In the News
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CA Educators Are Resisting Anti-Palestine Bills Pushing “Academic Police State”
August 20, 2024
Activists say the bills will make public education more hostile for people already targeted by anti-Palestinian racism. A raft of bills proposed in the California legislature would stifle Palestine-related speech in public schools and on college campuses, including protests against Israel’s war on Gaza and the teaching of ethnic studies and histories of Palestine and the Middle East.
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UC Approves Policy to Limit Faculty Speech on Websites
July 17, 2024
Despite the changes, some faculty remain concerned that the policy violates their free speech rights. Jennifer Mogannam, an assistant professor in UC Santa Cruz’s ethnic studies department, said she views the policy as targeting ethnic studies faculty and pro-Palestinian speech.
Mogannam is one of multiple Palestinian studies scholars in the Santa Cruz department and said statements about Israel’s war in Gaza should be considered part of their scholarly endeavors. But she’s worried it won’t be seen that way.
“I’m sure we’re going to be seeing double standards in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not when this policy is being implemented,” Mogannam said
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UC Regents Ban Views on Israel, Other Political Opinion from University Homepages
July 17, 2024
“It is only when faculty speech threatened to upset support for Israel and Zionism that the Regents saw fit to enact such a policy,” Malloy said in a statement to The Times. “It must be seen along with the dispatch of police against UC students, faculty and staff, as well as the newly adopted measures aimed against encampments as part of an effort by a group of Regents to hold the UC hostage to their own commitment to Zionism in the midst of a genocide against Palestine.”
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UC Ethnic Studies Requirement Waylaid by Israel-Hamas War
January 8, 2024
The University of California system plans to institute a proposed admissions requirement in ethnic studies, but the process to draft and approve course criteria has dragged on for more than two years and been at the center of controversy about how Israel would be discussed in high school ethnic studies classes, if at all. (from Inside Higher Ed)
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Pro-Palestinian UC students feel they are not supported. Some of the faculty are organizing to change that
December 21, 2023
University of California faculty members across the system have launched an unprecedented organizing effort to defend campus advocates for Palestinian rights who feel unsupported after reporting widespread harassment and threats triggered by the Israel-Hamas war. (from the Los Angeles Times)