UC Riverside Faculty Association

The Council of UC Faculty Associations, of which the Riverside Faculty Association is the UC Riverside chapter, sent the following letter to President Napolitano, urging her to cut ties between UC and General Dynamics Information Technology, a contractor for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.

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June 21, 2018

President Janet Napolitano
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Email: president@ucop.edu

Dear President Napolitano,

The Board of the Council of UC Faculty Associations applauds you for your forthright support for UC’s undocumented students, your lawsuit against the Trump administration’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and your strong public statement regarding the Trump Administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border.

In this spirit, we urge you to act positively on the June 18, 2018 UC-AFT call to sever ties between the University of California and General Dynamics Information Technology, a contractor for the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. In addition, UC faculty are concerned with outsourcing of the Analytical Writing Placement exam to this contractor who is helping run the child separation program.

On behalf of the CUCFA Board,
Stanton Glantz,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations,
Professor of Medicine, UCSF

The UC Council of Faculty Associations (CUCFA), of which the Riverside Faculty Association is a member, has issued this statement and set of recommendations in response to the tragic recent events in Charlottesville.

Statement

The events and aftermath of Charlottesville have revealed the disturbing connection between Alt-Right rhetoric of violence and the very real violence perpetrated by white supremacist groups. This situation bears dangerous parallels with the way fascist movements came to power in 20^th-century Europe. Historically, fascism takes root in the public demand for a strong government to restore order following the unrest and violence provoked by ultra nationalist organizations precipitating violent confrontations with antifascist forces. President Trump’s irresponsible and incorrect assertion of a “two-sided” violence has set the stage for a likely reaction by anarchy-inspired groups at the next provocation or implementation of violence by the Alt-Right / white supremacist front. This reaction, in turn, would allow the Trump government to present itself as the ‘neither left nor right’ party of order and security.

Knowing that university campuses are the likely sites for violence to erupt, it is tempting to call for suppressing the right to speak of any element connected with the Alt-Right movement. CUCFA disagrees. We reaffirm our unfettered commitment to free speech, and the proposition that universities cannot discriminate among speakers on the basis of the content of their speech. At the same time, we support denying permission to speak on campus if the speaker or those organizing the speech incite explicitly and/or pose a clear threat of violence.[1]

Recommendations

CUCFA endorses the recent AAUP statement, and UC President Napolitano’s letter in the wake of the tragic events in Charlottesville.  We invite them — and the entire higher education community  — to also denounce more explicitly the connection among the Alt-Right appropriation of ‘free speech’ rhetoric to provoke violent confrontation, white supremacist violence, and the proto-fascist narrative of equivalence between left and right being spun by the Trump administration.

To counter this worrisome state of affairs, CUCFA further recommends that UCOP make public its criteria for determining and countering a clear threat of violence on the part of outside speakers, and institute an “Outside Speakers’ Commission”—with representatives of the UC faculty Senate, students, campus police, UC lawyers, and other possible stakeholders—in charge of reviewing and publicly discussing these criteria, and, if necessary, of updating them, or developing new ones which would pay particular attention and respond to the following concerns:

1. What constitutes evidence of a clear threat of violence brought by a speaker or the organizers of a speaking event?
2. If necessary, should the cost of extra police protection be borne by the University or the association asking for a certain speaker to be allowed to speak on campus?
3. Should restrictions be passed to what protesters can hold in their hands (i.e. clubs, batons, etc…) entering any UC campus?

Lastly, recognizing the appealing status of all UC campuses as targets for Alt-Right provocations, CUCFA invites UCOP to publicize as soon and as widely as possible among students and faculty the “Ten Ways to Fight Hate Guide” released by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

[1] The decision by Michigan State and Louisiana State on August 18 to deny white supremacist leader Richard Spencer permission to speak there is an example of an appropriate response.

Dear President Napolitano,

We applaud your timely declaration in the immediate aftermath of the election that the UC administration “remain[s] absolutely committed to supporting all members of our community and adhering to UC’s Principles Against Intolerance.”[1]

Like you, we are gravely concerned by the statements made by President-elect Donald Trump during the campaign, and in the aftermath of his victory, targeting particularly vulnerable communities such as undocumented Latinos and Muslim immigrants.

