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  • Lawsuit intensifies spotlight on free speech controversies at UC Berkeley

    Lawsuit intensifies spotlight on free speech controversies at UC Berkeley


    UC Berkeley students on campus on Sather road in Berkeley.

    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    Long revered as the birthplace of the free speech movement in the ’60s, UC Berkeley now finds itself at the center of a fractious debate about First Amendment protections and religious intolerance amid the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East.

    Tempers are running high on all sides amid the bloodshed in the Middle East, which has already claimed thousands of lives, exposing ideological rifts between students and professors at the law school, spurring a discrimination lawsuit against the UC system and setting off a broader a debate over who gets to define the boundaries of First Amendment protections, a drama heightened by Berkeley’s legendary status as the heart of the ’60s student protest movement.

    “It’s emblematic of the polarized times that we live in. We can’t begin to decide what the contours of expressive rights are,” said Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy group. “In our pluralistic democracy, there are going to be groups out there with beliefs that you don’t share, that maybe the majority of Americans don’t share. But that’s what our system of government kind of defends and requires. We believe in groups of citizens banding together, even groups of citizens with unpopular ideas. That’s what the First Amendment protects.”

    The war of words first flared last summer when a student group, Law Students for Justice in Palestine, adopted a bylaw that banned supporters of Zionism from speaking at its events. Roughly 22 other student groups have adopted variations of this bylaw.

    Hundreds of UC Berkeley students walked out of class on Oct. 25, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. The students are among thousands who have walked out on campuses nationwide as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues in Gaza.
    Credit: Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris

    “As law students, we must utilize our privilege in amplifying the voices of indigenous movements for liberation and engage in the academic and political boycott that is essential to furthering goals of freedom,” as the LSJP group noted on its Instagram page, framing the bylaw issue as a matter of free speech. Members of the group did not respond to messages seeking comment. 

    Others view the bylaws as discriminatory toward Jewish students, faculty and invited speakers. Steven Davidoff Solomon, a noted professor of corporate law, took offense at the bylaw, firing off an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging employers: “Don’t Hire My Anti-Semitic Law Students.”

     “The student conduct at Berkeley is part of the broader attitude against Jews on university campuses that made last week’s massacre possible,” he wrote in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

    In response to that commentary, a group of alumni wrote an open letter to Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school, calling on him to uphold the rights of all students. The letter argued that Solomon conflated “support for the Palestinian people or criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

    Chemerinsky responded by voicing the school’s commitment to freedom of speech, including language that “others find offensive, even deeply offensive.” Excluding speakers based on race, religion, sex or sexual orientation would not be allowed, he said, but excluding speakers based on viewpoint is a different matter. 

    “Student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose speakers based on viewpoint,” said Chemerinsky. “The College Republicans can choose to invite only conservative speakers.  The Women of Berkeley Law can choose to invite only pro-choice speakers. I think that is quite clear.” 

    However, if you consider anti-Zionist to be synonymous with antisemitic, as some do, then excluding Zionist speakers can be seen as a discriminatory act. 

    “Nobody’s saying you have to include a program on a position that you disagree with,” said Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Brandeis Center For Human Rights under the Law. “They’re saying you cannot exclude an individual on the basis of their identity. That is a form of discrimination they need to address. You can’t have groups saying, ‘Zionists aren’t welcome,’ because that’s excluding Jews on the basis of an integral component of what it means to be a Jew.”

    That’s among the reasons the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education are suing UC Berkeley for what they characterize as the “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” on campus. The suit argues that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism and that the student group bylaws violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the First Amendment right to freedom of religion and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

    “Conditioning a Jew’s ability to participate in a student group on his or her renunciation of a core component of Jewish identity is no less pernicious than demanding the renunciation of some other core element of a student’s identity — whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity,” as the lawsuit said. 

    Others reject the notion of equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism. 

    “I am wary of that argument for a couple reasons. First of all, I do think there is a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” Creeley said. “You have a First Amendment right to criticize Israel. That’s core political speech.” 

    Still, the question became a hot-button issue when more than two dozen Wall Street law firms signed a letter warning deans at top law schools that they have “zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.” Harvard, Columbia and NYU students have already lost job offers over “inflammatory remarks.”

    Other voices, however, defend the right of student groups to invite whomever they choose to speak on campus. For instance, it has been noted that some chapters of Hillel, the Jewish student group on college campuses, have rules prohibiting speakers who “delegitimize” Israel.

    “If you are a public university, you can’t require your belief-based student groups to either adopt or disavow certain beliefs,” said Creeley. “Student groups have an associational right, protected by the First Amendment, to band together over a shared belief, even if that belief is noxious to some, many, or even most.”

    But some argue that freedom of speech should not trample on the freedom of religion. Kenneth Marcus, chairman and founder of the Brandeis Center as well as the civil rights chief of the U.S. Education Department during the Trump administration, has likened the bylaws to the “Jewish-free zones” of the past.

    “The school is quick to address other types of hatred, but why not antisemitism?” as Marcus, a Berkeley law school alumnus, has put it. “Berkeley, once a beacon of free speech, civil rights and equal treatment of persons regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender and sexual orientation, is heading down a very different and dangerous path from the one I proudly attended as a Jewish law student.”

    Hannah Schlacter, a second-year MBA student at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who is part of Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, says she feels unsafe on campus. 

    “I sense a hostile campus environment towards Jewish students who express their Jewish identity in certain ways. This was the case before 10/7, but it became even more so after 10/7,” she said. “If I express a part of my Jewish identity, like holding a flag of the Jewish homeland, then if I am assaulted, the university has demonstrated they will not investigate nor call it hate crime.”

    The dean of the law school, a constitutional law scholar who is Jewish, refutes the central tenet of the suit. 

    “There is no ‘longstanding, unchecked antisemitism’ on the Berkeley campus,” said Chemerinsky.  “I have been here six and a half years, and it is just a false narrative. I doubt the people who wrote it have been on campus.” 

    At the core of the debate is how you define freedom of speech, which has become an increasingly contentious matter in itself in recent years. Some say there’s not as much common ground on what constitutes free speech and the critical role it plays in feeding a lively marketplace of ideas, the foundation of any participatory democracy, as there once was.

     “I have been teaching First Amendment law for 44 years and I think there is less consensus about free speech than there used to be,” said Chemerinsky. “The first seven weeks of this semester were calm and easy. Since Oct. 7, it has been difficult on our campus and on campuses across the country.” 

    For his part, the dean has also blamed the media, suggesting that many outlets have overblown the controversy, pouring fuel on the fire. 

    “What is the proper role of the university? To be a place where all ideas and views are discussed,” he wrote. “At my law school, the Law Students for Justice in Palestine bring in speakers and hold programs to express their views. At the same time, the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies holds many programs.” 

