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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">UCLA’s Unholy Alliance</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Robin D. G.
Kelley</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">May 18,
2024<br>
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<p>In December the House Committee on Education and the
Workforce held a hearing on anti-Semitism on college
campuses that forced University of Pennsylvania
president Liz McGill and Harvard University president
Claudine Gay to resign in its wake. In April the
committee held another hearing, reducing Columbia
University President Minouche Shafik, keen to avoid
the fate of her counterparts, to a groveling mess. On
May 23 it will hold yet another, under the title
“Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic
College Chaos.”</p>
<p>This time the committee has summoned Michael Schill,
president of Northwestern University; Jonathan
Holloway, president of Rutgers University; and Gene
Block, Chancellor of the University of California, Los
Angeles. We expect another show trial, where committee
chair Virginia Foxx (Republican of North Carolina),
Elise Stefanik (Republican of New York), and their
friends pressure “liberal” university leaders into
confessing that anti-Semitism has run amok on college
campuses, that Jewish students are the real victims of
a Hamas-backed genocide being plotted in Gaza
solidarity encampments and the classrooms of tenured
radicals, and that the source of Jew hatred is
critical race theory. The committee has promised that
it will not sit idly by. In a press release, Foxx <a
href="https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=410503"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">warned</a> “mealy-mouthed,
spineless college leaders” that “College is not a park
for playacting juveniles or a battleground for radical
activists. Everyone affiliated with these universities
will receive a healthy dose of reality: actions have
consequences.”</p>
<p>The House Committee hearings chose only to summon
college presidents for a public tongue-lashing and
dressing-down. This is because House Republicans are
less interested in anti-Semitism than racking up
“gotcha” soundbites for their fundraising campaigns,
advancing the right-wing assault on DEI and what they
define as “critical race theory,” and attacking the
university as a whole. According to <em>Inside Higher
Ed</em>, Foxx <a
href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2024/04/16/higher-ed-braces-another-round-congressional-grilling"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">confirmed</a> that “the
inquiries could broaden to include the universities’
diversity, equity and inclusion politics.” If Foxx,
Stefanik, and fellow House Republicans were genuinely
concerned about anti-Semitism, they would investigate
the white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon
conspiracy theorists who make up part of their base
and participated in the January 6 insurrection.
Parroting Donald Trump, Stefanik referred to the men
and women convicted on charges ranging from
obstruction to assaulting a law enforcement officer as
“hostages.” Foxx not only voted against certifying the
2020 election but, like Stefanik and fellow House
Republicans, vehemently opposed the commission to
investigate the capitol riot.</p>
<p>The charges Chancellor Block will face exonerate
those responsible for the worst incident of
anti-Semitic violence in UCLA’s history.</p>
<p>Unlike the January 6 hearings, Foxx’s committee has
produced very little evidence of anti-Semitism outside
of words and slogans either taken out of context or
misinterpreted. Stefanik, for example, managed to turn
“intifada,” which literally means “shaking off” or
“uprising,” into “genocide of Jews.” But Chancellor
Block’s testimony will be different. It will give the
committee an opportunity to investigate not only a
verifiable and egregious incident of anti-Semitism,
but one involving white nationalists and neo-Nazis.</p>
<p>Between April 25 and May 2, UCLA experienced the
worst episode of <em>both</em> anti-Semitic and
anti-Palestinian/Islamophobic/racist violence in the
university’s century-long history. Proud Boys, white
nationalists, and neo-Nazis joined forces with
Zionists (including some self-declared Israelis) to
attack UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment, whose
residents included a large number of Jewish students.
