UW-Madison Opens Illegal and Discriminatory Student Disciplinary Proceedings Months After Last Spring’s Encampments
/Civil rights group requests university to drop cases violating First Amendment rights
CONTACT: Dahlia Saba, dahliasaba@comcast.net | Palestine Legal Media, media@palestinelegal.org
Madison, WI, Sept 24th, 2024 – Palestine Legal has sent a letter to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) demanding they terminate a new round of illegal and discriminatory charges brought against students relating to last spring’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Palestine Legal is representing two students, Dahlia Saba and Vignesh Ramachandran, who are facing disciplinary charges for allegedly “planning and carrying out an encampment on university lands.” The university brought the charges this summer, with the sole evidence being an op-ed the two students wrote for The Cap Times critiquing the administration's refusal to engage with protestors’ demands for divestment from war profiteers.
These cases are just two of over thirty student conduct investigations that the university has pursued against students for conduct allegedly connected to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment set up on the UW-Madison campus this spring. This follows a broader pattern of universities nationwide cracking down on students’ rights to protest and exercise free speech, including new arbitrary restrictions introduced at UW-Madison that at least one free speech expert has described as unconstitutional.
The letter to UW-Madison notes that the charges are a blatant attempt to silence students, faculty, staff, and other members of the campus who speak in solidarity with Palestine by curtailing their First Amendment rights. Rather than being based on a “preponderance of the evidence,” the investigations against Saba and Ramachandran are based solely on their public criticism of the University. These investigations create a chilling effect on rights to free speech and association when it comes to advocating for Palestine or critiquing the university. This comes in the context of people of color, and Palestinians specifically, being disproportionately targeted by the University and its police for their political viewpoints, as Saba is Palestinian and Ramachandran is South Asian.
“One-sided scrutiny and censorship of speech related to student activism or Palestinian rights threatens to shut down robust debate on the most urgent political issues of our time and undermines the pivotal role universities play in our society. It constitutes viewpoint discrimination, prohibited by the First Amendment,” notes Palestine Legal staff attorney Tori Porell in the letter.
“The university’s repression campaign against pro-Palestinian students is not only discriminatory and unconstitutional, but seeks to shelter its complicity in Zionist war crimes in Palestine from accountability. This draws attention to the lengths that the University is willing to go to in order to protect its moral bankruptcy,” said Dahlia Saba.
The precedent set by these cases poses a threat to academic freedom and free speech on campus. The lack of evidence used in these cases and in the other cases brought against students on campus is designed to intimidate students and community members who feel compelled to speak out against the university’s complicity in genocide.