great threat to the ability of our colleagues in K-12 education to properly do their jobs and will negatively impact our future students’ abilities to learn and think critically. Moreover, censoring and punishing educators for teaching about issues that politicians and outside interests decide are off-limits sets a dangerous precedent that will likely spread beyond K-12 classrooms and the issue of Palestine and Israel.
California’s existing education code already provides comprehensive protections against discrimination. It prohibits school districts from adopting instructional materials that reflect or promote bias or discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or other protected categories. AB 715 significantly exceeds this scope. By redefining “nationality” to include perceived ancestry or religion tied to a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity, the bill risks establishing a legal basis to suppress educational content that critiques or addresses historical and ongoing injustices, such as those committed against Palestinians. Teachers could be penalized for using accurate, well-documented instructional materials that discuss domestic and global issues affecting Californians, such as the history of mass deportation, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and US military intervention in the Middle East.
This bill’s language is not only legally troubling but pedagogically dangerous. It threatens to diminish intellectual inquiry and critical discussion in classrooms, chilling speech and discouraging educators from teaching crucial international issues, U.S. foreign policy, or human rights. The bill would create a climate of fear in which educators self-censor or avoid topics out of concern for professional retaliation, doxxing, harassment, and public targeting. We are already seeing teachers and students across California being aggressively suppressed and disciplined for discussing Palestine. AB 715 will only deepen this repression.
The bill’s vague language encourages bad-faith complaints and opens the door to politically motivated harassment, with profound implications for both governance and free expression. Of particular concern on this front is the fact that AB 715, as currently written, fails to define antisemitism thus leaving open the possibility of the legislation incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. California law makers must publicly oppose and reject the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and pledge to oppose any policy that conflates criticism and/or protest of Zionism and colonialism with antisemitism or “supporting terror,” as a matter of free speech, academic freedom and social justice.
Finally, AB 715 is fiscally irresponsible. Most of its proposed functions are redundant with existing state law. Creating new bureaucratic positions and inviting costly lawsuits over vague or politicized complaints will divert resources away from California classrooms at a time when the state faces a serious budget deficit. These funds would be far better spent fully implementing and supporting Ethnic Studies, as envisioned by AB 101, and ensuring that all students, regardless of background, have access to inclusive, honest, and critical education.
AB 715 is a dangerous and unnecessary bill. It will not make classrooms safer. Instead, it erases academic freedom, enshrines censorship, strips power from local communities, and uses the language of equity to advance a fundamentally political agenda designed to stifle honest, critical dialogue.
We urge you to vote NO and reject AB 715’s attempt to legislate fear, repression, and silence in our classrooms.
Sincerely,
Constance Penley,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
The otherwise excellent letter from CUCFA states that there is no definition of antisemitism in the law. However, there are prohibitions such as the following: “Do not introduce or promote antisemitic content, including inaccurate historical narratives such as labeling Israel a settler colonial state.” This is a clear example of how a matter that is validly the subject of ongoing debate is prohibited by labeling those on one side (including many Jews) as antisemitic.
Reject AB715
AB 715 will inappropriately label legitimate criticism of the current, Israeli government as “antisemitism” while discrediting actual antisemitism prevention and squelching the vital free speech of educators, crippling one of their main functions.
AB 715 would be another nail in the coffin of U.S. democracy and must not be allowed.