The assailants were not affiliated with the
university. One neo-Nazi, identified later as a member
of the Proud Boys, was heard shouting, “we’re here to
finish what Hitler started,” without any apparent
protest from the self-identified Zionists. Using metal
pipes, wooden planks, fists, knives, bricks, noise,
chemical weapons, and incendiary fireworks, the mob
sent at least twenty-five students to the hospital for
broken bones, head trauma, and severe lacerations,
while police stood by and watched for hours, electing
to neither detain nor interrogate the perpetrators. No
arrests took place that night. The following day, only
students and faculty defending the encampment were
arrested.</p>
<p>Although Block has promised to launch a full
investigation, <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/us/ucla-protests-encampment-violence.html"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">reporting</a> from various
media outlets (including outstanding <a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/07/i-thought-i-was-going-to-die-ucla-encampment-protesters-recall-april-30-attack"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">coverage</a> by our student
paper, <em>The Daily Bruin</em>), along with hundreds
of hours of video captured by students, faculty and
observers, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the
Palestine Solidarity Encampment—a nonviolent
occupation erected to protest U.S. support for the
genocide in Gaza and to demand that UCLA divest from
companies that fuel Israel’s war and occupation,
exercise financial transparency, break ties with
Israeli universities, and acknowledge the loss of
Palestinian life—came under brutal attack from its
very inception and the administration did nothing to
protect our students.</p>
<p>Given Block’s fervent opposition to anti-Semitism and
his unwavering defense of Israel and Zionism, why are
House Republicans going after him? Are they really
concerned about the assault on the encampment and the
health and safety of our students? To the contrary,
Foxx has crafted an indictment designed to shield
white nationalists from accountability and prosecution
for their rabid anti-Semitism by magically recasting
neo-Nazis as encampment <em>defenders</em> rather
than assailants, and by twisting information,
repeating misinformation, and conveying outright
falsehoods fed to the committee by Israel advocacy
organizations such as the AMCHA Initiative, the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Stand With Us;
right-wing media outlets such as <em>Campus Reform</em>,
<em>Legal Insurrection</em>, and Fox News; and
isolated tweets and Instagram posts. Foxx’s <a
href="https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ucla_final.pdf"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">letter</a> notifying Block of
the charges against him makes the wildly specious
claim that “a van displaying the Star of David inside
a Nazi swastika, as well as antisemitic writing
referring to Jews as ‘puppet masters,’ was parked on
UCLA’s campus in support of the encampment.” It
repeats false claims that journalists who tried to
enter the encampment were “assaulted,” but never
mentions the documented fact that in the wee hours of
May 1, four student journalists with the <em>Daily
Bruin</em> were tracked down, maced, and severely
beaten by members of the mob —sending <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-01/four-student-journalists-attacked-by-counterprotesters-at-ucla"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">one</a>, Catherine Hamilton,
to the hospital. The letter also repeats the
thoroughly debunked rumor that “anti-Israel activists
shoved a Jewish student counter-protestor . . . kicked
her in the head, and stepped on her. The assault left
her bleeding and caused her to lose consciousness and
to be rushed to the hospital.” Immediately after the
story began circulating on social media, the <em>Los
Angeles Times</em> <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-10/how-social-media-rumors-sparked-a-night-of-mayhem-at-ucla"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">interviewed</a> the woman in
question who explained that she had been accidentally
shoved by a fellow counterprotester “while attempting
to retrieve her fallen [Israeli] flag.”</p>
<p>The letter never mentions that self-proclaimed
Zionists took part in the attacks, nor does it
acknowledge that the encampment had actually been
attacked. Instead, Foxx labels the victims of mob and
police violence “antisemitic rioters.” She finds
evidence of rampant anti-Semitism in the Undergraduate
Student Association Council’s (USAC) resolution
calling for amnesty for those arrested, the
elimination of police on campus, and, in her words, “a
“permanent ceasefire” and an end to what they allege
is a “genocide in Palestine.” Finally, she makes the
absurd claim that the resolution asks professors to
hold Muslim and Palestinian students “to lower
academic standards.” In <a
href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/19g5EXnKlBeZt3oCtgEqLHCfjg4fN7Gi4EqtPz_nlESs/edit"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">actuality</a>, it asks for
temporary academic leniency “and to take into account
the needs of all students during this time, but
especially those of Palestinian and Muslim identities
who are the most unsafe and targeted individuals on
campus right now.”</p>
<p>There are many more examples of misinformation that I
will address below. My point is that the list of
charges Chancellor Block will face on May 23 performs
double duty in that it defends Israel’s genocidal war
and exonerates white supremacists and Zionists
responsible for the worst incident of anti-Semitic
violence in UCLA’s history. Foxx and Stefanik will
undoubtedly demand Block’s resignation. A large
proportion of the faculty and students at UCLA is also
calling for Block’s resignation, but for very
