The University of California's Unconscionable Ban On Student Governments Boycotting Israel
The UC's new policy reflects a settler colonial institution heavily invested in protecting a genocidal nation.
Last Wednesday The University of California system gave in to Trump Administration coercion and banned student governments and “entities” from boycotting Israel.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “In a letter to chancellors, UC President Michael Drake told campus leaders that ‘boycotts of companies based on their association with a particular country’ were a violation of university policy. Although UC does not have an anti-boycott rule on the books, Drake said that existing policies require competitive bidding for university contracts. Also, campus student governments must engage in ‘sound business practices’ that abide by UC legal requirements, which he said make clear that boycotts of nations are not allowed.”
This move is outrageous, a clear assault on freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the democratic process. It serves as part of a nationwide campaign targeting students, staff members, and academics who voice their support for the Palestinian People. A program of oppression that has gotten so intense that some protesters have faced federal arrest and attempts at deportation. This is the melding of state, financial, and campus power with the aim of crushing any opposition to what Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, The Lemkin Institute, governments including Ireland and South Africa, and many scholars have termed a genocide.
For those of us who have witnessed campus resistance to Israel’s crimes it’s no surprise that the University continues efforts to suppress dissent. Last year’s encampment protests stood in a fine tradition of activism going back to The Free Speech, Anti-War, and Anti-Apartheid Movements. I watched as UCLA’s peaceful demonstration, so allied with anti-Zionist Jews that Passover Seder was held, get tarred as Antisemitic by an incompetent and malicious media. Simultaneously, social media and group chats threw out wild accusations that whipped supporters of Israel into a frenzy. I was among the hundreds who were assaulted by a violent Zionist mob after days of harassment and threats. Almost none of our attackers faced justice while dozens of student protesters were brutally arrested the next night. Throughout this, administrators stubbornly refused to hear the protesters’ reasonable demands for financial divestment from Israel.
The students are being offered a real lesson here, not just on campus politics but broader American Society. Speech is tolerated, calls for justice allowed only within prescribed limits. Those asking for real, systematic change will see their rights stripped and their ability to leverage the democratic process severed. We’ve seen it time and again, the Red Scare, Reconstruction, The Black Panthers. It’s a lesson students should heed, the veneer of democratic rights serves as cover for the true oppressive nature of this land. We have no liberty when the roots of our troubles poison the soil. Real freedom cannot grow in barren ground.
The UC’s are an example of this. The land upon which they now sit was taken in the wake of an unjust war with Mexico and an outright genocide against California’s Indigenous nations. This is a university system that protects the author of torture memos and whose research helps create weapons that kill the innocent. It is a hierarchical structure where the president and board of regents face little accountability from students, staff, and faculty. It allows rich, well-connected supporters of Israel like regent Jay Sures to have more influence than tens of thousands of people within the institution. This isn’t democracy, it’s authoritarianism in academic robes.
I have no doubt those supporting Palestine will continue to resist. Repression just motivates people to fight back harder. Student governments can get around this new rule by modifying their phrasing. Simply enact boycotts of any entity found by reputable human rights groups to be engaged in genocide or ethnic cleansing. While UC Administration and President Drake are apparently willing to bend the knee to powerful Zionists and the Trump Regime, the students, faculty, and staff who stand with Palestine will continue show the backbone they so sorely lack.
They will honor that plaque only a few feet from the site of the encampment that honors those who helped Martin Luther King Jr. register voters in the South. They will keep focused on Palestine until this genocide is ended and every bit of that nation is free. As this happens, I suspect people will make the right connections and see the need to decolonize these universities, this state, and this country. The necessity of returning land to Native American nations, stopping support for all human rights abuses and colonial endeavors abroad, and creating real democracy. This means truly democratic, egalitarian government where the power is held by the vast legions of those who toil in the interest of those who toil. This extends to ensuring universities are democratic, and power is held by the students and workers not appointed elites. President Drake may wish to kill it, but it’s a dream worth fighting for.
Author’s note: To let you know how the mainstream media works, a rough draft of this op-ed was submitted to various large publications this week. It was turned down or received no response from The Los Angeles Times, Southern California News Group, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Washington Post, The New Republic, MSNBC, The Guardian, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Granted it would have been a quick turn-around, but studies and reporting show the media is systematically biased towards Israel. I thought my readers should see behind the curtain.
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I'll add as a full disclosure here I attended UCLA about a decade ago.