SAN DIEGO — The UC San Diego Faculty Association has joined faculty at other UC schools in filing an unfair labor practice complaint against the University of California for its efforts to suppress free speech regarding Palestine on campuses this year.
The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) filed the complaint with the Public Employee Relations Board on Sept. 17, along with faculty associations at UC campuses in Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and San Diego.
UCLA’s faculty association was the first to file an unfair labor practice charge against the college system in June, stating that the UC violated the law, its policies, and the state and U.S. constitutions through its actions against those speaking out regarding Palestine. According to CUCFA, this system-wide filing is an amended filing that builds upon the UCLA faculty’s charge.
“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.”
The complaint states that the UC administration sent vague and threatening communications to faculty warning them against teaching about Palestine or Israel in a way that does not align with course material, essentially chilling faculty’s academic freedom.
The charge also states the UC administration failed to defend faculty experiencing threats, harassment and violence for protesting against the war in Palestine or supporting involved students, and further repressed speech by prohibiting faculty from discussing a strike by academic workers after the university used law enforcement against protestors.
In early May, UCSD became the latest site of a peaceful encampment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the university to end relationships with weapons companies and Israel. Similar to the response of many other universities, police declared the encampment on campus an unlawful assembly days later, and arrested 65 individuals, most of them students.
The system-wide labor practice charge states that two faculty members were arrested at the UCSD encampment and that the university interfered with employee rights in several ways.
This includes directing law enforcement to arrest peaceful protestors, using violence against them by hitting them with wooden batons, shoving them and spraying them with chemical irritants, failing to take action when a counter-protestor attempted to choke an association member, and initiating disciplinary investigations against arrested faculty, the charge states.
UCSD also violated faculty’s rights by openly surveilling faculty exercising free speech and distributing flyers threatening discipline, according to the charge.
Wendy Matsumura, an associate professor of history at UCSD and 2023-24 chair of the UCSD Faculty Association, said it was important to fight for faculty’s academic freedom through this filing.
“We just thought, this was a moment where we could not just stand by and let the university essentially inflict violence on us, threaten our workplace safety, threaten our ability to take care of our students and obstruct our right to be in solidarity with the union, particularly graduate workers,” Matsumura said.
The University of California has pointed to its previous filing in July in response to UCLA’s initial unfair labor practice, where it stated that it “supports free speech and lawful protests” but has implemented policies for protest activities on campus to ensure that “all of its community members can safely continue to study, work, and exercise their rights.”
The Public Employee Relations Board will review the case, and decide whether to dismiss the charge or proceed with settlement negotiations between the parties. If no settlement is reached, the case would be scheduled for a formal hearing before an administrative law judge, according to the Associated Press.
Along with the United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents UC academic workers, unfair labor practice charges have also been filed by UC administration by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the University Council-American Federation of Teachers (US-AFT) in response to the crackdown on free speech regarding Palestine.