    Lewin disagrees that institutional neutrality is the best approach to combat a rising tide of bias. The suit argues that the university failed to address antisemitic incidents on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. In one campus incident, the suit alleges, a Jewish student draped in an Israeli flag was assaulted by two protesters who hit him in the head with his water bottle.

    There has also been a rise in anti-Islamic incidents. Pro-Palestinian students have reported being harassed and threatened in the wake of Oct. 7, according to university officials.

    “Hate doesn’t start with violence. Hate starts with biased attitudes,” said Lewin. “It starts with stereotypes. And then it builds. The reason we’re now seeing the violence is because for all those years when the biased attitudes, the stereotypes, the slurs, the shunning were taking place, the university said we’re not doing anything.”

    Certainly the law school is far from being alone in grappling with these thorny issues. Cases of both Islamophobia and antisemitism have been spiking on campuses across the country. These mounting incidents have prompted a federal response, with President Joe Biden’s Department of Education announcing investigations into antisemitism and Islamophobia at a growing number of universities, including Harvard, Columbia and Cornell. 

    “Of all the issues we deal with, of all the topics of speech, abortion, Trump, politics, whatever, Israel and Palestine has always been the most intensely felt. And that was true before Oct. 7. Now, holy moly,” said Creeley. “It’s the intensity of the feelings on both sides and the decades of historical precedent, the general feeling of bitterness and hopelessness. It all coagulates into a very toxic stew on campus.”

    The social strife rampant on campuses across the country, experts say, may reflect a deeply divided nation coping with myriad crises, foreign and domestic. This has spread far beyond campuses to society at large with Oakland’s City Council passing a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Demonstrators recently shut down the San Francisco Bay Bridge while others staged a sit-in at Oakland’s Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, also urging a cease-fire. Protesters have also delayed a ship, which was believed to be carrying military supplies, for nine hours at the Port of Oakland. The use of hate speech is also rising online. Common ground is proving elusive on all fronts.

    Grappling for ways to combat the rising tide of hate,  UC President Michael Drake  has pledged $7 million toward addressing  “acts of bigotry, intolerance, and intimidation” on campuses. 

    “We have a crisis today on America’s campuses,” as Marcus said in his testimony before the House Committee on Education in a hearing titled “Confronting the Scourge of Antisemitism on Campus.” “This is an emergency, and I would suggest to this committee that when the problem is exceptional and unprecedented, the solutions need to be unprecedented and exceptional.”

    Chemerinsky, for one, takes a pragmatic approach to the discord on and off campus in these polarized times. At the law school, he says he hopes to engender a greater sense of civility in the discourse.

    “I don’t think we can aspire to unity,” he said. “But we can work to create community and to make all students feel included and respected.” 





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  • UC delays vote on much-debated proposal to restrict some faculty speech

    UC delays vote on much-debated proposal to restrict some faculty speech


    Public speakers address UC leaders during a March UC regents meeting at UCLA.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    The University of California’s board of regents has delayed voting until May on a controversial policy proposal that would restrict faculty from using some university websites to make opinionated and political statements, such as opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.

    The proposal would ban faculty departments and other academic units from using the homepages of their department websites to make “discretionary statements,” which the proposal defines as comments on “local, regional, global or national” events or issues and not related to daily departmental operations.

    In the days leading up to the meeting, the UC system’s Academic Senate had asked the regents to reject or at least delay a vote and expressed concerns that the proposal would limit freedom of speech.

    The policy was scheduled for a vote Wednesday during a joint meeting of the regents’ academic affairs and compliance and audit committees. But regents voted to delay a final decision until their next meeting in May. Before that meeting, they plan to collect additional comments from the Academic Senate and other regents.

    “People will submit their issues that they have. The Academic Senate will do their thing. We’ll hear everyone’s point of view. We’ll modify if we need to modify. And maybe we could just personally commit that we’ll vote in the next meeting,” said regent Jay Sures, one of the regents responsible for bringing the proposal forward. Sures is vice-chairman of United Talent Agency, a powerful entertainment and sports-related firm.

    Regent Jay Sures, seen during Wednesday’s board meeting, backs a proposal to curb opinionated comments on academic department homepages.
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    UC systemwide President Michael Drake also supported delaying the vote, saying he doesn’t think the policy is finished and that the university “needs to get it right” before moving forward.

    The policy doesn’t mention a specific issue, but many faculty see it as an attempt to limit what they can say about Israel’s war in Gaza. The consideration of the policy, which has been in the works for months, comes after UC’s Ethnic Studies Faculty Council and several faculty departments have criticized Israel over the war. In addition, when the policy was first discussed at January’s regents meeting, regent Hadi Makarechian said the board was considering the policy because “some people were making political statements related to Hamas and Palestinians.”

    UC leaders who support the policy have said it is needed to ensure that the opinions of faculty departments aren’t misinterpreted as representing the university as a whole. 

    It’s unclear whether the policy will get enough support among the board when it does go to a vote. Some regents voiced concern Wednesday about the proposal’s possible impacts.

    Merhawi Tesfai, a graduate student at UCLA and a student regent, said during the meeting that he doesn’t think the regents should be setting a systemwide policy.

    “I think each campus should be free to decide on what policies they’re going to be doing, what guidelines they’re going to set around this issue,” he added.

    Another regent, Keith Ellis, said he was concerned that the policy could be used “as a weapon” against faculty.

    If faculty departments or other academic units, such as research centers, do want to make opinionated statements, the proposal still would allow them to publish those elsewhere on UC web pages, just not on the homepages. Those statements would also need to include a disclaimer explaining that the opinions don’t represent the university as a whole. The policy also allows faculty and groups of faculty to publish their opinions on private websites. 

    Last week, the Academic Senate formally requested that the regents reject the proposal or at least delay a vote. The Senate’s Academic Council voted unanimously, 19-0, in making that request to the regents. In a letter to the regents, Academic Senate leaders said the policy has the potential to “limit free speech and impinge on academic freedom,” among other concerns. 

    An overflow crowd waits outside of Wednesday’s meeting of the UC board of regents at UCLA.
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    The policy was updated after the Senate submitted its comments, and did include some changes addressing the concerns raised. The latest draft of the policy, for example, includes a definition of the types of statements that would be banned, whereas the previous version did not.

    In remarks to the regents, Academic Senate Chair James Steintrager said the latest version was a step in the right direction but lamented that the Senate had only two days to review the latest version before the meeting. He urged the regents to delay a vote and send the draft policy out for further review by the Senate.

    Trevor Griffey, a lecturer at UCLA and a vice president for the union representing UC’s non-tenure track faculty, wrote on social media on Wednesday that the union is worried about how the policy would be enforced. The union “believes that enforcement of this vague standard cannot be done consistently, and is likely to increase interest group pressure” on faculty departments, Griffey wrote.

    Griffey also said the regents were trying to bypass the Senate on this issue. Rather than approving a new policy, Senate leaders have asked the regents to adopt recommendations made by the Senate in 2022. 