different reasons.</p>
<p>UCLA’s Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim,
and Anti-Arab Racism, of which I am a member,
conducted its own investigation, and released a report
with its findings earlier this week. The <a
href="https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/45989"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">report</a> holds Block and
his administration, along with various branches of law
enforcement, responsible for failing to protect our
students. UCLA’s administration, it finds, not only
failed to direct law enforcement to arrest and remove
the armed mob but indirectly incited the violence by
inviting “counter protesters” to come on to our
campus, hold inflammatory rallies a few feet from the
encampment, and allow them to remain in the name of
protecting “free speech” and upholding their
responsibility as a “public university” to grant the
“community” access to campus. It seems clear in
hindsight that permitting hostile groups to harass and
attack the encampment is one strategy to avoid the
optics of sending in the police to attack students. If
that was the strategy, it didn’t work. The
administration probably did not anticipate an unholy
alliance of neo-Nazis and Zionists working together,
but those of us who spent more than a decade
criticizing Chancellor Block’s unremitting hostility
toward critics of Israel and his fervent defense of
Zionism could have predicted this outcome—especially
after October 7.</p>
<p>The following account draws on findings from our
report and provides a broader context but does not
purport to speak for the entire task force.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Intolerance and its Discontents</strong></p>
<p>As I write, UAW Local 4811, representing some
forty-eight thousand postdocs, teaching assistants,
academic and student researchers, tutors, and readers
across the University of California system, is
preparing to strike over the administration’s conduct
with respect to the encampment. The union is
demanding, among other things, amnesty for all
academic employees, students, faculty, and staff
facing criminal or disciplinary charges for
protesting; the right to free speech; divestment from
UC’s known investments in weapons manufacturers,
military contractors, and companies profiting from
Israel’s war on Palestine; and disclosure of all
funding sources and investments. UCLA faculty are <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-11/ucla-chancellor-faces-faculty-criticism"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">pushing</a> for a vote of no
confidence, or at minimum, “censure” of Chancellor
Block for failing to keep our students safe. Some
argue that the vote is merely symbolic, both because
the faculty do not have the power to remove the
Chancellor and because Block is just two months from
retirement.</p>
<p>The administration probably did not anticipate an
unholy alliance of neo-Nazis and Zionists working
together.</p>
<p>By most standards, his seventeen-year tenure has been
a success. Under his leadership, UCLA rose in the <em>U.S.
News and World Report</em> rankings from the
twenty-sixth best public university in the country to
the first, and its endowment <a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2023/09/21/gene-block-and-faculty-reflect-on-blocks-time-as-chancellor-of-ucla"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">swelled</a> from $2.2 billion
to $7.7 billion. The grandson of working-class Eastern
European Jews, Block proudly identifies as a liberal
who believes in diversity and racial equity. He often
speaks of his experiences as an undergraduate at
Stanford (1966–70) when he opposed the war in Vietnam.
He is way too liberal for House Republicans, who are
poised to make him their latest punching bag. But his
liberalism ends when it comes to Palestine.</p>
<p>Since I joined the UCLA faculty in 2011, I’ve seen
colleagues targeted for teaching critical perspectives
on Israel, and Muslim and Arab students profiled by
campus police and subject to racist epithets and
graffiti. In 2012 a UC “President’s Advisory Council”
issued a report on the campus climate asserting that
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and
“anti-Zionism and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movements and other manifestations of
anti-Israel sentiment” created a hostile environment
for Jewish students. It warned faculty that
criticizing Israel or Israeli policies in the
classroom was tantamount to using “the academic
platforms to denounce the Jewish state and Jewish
nationalist aspirations.” The report recommended,
among other things, suspending support for Palestine
Awareness Week from any university sponsorship and
adopting a hate speech policy that would not only mute
criticisms of Israel but prohibit outside speakers
deemed advocates of hate. The report was so extreme
and biased that over two thousand faculty signed a
petition asking the UC Regents to reject its findings.
Ultimately, UC President Mark Yudof rejected the
report, since its recommendations violated the First
Amendment. But while we succeeded in pressing the UC
Regents, students and faculty at UCLA could not
persuade Chancellor Block to openly denounce it.</p>
<p>In 2014 students seeking to divest student council
funds from companies doing business in the Palestinian
occupied territories learned that some members of
student government had accepted paid-for trips to
Israel sponsored by the ADL, AIPAC, Hasbara
Fellowships, and other organizations that not only
lobbied on behalf of Israel but promoted
“discriminatory and Islamophobic positions.” SJP
argued before the student judicial council that the
members who accepted these trips had a conflict of
interest in any government resolutions regarding
divestment, since the organizations furnishing them
were firmly opposed to campus divestment movements.
