Dear Colleagues,
The San Diego Faculty Association (SDFA) fully supports the statement from the UC-wide Council of Faculty Associations (CUCFA) linked here, about the urgency of defending academic freedom and the free speech rights of instructional faculty and students to express support for the Palestinian people and/or criticize the actions of the Israeli government. We believe that it is crucial to resist interference into our ability to teach in our classrooms freely and according to our expertise, and reject the accusations of “political indoctrination” leveled singly at those who speak and teach on issues that cause discomfort to our administrators. We point to the AAUP’s statement issued on November 15th, “Polarizing Times Demand Robust Academic Freedom” calling on university administrators and leaders to educate themselves on the rights of faculty and students, including student organizations to examine and express themselves freely both privately and publicly.
We highlight the egregious abuse of authority that we have seen from UC regent Jonathan Sures, written on UC Regents letterhead (https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/55/13/2fbfa8ff4974a3ca8718e539d039/regents-of-the-university.pdf) to delegitimize an entire group of faculty’s critical analysis of the ongoing situation in Palestine. (The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council’s response can be viewed here)
As our colleague at the UCLA School of Law, Noah Zatz has written, the one-sided repression of expressions of the most basic aspirations for Palestinian freedom offends not only civil libertarian commitments to free speech and related ideas of academic freedom, but also, civil rights commitments to nondiscrimination.
SDFA emphasizes the important role that we each have to play to speak in our departments, academic senate committee meetings, and other spaces we are part of to resist attempts by administration to suppress our protected right to academic freedom. We encourage the UCSD Academic Senate to issue a formal position on this issue of academic freedom, and demand that Chancellor Khosla clearly state his commitment to defending the rights of all faculty to speak without fear of retaliation or punishment.
Thank you,
SDFA Board
I strongly support academic freedom, but I see no evidence that Sures, Khosla, Drake, or other UC administrators have abused their administrative powers in this matter.
Although the SDFA may appear to be a representative organization of the UCSD faculty, it is not. In particular, the SDFA did not consult UC San Diego’s full faculty in preparing and disseminating the above letter.
For these reasons, I wish to explicitly disassociate myself from the present SDFA letter on academic freedom.