    The Senate determined at that time that UC faculty departments have the right to “make statements on University-owned websites” as long as the statements don’t take positions on elections. The Senate, like the regents, also recommended that those statements include disclaimers that the departments don’t speak for the university as a whole. But the Senate didn’t discourage statements from appearing on departmental homepages. 

    “These recommendations were based on comprehensive consultation with faculty on the ten campuses, as well as with UC Legal consultants. They are intended to guide departments whose members opt to post statements to do so in ways that minimize downsides and that do not infringe on academic freedom,” the Senate leaders wrote in their letter to the regents last week.

    Since last fall, some faculty departments have included statements on their websites criticizing Israel. The homepage for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department website has a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” 

    In a letter last fall, the systemwide UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council also criticized UC leaders for their public statements following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. The council said UC’s statements lacked context because they didn’t acknowledge Israeli violence against Palestine, including “75 years of settler colonialism and globally acknowledged apartheid.” The faculty also said UC’s statements “irresponsibly wield charges of terrorism.” 

    Sures, the regent who supports the proposal, responded with a letter of his own, saying the council’s letter was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.” He also pledged to do “everything in my power” to protect “everyone in our extended community from your inflammatory and out of touch rhetoric.” The faculty responded by criticizing Sures for not condemning Israeli violence and calling on him to resign. 





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  • USC students march in protest of decision to cancel valedictorian’s speech

    USC students march in protest of decision to cancel valedictorian’s speech


    Students march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on April 18, 2024.

    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    Holding Palestinian flags and signs calling for “Justice for Asna,” hundreds of University of Southern California students gathered Thursday to march in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the university. 

    The students, many of them wearing hoodies and masks, which they said symbolized the silencing of the valedictorian, first gathered by the Tommy Trojan statue near the center of campus. They then marched across campus, often chanting “let her speak” and holding signs with the same message in the Palestinian colors of red, green and black.

    The march was the latest protest of the university’s decision to cancel the May 10 speech. The valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, is a biomedical engineering major with an interdisciplinary minor in resistance to genocide. USC officials said they canceled the speech because of security risks, telling EdSource in a statement Thursday that university leadership made the decision in consultation with campus law enforcement. They did not disclose the specific security risks facing the university.

    “While the decision was difficult, it was necessary to maintain and prioritize the security of the USC community during the coming weeks, and to allow those attending commencement to focus on the celebration our graduates deserve,” the university said. “Nothing can take precedence over the safety of our community.”

    Students march near the Tommy Trojan statue in support of a Muslim valedictorian whose planned commencement speech was canceled by the University of Southern California on Thursday, citing unspecified safety concerns.
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    Pro-Palestinian student groups and other supporters, meanwhile, say the university is perpetuating Islamophobia with its decision.

    “It’s very disappointing that USC is very proactive in theory, for students, but then (the university does) not deliver,” USC student Aisha Patel said. “It’s a slap in the face that they won’t let her speak.”

    Patel said that as a fellow Muslim woman, she feels represented and supported by Tabassum — and that the university’s decision to cancel her speech “silences the voices of people who visibly look like me.”

    An international student at USC from Syria who did not want to be named, said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech “devastated and shocked me to my core.” 

    “When I came to the U.S., I thought this was a freedom of speech country and I thought I could express myself,” the student said. “It’s so upsetting that this is happening. If you can’t express yourself in America, then where can you do that?”

    No pro-Israel demonstrators were seen near Thursday’s march.

    The tensions between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students at USC and on other college campuses have heightened dramatically since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, after which Israel responded with a bombardment of Gaza. The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and another 240 were taken hostage. More than 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza — mostly women and children — since Israel launched its military response.

    The conflict has rattled universities across the country with administrators challenged to uphold freedom of speech amid charges that some speech is hateful antisemitism or Islamophobic.

    USC officials have said the decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech has nothing to do with freedom of speech, since no individual student is entitled to speak at commencement. Some free speech experts have still criticized the decision, arguing that selecting her as valedictorian only to cancel the speech raises red flags about the speech climate on campus. The decision also has given Tabassum a platform beyond what she would have had at the graduation. She has been widely interviewed in national and international media. “When you silence us,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “you make us louder.”

    USC students rally in support of a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, after her planned commencement speech was canceled .
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    After USC initially announced Tabassum as a commencement speaker, a number of pro-Israel groups, both on and off the campus, criticized the decision, with some attacking Tabassum over a link in her Instagram bio. The link leads to a webpage that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.” Pro-Israel groups took issue with another part of the website that says Zionism is a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”  

    Rabbi Dov Wagner, who runs the Chabad Jewish Center at USC, said in a statement on Instagram this week that while he has nothing against Tabassum, the initial selection of her as valedictorian “has caused great distress” to Jewish students at USC. He said the speech featured on Tabassum’s social media “is antisemitic and hate speech.”

    USC officials previously said that discussion related to the selection of Tabassum had taken on an “alarming tenor,” including from voices outside of the university. 

    Tabassum said in her own statement issued this week that she isn’t aware of any specific threats made against herself or the university and that she requested “details underlying the university’s threat assessment” but that the request was denied. 

    “There remain serious doubts about whether USC’s decision to revoke my invitation to speak is made solely on the basis of safety,” she added. 

    She also said that while she wasn’t surprised “by those who attempt to propagate hatred,” she was surprised that USC “abandoned me.”

    USC student Hafeez Mir said he attended the march because “it’s outrageous to see the university succumb to external pressures and strip this honor away from her.” 

    Students protest USC’s cancellation of a planned commencement speech by a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum.
    Credit: Delilah Brumer / EdSource

    “She earned this honor and she is far and beyond deserving of it,” Mir said.

    Tabassum also has the support of 66 student and local groups who signed an open letter calling on USC to reverse its decision and allow Tabassum to speak at commencement.

    In the letter, authored by Trojans for Palestine and 65 co-signer groups, the students wrote that USC “perpetuates and engages in Islamophobia and xenophobia by bowing” to outside groups that called for Tabassum to be disinvited.

    “We demand that the University recognize its grave error and allow Tabassum to give her speech at graduation, provide her with whatever safety measures she requests — as has been provided for former presidents and governors, royalty, artists, musicians, professional athletes and others — and publicly apologize to her for acquiescing to a campaign of intimidation and harassment,” they added.

    Meanwhile, some free speech advocates have criticized USC for canceling the speech. Alex Morey, the director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), wrote in a blog post that “with no sense that USC actually received any threats or took any steps to secure the event short of canceling it,” the decision appears to be “a calculated move to quiet the critics.”

    USC Provost Andrew Guzman said in a statement this week that there is “no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement” and that the decision to cancel the speech “has nothing to do with freedom of speech.” 

    Morey wrote that while she agrees that no student is entitled to speak, her organization disagrees with Guzman’s assertion that the decision has nothing to do with free speech.