They also asked candidates running for student
government to take an ethics pledge committing to
decline free trips to Israel paid for by those
organizations—provoking a vicious backlash from the
AMCHA Initiative, who accused the students raising
these issues of “intimidation,” “harassment,” and
making Jewish students feel unsafe.</p>
<p>In reality, pro-Zionist retaliation made
pro-divestment students <em>actually</em> unsafe.
Zionist organizations not affiliated with the
university came on campus, filmed students without
their consent, engaged in online harassment, and
arranged visits by Israeli soldiers in full military
uniform. Rather than condemn these intimidation
tactics, Block chastised the students for proposing
divestment in the first place. He <a
href="https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-chancellor-gene-block-statement-on-student-vote-on-israel-divestment"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">stated</a> flatly that the UC
Regents “does not support divestment in companies that
engage in business with Israel” and that “divestment
decisions should not hold any one organization or
country to a different standard than any other.” He
refused to meet with SJP, but he did meet with
representatives of the AMCHA Initiative to hear their
demands to investigate SJP. The divestment campaign
also triggered a resolution from the Los Angeles City
Council condemning SJP’s actions as “bullying” and
“harassment” and requesting that UC administrators
“refer cases of ‘intimidation or harassment’ to ‘the
proper law enforcement agencies.’” And while Block’s
administration was busy <a
href="https://newsroom.ucla.edu/a-message-from-chancellor-block-on-the-importance-of-civil-discourse"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">painting</a> campus
divestment advocates as closed-minded and intolerant,
it was the other side who was moving to shut down
opposing speech. That same year, UCLA Hillel worked
with a public relations firm to “‘isolate’ SJP on
campus and to paint the group as ‘unrepresentative,’”
in the words of a leaked email.</p>
<p>Despite these tactics, in November 2014 a coalition
of more than thirty student groups passed a resolution
calling on student government “to divest from
companies engaged in violence against Palestinians.”
In response, the David Horowitz Freedom Center
(DHFC)—which has been designated a hate group by the
Southern Poverty Law Center—plastered posters all over
campus and in the surrounding neighborhood accusing
SJP and individual faculty members of terrorism and
anti-Semitism. The names of individual students and
faculty were printed on posters under the slogan
“Combat Jew Hatred on College Campuses.” At the time,
only the Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and
Inclusion, Jerry Kang, issued a strong campuswide
statement condemning the posters as racist
fear-mongering. Chancellor Block was silent.</p>
<p>Student council remained a contested terrain over
Israel and divestment. In 2015 three students
unaffiliated with SJP questioned Rachel Beyda, a
nominee for USAC’s Judicial Board, about her ability
to remain objective on the “Israeli-Palestinian
conflict” because of her Jewish identity. Foxx
resurrects this incident as evidence of USAC’s “deeply
concerning history of retribution against students who
speak against anti-Jewish bigotry on campus.” What she
omits from the story is that the students who opened
the line of questioning were swiftly censured and <a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2015/02/20/submission-usac-members-apologize-to-jewish-community"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">offered</a> apologies, and
that Beyda was unanimously appointed to the committee.
SJP also condemned “the questioning of Beyda or anyone
else based on their identity,” adding that its members
“believe in the inherent equality and right to freedom
for all people, a stance that inspires us to both
support the Palestinian call for BDS as well as to
oppose incidents like that which befell Beyda.”</p>
<p>We can point to many more examples, such as Block’s
November 2018 <em>Los Angeles Times</em> op-ed
explaining why he “allowed” SJP to hold its National
Conference at UCLA. After claiming that “some” feared
the conference “will be infused with anti-Semitic
rhetoric” expressed by people who embrace “a double
standard that demonizes the world’s only Jewish state
while other countries receive less condemnation for
dreadful behavior,” Block <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-block-ucla-students-for-justice-in-palestine-conference-20181112-story.html"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">invoked</a> the principle of
free speech to justify his decision to let it proceed.
But the damage had been done. </p>
<p>Block was silent when a hate group plastered posters
all over campus accusing SJP and individual faculty
members of anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>This decade-long trail of evidence indicates that
Block has maintained a consistent anti-Palestinian
bias, giving Zionist and pro-Israeli groups such as
AMCHA Initiative outsized influence over university
policy and carte blanche to come onto campus and
intimidate students and faculty without consequence.