We support your subsequent statement to the UC Regents that “it is more important than ever that we preserve our core values, expand opportunity, and create and share knowledge in the public interest.”[2] We also support your decision to meet with representatives of undocumented students, and to institute a task force to help UC students who are in the country without legal permission and who may be at greater risk of deportation under a Trump administration.

We endorse the joint letter you wrote with CSU Chancellor Timothy White and CC Interim President Erik Skinner to the California congressional delegation asking for the restoration of year-long Pell grants.[3] CUCFA has long believed in the inextricable connection between affordable higher education and the benefits of all forms of diversity to knowledge-production, society, and democracy. We greatly appreciate the advocacy of our leaders on behalf of our students.

In short, we stand united with our administrators against any threats directed at our students and fellow employees, or any words or acts of hate that threaten our mission as a public research university committed to the betterment of our global society through teaching, learning, and the dissemination of new knowledge. We pledge to stand up for, support, and defend the most vulnerable among us, those deliberately targeted in the lead up to the election, and those who are now victims of hate in its wake – members of our community who are undocumented, people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims (and other religious minorities), immigrants, people with disabilities, and women.

To implement these policy principles, we urge that, in collaboration with the chancellors and other appropriate authorities, you:

• Explore all legal venues to refuse to act on behalf of federal agents, and to withhold information on the immigration status, religion, and national origin of our students, faculty, or staff;
• Not enter into agreements with state or local law enforcement agencies, Homeland Security or any other federal department for the enforcement of federal immigration law;
• Instruct university police not to honor immigration hold requests, and not to contact, detain, question or arrest individuals solely on the basis of being, or suspected of being, a person that lacks documentation;
• Standardize a UC systemwide administrative office with responsibility for counseling DACA students on their educational situation;
• Publicize that DACA student counseling services are available on a strictly confidential basis;
• Continue to allow DACA-eligible students to pay in-state resident tuition;
• Ensure student’s access to health care and financial aid within California law;
• Invest in faculty and staff training for UndocuAlly modules developed by UC Davis;[4]
• Commit to allow undocumented students to work on UC campuses in the event that the DACA provisions were repealed;
• Take these measures before Inauguration Day so that DACA students can be assured of institutional support.

We are aware of the many calls to consider declaring all UCs “sanctuary campuses” before the inauguration of President-elect Trump.[5] While we support the spirit of this call, believing that Universities have an ethical obligation to assist undocumented students against threats of deportation, we are concerned that the idea of sanctuary campuses does not have any legal status, and agree with Cal State Chancellor White that declaring any public university a “sanctuary” may give a false sense of security “to the very people we support and serve.”[6] We urge you to study all legal and symbolic ramifications of declaring UC campuses “sanctuaries,” and to involve students, staff, and faculty in making that decision. Accordingly, we ask you to charge the announced task force on undocumented students with discussing explicitly the issue of sanctuary status and to make their findings public before January 20.

It is estimated that one third of the over 740,000 undocumented students in the US reside in California, and our state already has multiple progressive policies designed to support undocumented immigrants, including measures that help them access healthcare, driver’s licenses and student loans. We have a responsibility not only to reassure our students that we will stand by them in the face of deportation if laws were passed in that direction, but to lead the nation in rejecting policies opposed to the core values of our university.

For this reason we support your actions to date and reiterate our desire to work with you and other university leaders to advance these important goals.

On behalf of the Council of UC Faculty Associations Board,
Stanton Glantz,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor of Medicine, UCSF

[1] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article113780763.html

[2] http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-regents-20161116-story.html

[3] https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/uc-president-joins-california-higher-education-and-uc-student-leaders-support-pell-grants

[4] http://undocumented.ucdavis.edu/education/ally.html

[5] http://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2016/11/proposal-turn-californias-massive-public-higher-ed-system-into-sanctuary-campuses-to-stop-trump-107463

[6] http://mynewsla.com/education/2016/11/17/no-sanctuary-at-cal-state-university-but-no-cooperation-with-trump-immigration/