    “But once USC has selected a student for this honor, canceling her speech based on criticism of her viewpoint definitely implicates the campus speech climate in important ways,” Morey wrote. She added that administrators should have done “everything in their power to provide adequate security” and that canceling the speech should have been a last resort.

     Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • Amid Israel-Hamas war, colleges draw lines on faculty free speech

    Amid Israel-Hamas war, colleges draw lines on faculty free speech


    University of Arizona faculty senate chair Leila Hudson, a Palestinian American, attends a board of regents meeting at the University of Arizona last November.

    Credit: Michael McKisson / Arizona Luminaria

    This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity.

    Leila Hudson treads carefully when discussing the Israel-Hamas war.

    As a Palestinian-American and the elected faculty chair at the University of Arizona, she says she has no choice.

    University policy forbids staff from using the college’s resources, including websites, computers and letterhead, to take a position on any ongoing public policy controversy, and it carries a mandate that staff who engage in political activity do so on their personal time.

    So when Hudson made a statement condemning the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 on behalf of the faculty senate, she made clear that she was speaking for herself when she said, “War crimes do not justify more war crimes. Terrorism does not justify terrorism.”

    In an interview, Hudson, an associate professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, said, “I knew that I would be subjected to a higher degree of scrutiny and attempts to invalidate my speech if I didn’t frame it as my own individual opinion. And that was very deliberate.”

    In the seven months since the attacks that triggered the Israel-Hamas conflict, colleges and universities have struggled to strike a balance between defending free speech and denouncing hate speech. And as protests continue to grow on college campuses, faculty are becoming more visible, joining protests or issuing statements critical of university response.

    “As of late, certainly since October 7th, I think the lines are increasingly up for debate around controversy and conversation on campuses,” said Kristen Shahverdian, program director of campus free speech at PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression.

    Weeks after Hudson’s statement, the University of Arizona suspended two education professors who implied during a class lecture that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, a view that’s contrary to the U.S. State Department’s. Audio recordings of the comments went viral on social media. After weeks of student and faculty protests, the university reinstated the pair.

    The University of California’s board of regents is weighing a similar policy that would prohibit faculty from using some university websites to make opinionated and political statements.

    At Barnard College, a private all-women’s college in New York City, a decision to monitor and remove pro-Palestinian statements and other speech that administrators consider too political has drawn widespread condemnation. 

    “It’s heartbreaking. I believe in democracy, and I believe in knowledge as something that can contribute to democracy. The mission of higher education is to produce and share knowledge,” said Janet Jakobsen, a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the college. 

    Shahverdian of PEN America said the war has affected “many, if not most campuses” across the country. 

    “What we want to advise against is that knee-jerk reaction to curtail free expression,” she added.

    UC mulls faculty ban 

    In California, the proposed policy before UC’s board of regents would prevent faculty departments from making political statements on the homepages of university-owned websites, something many faculty members say would infringe on their academic freedom. Faculty would be permitted to make statements elsewhere on the websites, with a disclaimer that the opinions don’t represent the university as a whole.

    Votes on the proposal have twice been delayed to get further input from UC’s academic senate. It’s next scheduled to appear before the regents in May, though it’s possible a vote could be delayed again.

    The regent driving the proposal, Jay Sures, said in an interview with EdSource that while he hopes the board approves the policy in May, he’s “not planning to rush anything.”

    “We want to get it right as opposed to having the time frame dictate anything around it,” he said.

    Sures maintains that the proposal protects academic freedom. He said it closely mirrors recommendations made by the academic senate in 2022, when the senate considered whether faculty departments should be allowed to make political statements.

    However, the senate recommendations would allow faculty departments to share statements on the homepages of websites, as long as there is a disclaimer.

    Senate leaders have called on the regents to accept their recommendations rather than create an entirely new policy. In a letter to the board, senate leaders said they are concerned that the proposed regents’ policy is ambiguous, offers “an overly broad and simplistic approach to a complex set of issues” and has the potential to limit free speech.

    “Freedom of speech and of inquiry are cornerstone values of the University of California. Faculty members should have the right to express their opinions, whether as employees or subject matter experts, even if their views differ from those of peers and senior leaders,” wrote the senate leaders, UC Irvine professor Jim Steintrager and UC San Francisco professor Steven Cheung.

    As the war in Gaza rages on, pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the country — from Columbia University in New York to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles — have ramped up.

    One case in California illustrates how divisive the free speech debates have become and how faculty can become entangled. In April, the dean of UC Berkeley’s Law School, who is Jewish, confronted a Palestinian student who staged a protest during a private dinner at his home. The incident, which raised concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia, grabbed international headlines.

    ‘A vexing challenge’

    In addition to UC, EdSource and the Center for Public Integrity contacted more than two dozen colleges and universities around the country, public and private, to ask about their policies on faculty and political speech. Just eight of the institutions replied. The responses ran the gamut, from state laws that mandate political neutrality to those that support free speech, albeit with conditions. And there was no political pattern with restrictions surfacing in blue states and red states.

    Regardless of a state’s leanings, high-profile institutions are under pressure from members of Congress and national conservative leaders.

    Barnard College was one of the first to create new policies restricting faculty speech after Oct. 7. The college generated headlines last fall when it removed a statement in support of Palestine from the website from the college’s department of women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

    The college then made changes to its policies governing political activity and what can be published on college-owned websites. Under the policies, faculty are barred from making political statements on any Barnard website or on social media websites “bearing a Barnard name.” Faculty also can’t display signs on campus that make political statements. 

    A spokesperson for the college did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

    “This is a vexing challenge for campus leaders right now,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and former president of Mount Holyoke College, a private women’s college in Massachusetts.

    To Jakobsen, the new policies are a direct attack on academic freedom. For some faculty, making statements about Palestine is a way for them to apply their academic expertise to a global issue. For example, one of Jakobsen’s colleagues in gender and sexuality studies, professor Neferti Tadiar, has conducted research into why the occupation of Palestine is a feminist issue. 

    “We think about things very broadly. And then we share that expertise with the public,” Jakobsen said. 

    UC faculty feel similarly. In their letter to the regents, the senate leaders argued that department websites are often platforms for “scholarly communications” and a place to apply academic expertise to ongoing social and political issues. “Imposing blanket restrictions on personal or collective opinions could hinder scholarly discourse and limit academic freedom,” they said.

    University of Southern California’s policy does not allow use of the university’s logos, graphics or websites to express political positions. Faculty members “must be mindful when they speak or write as citizens to indicate that they are not speaking for the university, given that the public may judge the university by their statements,” the university’s faculty handbook states.

    At the University of Virginia, faculty should not post political positions on university-owned websites in a manner that implies institutional endorsement or support.

    The University of Chicago faculty are “free to speak or issue statements in their individual capacities, including on their individual faculty webpages hosted by their university,” a statement from the university read.

