Professors across the state have accused the University of California system of carrying out a broad campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian speech and protests, in violation of state labor laws.
The University of California Council of Faculty Associations said UC administrators have threatened faculty for teaching about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have initiated disciplinary proceedings against faculty for supporting student encampments on campus as well as for backing a strike by student academic workers this spring.
The faculty group made the allegations in a 581-page complaint filed Thursday with the California Public Labor Relations Board, which oversees the interaction between labor and management of public employees in the state. The allegation of unfair labor practices was co-signed by the faculty associations of seven UC campuses, including Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Davis and San Francisco.
Faculty members gathered at UCLA midday Thursday to announce the indictment. At the news conference, Constance Penley, president of the UC Faculty Associations Council, described the university’s actions as a “relentless campaign to curb faculty members’ exercise of academic freedom and discourage them from teaching about the war in a way that does not align with the university’s position.”
Professors have also been investigated for pro-Palestine social media posts, arrested for exercising their right to freedom of expression, and subjected to surveillance and intimidation by university officials, the report said.
The faculty pressure highlights how, months after police dismantled pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses, the fallout has continued on several campuses, with university officials implementing new protest rules and students dealing with continued suspensions and holds on their records.
The faculty members’ claims build on an earlier complaint filed by the UCLA Faculty Association following mass attacks and arrests against students and faculty who participated in a camp on campus in April and May. And they parallel similar allegations made by unions representing UC employees, including the United Auto Workers Local 481 union, which represents student academic workers, and the University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which represents 6,500 librarians and faculty across the university system.
The multiple charges, filed earlier this year with the state labor board, essentially allege that the university failed to maintain safe working conditions, ignored its employees’ free speech rights and made illegal changes to working conditions in response to campus protests.
The university is standing by its course of action. In response to a request for comment, UC spokeswoman Heather Hansen pointed to a statement the university previously filed with the state labor board in response to the UCLA Faculty Association's allegation.
The university said that while it “supports freedom of expression and lawful protest,” it must also “ensure that all members of its community can continue to study, work and exercise their rights safely, and has policies in place that regulate the time, place and manner of protest activities on its campuses.”
“The University has permitted – and continues to permit – lawful protest activities surrounding the conflict in the Middle East. But when protests violate University policy or threaten the safety of others, the University has taken legal action to stop unconscionable and unlawful conduct,” the university said.
The dossier details cases in which the university allegedly investigated and disciplined professors.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s bombing siege of Gaza, the university began emailing professors threatening that they could be investigated and disciplined for teaching content that was not within the scope of their courses. In November, UC San Diego investigated two professors for teaching about the history of the Palestinian territories, according to the filing. The administration sent a “warning letter” to a UC Irvine faculty member for holding a vote on whether to teach the class at the campus camp, with attendance optional.
In another cited example, a University of California, San Francisco, medical professor who gave a talk in April about trauma-informed care at a health equity conference was banned from future educational activities after she spent about six minutes of a 50-minute course discussing the topic in relation to Palestinian health concerns. A campus administrator informed the professor that they had received complaints that her talk was “biased and anti-Semitic,” and removed a video of the talk from the internet. The ban was eventually lifted, but the video remains offline.
The complaint says the university's “harsh repression of faculty for expressing pro-Palestinian views stands in stark contrast to its treatment of openly pro-Israeli faculty.”
The university declined to launch a formal disciplinary investigation into a pro-Israel faculty member at UC Irvine accused of physically harassing and intimidating an undergraduate student, even though a video was provided of the faculty member “cornering, physically intimidating and interrogating a visibly frightened student,” according to the filing.
After an unfair labor practice complaint is filed, the Public Employee Relations Board will review and evaluate the case and decide whether to dismiss the complaint or move the parties to negotiate a settlement. If no settlement is reached, a formal hearing will be scheduled before an administrative law judge.
