More than 800 faculty and staff at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have called for the chancellor’s resignation following attacks by counter-protesters on pro-Palestinian student demonstrators and a violent police raid of the Gaza solidarity encampment on campus last week.
More than a hundred professors and other teaching staff gathered on Thursday to deliver a letter in support of their students engaged in pro-Palestinian activism, demanding Gene Block immediately step down as chancellor and an academic senate vote of no confidence in him. The letter also called for authorities to drop all charges against students, staff and faculty who were involved in the encampment.
The mass faculty action at one of the most prominent public universities in the US comes as campuses across the country have been roiled by pro-Palestinian encampment demonstrations and aggressive law enforcement crackdowns during graduation season.
Holding signs that said “Take a walk, Block”, “UCLA faculty and staff … stand with our students” and “Disclose & Divest”, professors from across departments recounted the brutal violence by counter-demonstrators on 30 April as police failed to intervene, and the subsequent mass arrests of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“We are outraged at the university’s failure to protect its students from vigilante and police violence and its refusal to uphold its stated values as made evident in the forcible removal and arrest of peacefully protesting students, faculty and staff,” said Dan Froot, a UCLA world arts and cultures and dance professor representing senate faculty from his department.
A group of volunteer medics who helped care for demonstrators injured by police and counter-demonstrators told reporters that they had treated a wide range of injuries, including severe head lacerations, facial fractures, subarachnoid hemorrhages, rubber-bullet wounds, broken bones and asthma attacks from chemical irritants. Katherine Marino, a history professor who read a statement from faculty in her department, noted that at least 25 students had been hospitalized and roughly 200 protesters had been arrested, with police “dragging visibly injured students away”.
The letter also expressed solidarity with students’ demands, calling on UCLA to publish a report within 30 days disclosing all investments and for the university to “divest from military-weapons-production companies and supporting systems”.
Susan Slyomovics, an anthropology professor, read a statement on behalf of 75 Jewish faculty and staff, saying Block had “misused Jews” by suggesting the encampment had to be dismantled to prevent antisemitism: “We assert that critiques of Israel are not presumptively antisemitic … that Jews who support the liberation of Palestine must not be devalued.”
The faculty action comes as UAW local 4811, the largest union of academic workers representing 48,000 graduate student workers throughout the University of California system, is voting on a possible strike over administrators’ response to pro-Palestinian protests. Matt Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o studies, said the group of professors was discussing the “possibility to withhold our own additional labor” until the demands are met. If graduate students go on strike, professors will not cross picket lines or do their work, he said.
UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Block announced earlier this week the creation of a campus safety office, headed by a former Sacramento police chief, to “identify the perpetrators of the violence and hold them to account”.
A Los Angeles police department spokesperson said in an email on Friday morning that the department was “looking into its involvement on campus along with other law enforcement agencies” and that a “detailed report” would be issued.
Purnima Mankekar, a UCLA anthropology professor, said she felt an obligation to defend students at the encampment. The students, she said, had gone to great lengths to de-escalate violent attacks from counter-demonstrators. “My job is to make sure the learning and intellectual growth of our students goes unimpeded … When that gets disrupted by violence that is perpetrated on them by outside instigators or by the police, that makes me very upset,” she said.
If students are unable to engage in peaceful protests, “the university is not a university, it’s a police state”, she added. “The parents of our students entrust us with them. It’s our job to keep them safe.”
It was significant that so many faculty had signed on to the letter, said Gary Segura, professor of public policy, political science and Chicano/a studies, and a former dean. “Even faculty who may not have agreed with the student protesters’ underlying issues were mortified by the video of LAPD cops firing [less-lethal munitions] into the crowd. Those are students. I found it just terrifying.”