    State law requires schools in the University of North Carolina system to remain neutral on political controversies. The policy extends to content on university-owned websites and social media accounts.

    In a statement, the University of Michigan wrote that “freedom of speech and academic freedom are bedrock principles” but did not address whether university policy allows faculty to address political controversies on its website. After a group of students protesting Israel interrupted a cherished academic ceremony on campus in late March, administrators are weighing a policy that would penalize faculty, staff and students for activity deemed disruptive to university operations.

    In a letter to the university protesting the policy, the ACLU of Michigan argued that it will “almost certainly lead to discriminatory enforcement against disfavored speech” and harsh disciplinary outcomes.

    Public universities “should be especially sensitive to protecting and promoting the freedom of speech and expression of its students and faculty — especially when that speech is controversial or critical of the University,” the ACLU letter read. 

    As it considers its own policy, UC isn’t paying much attention to what other colleges are doing, according to Sures.

    “I believe we’re the leaders in many regards, in terms of setting a policy that most people or a lot of the universities tend to follow,” he said. “So what we do is we try to figure out the best policy for the University of California, what makes sense for our campuses, and go from there.”

    Most schools have policies that limit speech in some manner, said Alex Morey, an attorney who leads the Campus Rights Advocacy program at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They may make promises about freedom of expression, but at the same time, they have policies on information technology, web hosting, harassment and bias reporting, Morey noted. “So there’s all these other policies that are sometimes written in a way that conflict with those broad protections of expression and freedom.”

    Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said that while faculty can speak freely as citizens, colleges and universities do not have to provide a platform or resources for exercising free speech rights.

    “Public universities have to pay attention to First Amendment rights. So I think they do have a special responsibility to promote the free exchange of ideas, the unfettered pursuit of the truth,” she said. “But there’s some responsibilities that go along with that. Your role as a faculty member in a public institution … imposes special obligations. And you’re likely to be judged not only in terms of your role as a citizen but as a representative of the institution.”

    While the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression advocates for free speech for faculty, staff and students, the organization encourages universities, administrators and trustees to remain institutionally neutral.

    It urges administrators to protect speech and academic freedom in all cases. The Israel-Hamas war has made that difficult for schools because it’s such a divisive issue that remaining neutral is seen as a political move.

    “The bigger the controversy, the more pressure on a university administrator, the more likely they are to be looking for a way to silence that speech rather than returning to core principles like free expression or academic freedom for controversial speech, even when it’s difficult,” Morey said.

    The American Association of University Professors advises universities to involve faculty leaders when developing any policies regarding academic freedom, including those that govern political speech.

    “It should not be simply unilaterally developed and imposed on the entire campus by a board or by an administrator,” said Michael DeCesare, a senior program officer with the organization.

    ‘Chilling effect’

    Hudson, the University of Arizona faculty chair, said campus policy reasonably prevents professors from using their authority to advocate for legislation and candidates. Still, the threat of being reported for addressing public policy controversies looms for her and other faculty members.

    When Hudson delivers her lectures on Palestine’s history, for instance, she has to consider if students with strong ideological opinions will file complaints that she’s breaking that rule.

    In the past, advocates have pushed back against policies and decisions that clamped down on speech about Israel.

    In 2015, the American Association of University Professors voted to censure the University of Illinois because it rescinded a job offer to a professor after he wrote social media posts criticizing Israel. Some donors complained that the messages were antisemitic.

    The professor, Steven Salita, successfully sued the university, winning an $800,000 settlement in a case that garnered national attention. The university’s chancellor resigned in the wake of the ruling.

    But that was an isolated case.

    “This seems a little bit different from that because that was one faculty member and his tweets,” said DeCesare of the American Association of University Professors. “This is now at the institutional level.”

    What’s troublesome to some organizations is that a different set of rules seems to apply to political speech on the Israel-Hamas war. When departments issue similar statements against police brutality, many colleges and universities don’t clamp down, said Morey with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

    “They’re making subjective judgments about what’s sufficiently political and which political views do we like and want to keep up, and which political views do we want to suppress. That’s very clear viewpoint discrimination,” she said. “They can’t start deciding which political views are acceptable or not.”

    The University of Arizona policy on faculty speech does not define public policy controversies, a term that could apply to a wide range of topics.

    One example: Republican lawmakers in the state are pushing legislation that would allow people with concealed carry permits to bring their firearms onto college campuses. Faculty members wanted to pass a resolution in opposition to the bill, but a professor argued the body should not weigh in because of the public policy controversy restriction. 

    The administration suggested that it didn’t apply in the case because the legislation would impact university operations. Faculty approved the resolution.

    In March, Hudson, the faculty chair, said she believes that in every state, “whether it’s red, blue or purple,” people have “a deep understanding” of the importance of free speech. But the recent crackdown by universities and law enforcement on pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country has her questioning that assumption.

    “The advance of knowledge depends on the ability to express, debate, test the unpopular, the improbable, the out-of-style topics that might enrage some people,” she said. “You need to be able to speak freely without fear or favor. That’s why students from all over the world have historically come to American universities. I hope that is still the case in the future.”





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  • UC regents again postpone vote on policy to restrict some faculty speech

    UC regents again postpone vote on policy to restrict some faculty speech


    Public speakers address UC leaders during a March UC regents meeting at UCLA.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    The University of California’s board of regents on Thursday again postponed a vote on a controversial policy to restrict faculty departments from making opinionated statements on the homepages of university websites. The regents could next consider the policy at their July meeting in San Francisco.

    The proposal was initially introduced after some faculty departments, such as the ethnic studies department at UC Santa Cruz, posted statements on their websites criticizing Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to the Hamas assault in Israel. The potential adoption of the policy comes as pro-Palestinian protests and encampments have popped up across the system’s 10 campuses, with arrests of hundreds and, at UCLA, a violent counter-protest.

    How a university should respond, if at all, to various forms of protest has suddenly become an overwhelming question across California and the rest of the nation, affecting graduation ceremonies and faculty support of campus leaders.

    The agenda for Thursday’s regents meeting at UC Merced included the policy as an action item to be voted on by the regents, but for the third consecutive meeting, the vote was delayed. Unlike previous meetings, the item was not discussed in open session before regents decided to postpone the vote. They did not say whether it was debated in closed session. 

    Faculty across UC have criticized the policy, arguing that it would infringe on academic freedom and questioning how it would be enforced. But supporters of the policy, led by regent Jay Sures, say it is needed to ensure that the views of faculty departments aren’t misinterpreted as representing UC as a whole. Sures could not be reached for comment Thursday about why the item was delayed again.

    Under the latest version, political and other opinionated statements would not be allowed to appear on the homepages of departmental websites. They would be permitted elsewhere on those websites, but only with a disclaimer stating that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or university system.

