Civil Rights Groups: UCLA Must Defend Students and Faculty Against Baseless Claims

UCLA students demonstrate outside a march 2018 University of California regents meeting.

Palestine Legal has joined a coalition of interfaith and civil rights groups calling on UCLA to defend the rights of faculty and students in the face of two federal investigations into the university’s response to Palestine advocacy and scholarship.

“UCLA’s public response has been alarmingly confined to distancing itself from student and faculty actions, rather than defending their academic freedom and right to advocate for Palestinian rights on campus,” reads the letter, sent by the Los Angeles chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block on Thursday. “This is not enough.”

Other signatories of the letter include the American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the National Lawyers Guild. 

Following Trump’s December 2019 executive order adopting a distorted redefinition of antisemitism that targets advocacy for Palestinian rights, the Deparment of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened investigations into two complaints filed by rightwing Israel proxy groups against UCLA. 

The first complaint, filed by Zachor Legal, targeted the National Students for Justice in Palestine conference in November 2018. The second, file by StandWithUs, focused on a guest lecture by Professor Rabab Abdulhadi last May, where a student was upset that Abdulhadi compared Zionism and white supremacy. After a months long investigation into whether the student faced religious discrimination or retaliation, UCLA concluded in August 2019 that there had been no wrongdoing. 

The letter argues that UCLA’s lack of public response to the Title VI investigations facilitates smears against faculty and students.

“The university’s virtual silence in the face of media reports that falsely equate advocacy for Palestinian rights at UCLA with fostering a climate of antisemitism smears your students, faculty, and guest speakers and stifles the ability to engage in critical intellectual debates – the very mission of UCLA in particular and the university in general,” the letter explains.

UCLA’s silence amid these federal investigations has had a chilling impact on campus. One professor reported to Palestine Legal that though she views guest lectures as a valuable learning opportunity for her students, she no longer invites guest speakers into her classes because of the risk that inviting an outside speaker could result in a time-consuming investigation.

In the letter, the coalition of civil and human rights groups urges UCLA to issue a public statement making it clear that UCLA will defend the voices of all students, so that free speech and academic freedom can continue to flourish at UCLA.

University students and faculty were targeted in 74 percent of the incidents Palestine Legal responded to in 2019. Nearly half of incidents in 2019 involved false accusations of antisemitism due solely to activists’ support for Palestinian rights.

See CAIR-LA’s press release here.

Sign on to the letter here.