UCSC faculty join statewide unfair labor claim over handling of Gaza protests

In a 581-page document, the association representing faculty at University of California campuses accused the UC administration this week of violating faculty’s rights in a crackdown on protests last spring of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) filed the unfair labor practice charge with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) on Thursday.

In addition to the systemwide faculty association, the UC Santa Cruz faculty association and its counterparts at UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UC San Francisco brought charges against UC administrators.

Chris Connery, a spokesperson for UCSC’s faculty association, said the university’s decision to ban three UCSC faculty member from campus without a hearing violated their rights and violated university procedures. It happened after they were arrested with more than 100 others at the Gaza solidarity encampment May 31. The students arrested were also temporarily banned from campus. 

“The faculty association in general thinks that the university went over the line in suppressing, discouraging and reacting to protests,” he said. “I think what this [unfair labor practice charge] represents is an effort to fight back at the institutional level to get some clarity about what our rights are.” 

The unfair labor practice charge describes incidents at multiple UC campuses, including the attack by anti-protesters at UCLA’s encampment and the subsequent police raid there. A section of the charge describes the arrests at UCSC as well as the experiences of three faculty members who were arrested: assistant professor Sophia Azeb, associate professor Marisol LeBrón and professor Christine Hong, who has joined a separate lawsuit against UCSC over the incident. 

“UC also unlawfully discriminated against LeBrón, Azeb, and Hong by arresting them and excluding them from the campus based on their protected conduct,” the unfair labor practice charge reads. 

UC Santa Cruz officials haven’t responded to requests for comment about the unfair labor practice charge. 

“UC’s actions to suppress speech about Palestine on our campuses, which represents an illegal content-based restriction of faculty rights, sets an alarming precedent,” said CUCFA President Constance Penley in a statement. “Our unfair labor practice filing demands they change course and follow the law, and make whole the faculty who have been harmed.”

LeBrón said she was glad to see the charge get filed, but that she has mixed emotions.  

“On the one hand, I’m happy to see it, on the other, really heartbroken,” she said. “Seeing the kind of extent of the repression that’s happening across all of the campuses and what people have been dealing with.” 

In addition to describing LeBrón’s arrest, the unfair labor practice charge describes a “baseless investigation” into Twitter posts she shared on her personal account after her arrest. LeBrón posted two photos and one illustration of the same image of Campus Provost Lori Kletzer smiling as she walked her dog across the street from students and faculty as they were being arrested by police at the encampment. 

LeBrón didn’t take the photo or make the graphic, which were shared widely on social media platforms. 

On July 9, the unfair labor practice charge says, the director of equity and equal opportunity at UCSC’s Equity & Equal Protection Office sent a letter to LeBrón’s department chair informing them that their office received a report from a university administrator alleging that LeBrón’s social media posts were “harassment and abusive conduct on the basis of their shared ancestry and Jewish identity” and included “antisemitic images.”

“I would not share it if it was antisemitic,” LeBrón said. “I teach ethnic studies, I’m familiar with antisemitic tropes.” 

While the letter said that the office wasn’t conducting an investigation, it did say that the office was informing the Humanities Division about the report and that officials would have a discussion with LeBrón warning her that if similar incidents occurred, it could “lead to credible claims of a hostile work environment.” 

In a July 23 meeting, LeBrón and her legal counsel met with the Equity & Equal Protection Office. LeBrón said she asked the officials to say what was antisemitic about the posts, but that they were unable to provide an answer. She said that they also said they couldn’t say who filed the report, as it was confidential. 

She also asked them multiple times during the meeting to investigate the incident formally rather than reaching a conclusion that the posts were antisemitic. 

“Because I felt like they would find that this was baseless, that this was actually an intimidation tactic,” she said. “And that this was meant to silence my critiques that I have of the senior administration at the university and the way that they behave towards the solidarity encampment and towards protests in general.” 

She said she was told the “senior administrator” who filed the complaint didn’t want an investigation because there was too much of a power imbalance. 

LeBrón said she wasn’t given any formal closure or documents to clarify what the meeting with the Equity & Equal Protection Office was for or the result of it.

LeBrón believes the senior administrator who filed the report was Kletzer, but doesn’t know for certain. 

UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment regarding the unfair labor practice charge, but did respond to questions about the report filed by a senior administrator against LeBrón. 

“Complaints received by the Office of Equity and Equal Protection and any subsequent investigations are confidential,” he wrote by email. 

In a statement about the unfair labor practice charge, the UC Santa Cruz Faculty Association said it hopes that a PERB hearing will clarify that the protection of faculty rights is essential for the university. 

“Our administration has been quick to institute disciplinary procedures and slow to emphasize and strengthen protections for faculty speech and activity,” the statement reads. “Last spring, the administration attempted to prohibit the [faculty association] from discussing faculty rights regarding the UAW strike at department meetings. We hope that when the administration is compelled to recognize faculty rights to organize around the workplace, we will be able to continue to exercise those rights without fear or intimidation.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.