    Entering the regents meeting, academic senate leaders had asked the regents not to adopt the policy and instead issue a statement endorsing recommendations made by the senate in 2022. The latest policy in many ways mirrors the senate recommendations but does have some differences. The senate recommendations say faculty departments should be able to make political statements on UC homepages, as long as the statements include a disclaimer and don’t take stances on elections. 

    “We would welcome a straightforward Regents’ statement endorsing the 2022 Senate recommendations rather than the creation of new and not entirely clear bureaucratic regulations that raise issues of compliance and enforcement,” wrote James Steintrager, chair of the senate, in a letter to regents ahead of this week’s meeting.

    Steintrager did, however, say the policy was an improvement over previous versions because it “enunciates clearer goals, defines key terms more explicitly, and better specifies the types of statements it covers.” 

    Steintrager also wrote that he appreciated that the regents took feedback from the senate ahead of this weekend’s meeting. That sentiment was echoed by James Vernon, a professor of history at UC Berkeley and chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association. Vernon said in an interview this week that the regents ahead of this meeting took “a more consultative approach to the academic senate.”

    But Vernon, like senate leaders, still has reservations about the policy and questioned whether it’s an issue the regents should be dealing with at all. 

    “For me, this policy represents an overreach by the regents. The academic senate has already issued a report about statements on websites. It set out a set of discretionary guidelines for campuses and departments to follow,” Vernon said.





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  • UC approves policy to limit faculty speech on websites

    UC approves policy to limit faculty speech on websites


    Public speakers address UC leaders during a March UC regents meeting at UCLA.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    This story was updated to reflect the full UC board of regents vote on the policy.

    University of California faculty will face some new limits on how they can use university websites to share political opinions, such as criticism of Israel, under a policy approved by the system’s board of regents. The policy is less restrictive than previous proposed versions after regents made some concessions to faculty.

    The policy would prevent faculty departments and other academic units from sharing opinionated statements on the homepages of department websites. Those statements will be permitted elsewhere on the websites, however, so long as they include a disclaimer that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or UC. 

    The approval of the policy followed months of negotiations with Academic Senate leaders. The latest version specifies that statements related to faculty’s “scholarly endeavors” are allowed, a reassuring clarification to Senate leaders. It will also allow for homepages to include links to political statements. Some UC faculty, however, remain unsatisfied with the policy and argue that it infringes on their academic freedom.

    “What we’re protecting is for the public or for the university community to think that statements being made on individual websites are reflective of the University of California when they’re not,” said regent Jay Sures, who introduced the policy. 

    The policy was cleared Wednesday during a joint meeting of the board’s academic affairs committee and the compliance and audit committee. The academic affairs committee voted 9-1, with one abstention. The compliance and audit committee voted 6-1, with one abstention.

    The full board then voted 13-1 to approve the policy Thursday. The lone regent to vote against it was Josiah Beharry, the student regent on the board. Beharry, who sits on the academic affairs and compliance and audit committees, was also the only vote against the policy in both committees.

    Last fall, some faculty departments published opinionated statements on their websites criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza, setting off the current debate. The ethnic studies department at UC Santa Cruz, for example, posted a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.”

    The first version of the proposal to limit what faculty can say was brought to the regents in January. A vote on the policy was tabled at the time, and delayed twice more at regents meetings in March and May, before Wednesday’s vote. 

    Some faculty have criticized the regents for taking up the issue at all, saying it is outside their purview and that it infringes on academic freedom.

    But in the months since the original version of the policy, regents worked with Academic Senate leaders to refine the proposal. The Senate considers the latest policy “a marked improvement over previous drafts and generally consonant with free expression and academic freedom,” said James Steintrager, the 2023-24 chair of the Senate, during remarks prior to Wednesday’s vote.

    Steintrager called it a “welcome addition” that the latest version clarifies that statements related to scholarly endeavors won’t be banned from homepages. Commentary by public health faculty on the importance of vaccines, for example, would be permitted. 

    Steintrager added that the policy “is not a ban on discretionary or political statements.” Instead, he noted, it “imposes certain requirements and guardrails” on those statements, including ensuring that the statements don’t impose on faculty who might hold different views.

    Another concession to the faculty is that links to political statements will be permitted on the homepages of department websites. Only the statements themselves cannot appear on the homepages. 

    Despite the changes, some faculty remain concerned that the policy violates their free speech rights. Jennifer Mogannam, an assistant professor in UC Santa Cruz’s ethnic studies department, said she views the policy as targeting ethnic studies faculty and pro-Palestinian speech.

    Mogannam is one of multiple Palestinian studies scholars in the Santa Cruz department and said statements about Israel’s war in Gaza should be considered part of their scholarly endeavors. But she’s worried it won’t be seen that way.

    “I’m sure we’re going to be seeing double standards in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not when this policy is being implemented,” Mogannam said.

    Ultimately, the implementation and enforcement of the policy will be left to each individual campus, with campus chancellors having the final say. Each academic department that plans to share political statements will be required to “develop and publish procedures” detailing how they plan to comply with the new policy. 

    UC President Michael Drake credited regents and Senate leaders for their collaboration on the policy, saying it had been “developed and refined in a way that makes it much more easily supportable.” 

    “I think it will have good ramifications and actually will reverberate back to the units and help guide them in the way that they’re communicating their positions,” he added.





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  • ‘Bring it on,’ Kamala Harris says in fiery speech to teachers’ union

    ‘Bring it on,’ Kamala Harris says in fiery speech to teachers’ union


    Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the American Federation of Teachers’ 88th national convention,
    Thursday in Houston.

    Credit: AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

    It may well just have been a case of fortuitous timing, but Vice President Kamala Harris — the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency — gave her most full-throated address on Thursday since President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign Sunday to an auditorium filled with enthusiastic teachers.

    watch or read the speech

    Watch the speech here.

    Read the transcript here.

    She articulated what seem likely to be the principal lines of attack in what, for her, will be one of the shortest presidential campaigns in American history.  She also reprised some of the education issues that have figured prominently in her career so far. 

    Speaking Thursday in Houston at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers, which, as she noted, was the first union to endorse her candidacy, her speech was in effect a paean of praise not only to teachers, but to everyone working in schools, from bus drivers to nurses. 

    As she has many times, she paid tribute to her first grade teacher at Thousand Oaks Elementary School in Berkeley, Frances Wilson.

    “I am a proud product of public education,” she said in a not-so-subtle rebuttal to former President Donald Trump and his allies’ disparaging descriptions of public schools as “government schools” intent on indoctrinating students with left-wing and “woke” ideologies.   

    Vice President Kamala Harris attended Thousand Oaks Elementary School in Berkeley in the 1960s. The school has been rebuilt since then.
    Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource

    “It is because of Mrs. Wilson and many teachers like her that I stand before you as the vice president of the United States, and why I am running to become president of the United States,” she said. 

    “You all do God’s work teaching our children,” she told the teachers, all of whom are union members. 

