More than a thousand demonstrators marched through the UC San Diego campus Wednesay, condemning the crackdown of a pro-Palestinian encampment early last week. The events are some of the latest in a conflict that’s pitting free speech against campus safety.
At noon, protestors wound through the university, calling for the resignation of Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, and chanting battle cries of the war in Gaza.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” one student called over a bullhorn, in a refrain that invokes Palestinian resistance – or antisemitism – depending on the point of view.
“Who is the intifada?” another cried. “We are the intifada!”
“We don’t want any funds devoted to Israel and Zionism,” Sara Mannal, 20, a biology major at the university, told me. “We don’t want to put money into a school that funds a genocide and supports the killing of women and children and men who are innocent and in occupation.”
The demonstration illustrated the protections established in the mid-1960s, when the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley confirmed students’ rights to speak out on social and political issues.
Universities can discipline students for unlawful conduct at protests, but not for the ideas they express.
Those actions have become the point of contention. UCSD Chancellor Khosla defended the enforcement Monday, saying the encampment had become dangerous, restricting movement on campus and blocking access to the fire marshal and health inspectors. Protestors said police in riot gear provoked the confrontation, deploying batons and pepper spray against people they arrested.
The demonstrations followed months of turmoil at universities throughout the country, including violent clashes at UCLA between protestors, counter-protestors and police, which were widely condemned as a failure of UCLA leadership.
And it contrasts with events at UC Riverside, where administrators successfully negotiated the closure of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
How are local lawmakers responding to the movement shaking universities?
For the most part, they’re not.
A scan of San Diego politicians’ social media accounts and websites showed no comment on the UCSD clashes this week.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-San Diego, defended the right to protest in a statement last week, explaining why she voted against HR 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act. It’s a controversial bill that critics claim would punish peaceful protest against the Israeli government as a form of antisemitism.
As a Jewish woman, Jacobs said she has experienced antisemitism throughout her life, but maintained that’s not the same as anti-Zionism, adding “Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer.”
I checked with state lawmakers’ offices to see where they stand, and a couple responded, although they didn’t comment specifically on events at UCSD.
Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, called for balance between “the right to peacefully assemble and express grievance, and rules of law that provide order.”
“I firmly believe in the right to peacefully protest, but we must also assure that we maintain campuses with the health and safety for all students in mind,” he said in an email.
State Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, voiced a similar position.
“Free speech is integral to our democracy but it should not come at the cost of public safety,” she wrote.
A week earlier, state Sen. Brian Jones, R-San Diego, took a harder line on campus protests, arguing for cutting state funding to universities that don’t protect campus safety, and revoking state grants to students convicted of illegal acts.
In Sacramento, the state Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill, SB 1287 that would require California universities to establish “student codes of conduct that prohibit violence, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statement May 1 condemning the events at UCLA: “The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus. Those who engage in illegal behavior must be held accountable for their actions – including through criminal prosecution, suspension, or expulsion.”
But the LA Times ranked Newsom as AWOL on the university front, comparing his relative silence to former President Ronald Reagan’s militaristic response to student protests in 1969, and noting that there’s probably little political gain for Newsom to step into the fray.
Keeling Curve Shows Biggest Spike in Climate Emissions in Two-Thirds Century
You may be familiar with the Keeling Curve, one of the longest-standing continuous measurements in modern science, and a harbinger of climate collapse.
It follows data dating to 1958 to track the upward trend of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas driving global warming.
This week Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that the curve showed the largest 12-month spike in CO2 ever recorded. That means the pace of carbon emissions is climbing, accelerating climate change.
“We sadly continue to break records in the CO2 rise rate,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at Scripps. “The ultimate reason is continued global growth in the consumption of fossil fuels.”
In related, but also unfortunate news, Politico reports that CalSTRS, California’s megalithic teacher’s pension fund, has lost track of its carbon footprint.
The pension fund revealed the confusion at a board meeting last week, acknowledging that its emissions data for 2021 and 2022 isn’t accurate, and it won’t know last year’s data until next year. Climate advocates say that’s an argument for more and better reporting of greenhouse gas emissions.
State Supreme Court Deciding Whether to Kick Tax Measure Off the Ballot
The state Supreme Court is deliberating whether the “Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act,” a sweeping initiative to tighten requirements for increasing taxes, should be nixed from the ballot.
Voice of San Diego has taken a close look at this measure, which would require voters to OK any state tax hike, raise the threshold for local taxes, and redefine some government fees as taxes.
Last fall Newsom asked the California Supreme Court to kick the taxpayer initiative off the ballot. The court is now considering whether the measure would be a constitutional amendment, which can be approved by voters, or a constitutional revision, which must go through the legislature.
The Sacramento Report runs every Friday and is part of a partnership with CalMatters. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org.
Enough of this terrorist sympathizing nonsense. There is no genocide. Only the eradication of a terrorist organization bent on killing anyone outside of their own beliefs. And yes, that includes members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The UCSD faculty members participating in today’s protest should be fired immediately. Any people participating and here on visas or green cards should be deported.
“pubic safety” does not mean the feelings of zionists who support an apartheid state.
What AIPAC has done to our power structures, ceding the national interest to a foreign power, is disgusting.