    In what could become the signature slogan of her campaign, Harris framed the contest as one between the future and the past.

    “In this moment we are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms,” she said, pausing dramatically.  “And to this room of leaders, I say, bring it on.”

    She repeated “bring it on” three times, as the audience roared “bring it on” back to her. 

    She said the choice was clear between “two different visions” of America — one focused on the future, and another on the past, and “we are fighting for the future.” 

    Teachers, by the very nature of their work, are engaged in creating America’s future. 

    “You see potential in every child,” she said. “You shape the future of our nation.” 

    “While you teach students about democracy, extremists attack us on the right to vote,” she declared. 

    And she criticized Republican resistance to gun control, less than a week after a 20-year-old inexperienced gunman nearly assassinated her likely opponent with an AR-15 rifle. 

    “They have the nerve to tell teachers to strap on a gun in the classroom, while they refuse to pass common sense gun safety laws,” she said. 

    Harris also took on some of the ideological issues raised by Republicans and the far-right that have roiled the education landscape. 

    “While you (the teachers) teach about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn, and to acknowledge our nation’s full history, including book bans,” she declared. “We want to ban assault weapons, and they want to ban books.”

    The vice president doubled down on the Biden administration’s ambitious efforts to ease the burden of student loan debt — efforts that have been stymied by lawsuits brought by Republicans and their allies blocking his most ambitious loan forgiveness plans.

    She described a teacher in Philadelphia she met recently who had been paying off her student loan for 20 years but still had $40,000 to pay off, despite being part of the public service loan program that has been in place for years. 

    “We forgave it all,” she said. 

    Her appearance before the AFT, the second-largest teacher’s union (with almost 2 million members) after the National Education Association, may also have been fortuitous for practical reasons.  

    In addition to their financial contributions, teachers’ unions have a large network of volunteers they can draw on to go out into communities, knock on doors, and make phone calls to mobilize support for the candidates they back.  

    Both unions have now formally endorsed her. 

    It is that kind of backing that will make a big difference in the outcome of what almost everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, acknowledges is likely to be a close race.





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  • Professor, community college reach $2.4 million settlement in free speech case

    Professor, community college reach $2.4 million settlement in free speech case


    Matthew Garrett, a former professor at Bakersfield College, recently settled a lawsuit with his former employer.

    Credit: Bakersfield College / Facebook

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    A long-running saga involving a Kern County community college professor — hailed as a defender of free speech by some but by others as a source of campus strife — has ended with a $2.4 million payment from the community college district and the professor’s resignation. 

    Matthew Garrett, who was a tenured professor of history at Bakersfield College, resigned from his position and agreed to drop all claims against the Kern Community College District, according to settlement terms reached in July.

    That includes the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, claiming that the community college district violated Garrett’s First Amendment rights. Garrett also agreed to drop an administrative challenge to the district’s board, which had voted in favor of firing Garrett on April 13, 2023.

    The federal suit alleging free speech violations will continue with Erin Miller, also a history professor at Bakersfield College, as lead plaintiff. The next hearing is set for Nov. 7 at the Robert E. Coyle U.S. Courthouse in Fresno in front of presiding Judge Kirk E. Sheriff. Miller declined to comment on the case, deferring to her attorney.

    In turn, the district has dropped the claims it made against Garrett. In a letter recommending Garrett’s termination on April 14, 2023, Zav Dadabhoy, then-interim president of Bakersfield College, stated that the board should consider Garrett’s “immoral conduct, unprofessional conduct, dishonesty, evident unfitness for service.”

    The district will distribute $2.2 million for “alleged general and emotional distress damages” through an annuity and another $154,520 for back pay and medical benefits. The settlement outlines that neither the district nor Garrett are admitting to any wrongdoing or liability. 

    Garrett, 46, was a vocal critic of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies that were being rolled out in the Kern Community College District. He claimed the district was supporting “highly partisan propaganda.” He wrote a piece in 2023 on a site called Minding the Campus that criticized the administration for turning Bakersfield College into what he called “a place of implicit bias and microaggression training; racial quotas and affirmative action preferences; racially segregated programming emphasizing ethno-nationalist rhetoric.”

    Garrett said that he ultimately decided to settle because the case was draining him financially. He was also concerned that the college district would continue to appeal and prolong the case, even if he initially won.

    Despite the settlement, both sides — Garrett and spokespersons for the community college district — still do not agree on the details of the dispute.

    According to the district, the dispute stemmed from Garrett’s “unprofessional” conduct toward other faculty and students, according to a statement issued by the district shortly after the settlement.

    “The dispute with Matthew Garrett was a disciplinary matter due to his disruptive actions on campus, none of which concerned freedom of speech,” read the district statement.

    Garrett counters that the problems started because the district violated his First Amendment rights and retaliated against him for criticizing an administration that he claims inappropriately promoted a “one-sided partisan political agenda” focused on “social justice.” He disputes the list of charges that the district made in its recommendation to terminate him, which include “baseless attacks” on the district and his colleagues. 

    “I’m tired of this lie,” Garrett told EdSource.  “All I asked is, ‘Why is money going here?’”

    Disputing Garrett’s claim about the violation of his free speech rights, the district said in its statement to the media after the settlement, “Kern Community College District unequivocally supports the right for our students and faculty to share their views and opinions on campus and elsewhere.”

    Free speech in academia

    Garrett’s case attracted the attention of free speech advocates nationwide, especially those who believe college campuses are suppressing conservative viewpoints. 

    Garrett’s attorney Arthur Willner said he took on the case because he believes free speech is under assault on college campuses nationally. He is a partner with Leader Berkon Colao & Silverstein, a part of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) network, a free speech advocacy group.

    “When you start restricting faculty and students, it not only punishes the speaker, but it also cheats the students in the classroom, who might hear a nice robust debate that interests them,” Wilner said.

    Courts tend to interpret free speech broadly for professors, because they are expected to “speak out and take controversial positions,” stated David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that promotes freedom of expression. He declined to take a position on Garrett’s case, but noted that colleges and universities are a “unique kind of workplace,” compared with other positions in government, such as in a planning or park department.

    “The concept of what is ‘duly disruptive’ is different than it is in other settings,” he said, adding that being offended or not liking what a professor has to say is generally not enough to justify cracking down on speech.

    Even untruths can be considered protected speech, Loy said, because the government is not a referee in the debate over what is or is not true. He said it would require “extreme circumstances” for an academic to lose their position by making outrageously false and defamatory statements, such as falsely claiming that a department chair is kidnapping children and stealing from the budget.

    The controversy

    The controversy began with a debate in the op-ed pages of The Bakersfield Californian that led to a public presentation Garrett made at Bakersfield College. The debate spilled over onto a local radio show hosted by conservative Terry Maxwell.  

    Miller introduced Garrett in 2019 when he gave the presentation called “A Tale of Two Protests” that contrasted how the Bakersfield College administration responded to two incidents on campus. The first involved chalkings that referred to Christopher Columbus as a “murderer” and “genocidal maniac.” In the other, stickers with phrases such as “never apologize for being white” and “smash cultural Marxism” were placed on bulletin boards, primarily those of Chicano studies-related events. The stickers were created by the Hundred Handers and promoted on a Telegram social media channel by a leader who was jailed earlier this year in the United Kingdom for “inciting racial hatred” with stickering campaigns, according to the BBC.

    Garrett defended the free speech of both incidents, but decried the administration for making a campuswide announcement that characterized the latter as “hate speech.” Garrett argued that the stickers may be a protest against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campus.

    “I am neither endorsing the sticker campaign’s methods nor its messages, but I am asking that we take them seriously,” he wrote in his op-ed in The Bakersfield Californian. “Does our community’s college devote disproportionate attention and resources to certain groups at the expense of others? Does that marginalize some students? To what extent is that appropriate?” 

    Garrett, a white man, is a vocal critic of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, particularly those aimed at specific racial groups on campus. For instance, he calls Umoja — a program that offers courses and club activities aimed at improving the success of African American students throughout California community colleges — a “racially segregated class” that he told EdSource should produce data to show that it is not a “crutch” that actually undermines students’ self-sufficiency.

    Professors Andrew Bond and Oliver Rosales, Garrett’s colleagues at Bakersfield College, took issue with some of the claims in Garrett’s September 2019 presentation, which they said were repeated on Terry Maxwell’s radio show. The professors filed a complaint against Garrett with the college’s human resources department, claiming that he acted unprofessionally by accusing them of financial impropriety. The district said it hired an independent investigator who corroborated those charges against Garrett.

    Garrett said the district mischaracterized him. He said he was not accusing the college or any professor of anything illegal; he was just criticizing the college’s affiliations with what he called “partisan” groups. Garrett characterized a noncredit course covering the history of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworker Movement in Kern County, which was created by Rosales, as “partisan indoctrination.”

    Paige Atkinson, then a journalism student at Bakersfield College, weighed in through a piece that ran in The Bakersfield Californian and a local site called South Kern Sol. In the piece, she praised college staff for “protecting its minority students by alerting them to the vandalism — even if it means ruffling the feathers of apologists on campus.” The piece criticized Garrett as one of those apologists. Atkinson said that the Hundred Handers was not simply a “conservative” group exercising its right to free speech, as Garrett wrote, but a “blatantly hateful” group that promoted “white supremacy and the inevitable violence it brings.”

    Garrett responded, calling South Kern Sol a “propaganda site” for the United Farm Workers and activist Dolores Huerta. He said the publication was partisan and that it was inappropriate for the Kern Community College District to donate to them. He accused Atkinson, then editor-in-chief of Bakersfield College’s student paper, of writing a “hit piece” on him in coordination with the district.

    “I said, ‘Why is the college paying for this smear piece?’” Garrett said, in an interview with EdSource.

    District spokesperson Norma Rojas said Bakersfield College faculty and programs sometimes obtain grants, which may be maintained in district accounts but will not commingle with other district or college funds. Grant funds donated to South Kern Sol came from a student journalism grant from the Virginia and Alfred Harrell Foundation in partnership with California Humanities and administered through the Bakersfield College Foundation, Rojas said in a statement. 

    The district denied that it otherwise had a relationship with South Kern Sol “outside of their traditional outreach to a wide variety of local media to inform of news and happenings,” according to a recent statement from the district. 

    John Harte, a retired professor of journalism at Bakersfield College, praised his former student, Atkinson, and defended her against Garrett’s charge that she had coordinated her piece with district leadership — which would be considered a serious breach of journalism ethics.

    The conflict widened beyond the topic of campus protest to include more students and many more professors. Garrett founded the Renegade Institute for Liberty (RIFL), a group of faculty members that aimed to promote “open discourse of diverse political ideas with an emphasis on American ideals and western historical values.” The group’s posts on Facebook became a lightning rod for criticism — and the subject of the recommendation to terminate Garrett by then-interim President Dadabhoy.

    That recommendation said that Garrett, as faculty lead of RIFL, failed to restrict its “baseless attacks” on the district and colleagues. It took issue with one Facebook post that called the “chronic mismanagement” of a local bond measure a “consistent embarrassment” for the college and another post that said the college’s curriculum committee were giving away the equivalent of participation trophies by approving Rosales’ course that covered farmworker history.

    Conflict over diversity, equity and inclusion

    The implementation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has divided faculty and staff at Kern Community College District, particularly its largest campus in Bakersfield, where Garrett worked, according to a workplace survey conducted last spring.

    One Bakersfield College faculty member quoted anonymously in the survey called diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives “an ideological religion” and complained that the debate over DEI has “led to a social and political divide that is disrupting the ability of employees to collaborate.”

    In a lengthier version of the survey, another college faculty member praised the district’s leadership for understanding the value of diversity, equity and inclusion but noted that there is “significant” opposition to DEI, especially in the faculty ranks. This faculty member pointed to Garrett and RIFL as a source of discord on campus and for promoting “agenda, politics and hate” on every college committee and that they had “successfully halted almost all inclusive and equity based work on this campus.”

    The Kern Community College District pointed to Garrett’s public accusations as a cause of internal strife in the district.

    “Garrett’s pursuit of notoriety devolved the sincere efforts by the District and the community to create an environment where students can thrive into an environment of hostility and anger,” the district’s statement after the lawsuit said. 

    Harte agreed and said that he’s happy to see Garrett go.

    “I think Garrett’s settlement and his resignation in the long-run is best for the students,” Harte said. “He is really divisive.”

    Garrett pointed to the workplace survey as evidence that district leadership is to blame for that dysfunction. The word “retaliation” came up in 75 out of 423 employee surveys. “Social and political agendas” came up in 131 surveys.

    “It’s not just ‘crazy disgruntled Matt Garrett’,” Garrett said.

    The Kern Community College District’s new chancellor, Steven Bloomberg, said in a statement to EdSource that he has begun addressing the concerns outlined in the workplace survey, such as creating a leadership development program for supervisors.

    “We have heard the concerns from faculty and staff and are actively working to address them,” Bloomberg wrote. “I am committed to fostering a culture of continuous improvement.”

    The settlement doesn’t mean that Garrett has stopped criticizing the Kern Community College District. Since the settlement was announced, he has spoken out, through his personal Facebook page, against the contract renewal of the vice chancellor of human resources, who he claims targeted him and is responsible for the district’s poor workplace climate. Both he and RIFL have posted about the board members who voted to dismiss him, demanding accountability.

    “I didn’t want to be an activist,” Garrett said. “But I’m going to keep pointing out the problems.”

    Disclosure: Emma Gallegos was an independent freelancer who wrote pieces for South Kern Sol between 2017 and 2019.





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