The mere fact that DHFC could access our campus under
the cynical guise of protecting Jewish students
presaged the crisis we now face.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>The Winds of October</strong></p>
<p>Our students were deeply affected by the events of
October 7. The nearly 350 students enrolled in my
lecture course on the history of neoliberalism were
genuinely shell-shocked, saddened by the immediate
loss of life. When a couple of Jewish students told me
they felt unsafe on campus, I encouraged them to stay
home and listen to the recorded lectures. We mourned
the loss of life—not just the 695 Israeli civilians,
but the 26 Arab-Israeli citizens (mostly Bedouin), the
71 Thai and Nepalese migrant workers, and even the 373
police and soldiers who were official combatants.</p>
<p>But before the official death toll and hostage count
were complete, Israel had begun its breathtaking war
of extermination. As the death toll in Gaza rose
exponentially, students and colleagues told of losing
dozens of family members, including cousins they had
never gotten the chance to meet. They felt betrayed
when Block and UC President Michael Drake spoke on
behalf of the university, affirming that “we” stand
with Israel but saying nothing about the slaughter of
Palestinians, the leveling of universities, schools,
hospitals, and homes, and the displacement of more
than 75 percent of Gaza’s population. When students
and faculty began to criticize the war and deploy the
word “genocide,” many were threatened, doxxed, and
subjected to investigation by colleagues who
weaponized Title VI complaints and the university
grievance process to attack anyone critical of Israel
or Zionism. Statements decrying the loss of
Palestinian life, Israeli war crimes, and U.S.
complicity were deemed anti-Semitic and “pro-Hamas.”</p>
<p>Unfazed by these patently false accusations, SJP and
the UC Divest Coalition organized a mass march and
rally on campus on October 25, calling for an
immediate ceasefire and divestment. Unsurprisingly,
Block found the speakers’ rhetoric “hateful” and
“antisemitic,” cherry-picking a few ill-informed and
unsanctioned actions unrepresentative of the spirit or
intent of the march. More significant is the fact that
the administration ignored the Undergraduate Students
Association Council’s Cultural Affairs Commission
(CAC) warning that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zionists who do not attend this school are being
allowed entry into UCLA to freely harass students.
It speaks volumes of the level of unsafety that our
students are facing. . . . Various attacks like
these have been happening on campus for weeks and
UCLA has not done a sufficient job to intervene or
even condemn harm against students who support
Palestine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They made a direct <a
href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CzXnL2ELkpd/?img_index=1"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">appeal</a> to UC leaders to</p>
<blockquote>
<p>protect students from the violence that is waged by
both students and non-students on your own campuses.
We call on campus resources to be more accessible to
students facing imminent and indirect danger from
islamophobic, zionist, and anti-Palestinian
violence. It is unacceptable that agitators,
especially non-students, are able to access
student-led spaces like Kerckhoff [Hall] to harass
and threaten students.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The attacks on faculty and students ramped up when a
<a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2023/12/05/op-ed-ucla-must-condemn-hamas-attacks-fight-antisemitism-on-campus"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">group</a> calling itself
“UCLA Faculty Against Terror,” led by Professor Judea
Pearl, branded the student antiwar movement as
anti-Semitic and “incitement.” Pearl himself labeled
these students “pro-Hamas,” endangering antiwar
students, faculty, and staff and putting a chilling
effect on speech as well as on the urgent effort to
secure a ceasefire. In response, well over 250 of our
colleagues signed a <a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2023/12/05/op-ed-ucla-must-protect-free-speech-academic-freedom-of-those-advocating-for-palestine"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">letter</a> expressing our
concerns over the attack on academic freedom, the
safety of our students, and the administration’s
indifference to Palestinian suffering. A meeting with
Chancellor Block and Executive Vice Chancellor and
Provost Darnell Hunt in November ultimately led to the
creation of our group, the Task Force on
Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Arab Racism,
along with a Task Force on Antisemitism and
Anti-Israeli Hostility. Our taskforce’s goals were to
inform campus leadership of the hostile climate faced
by Arab and Muslim students as well as student groups
protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza; to urge Block to
affirm the value of Palestinian life publicly and
unequivocally, to make a clear statement rejecting the
conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; and to
back up any statement with action. To date, none of
our objectives have been met.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>A Beautiful Experiment Under Siege</strong></p>
<p>Five months later, the UCLA Palestine Solidarity
Encampment was up. Erected on Royce Quad on Thursday
morning, April 25, it was one of the greatest examples
of principled protest, nonviolent civil disobedience,
collective education, and political resistance I have
ever seen. The encampment was a multiracial,
multinational, and gender-diverse assembly, composed
of undergraduate and graduate students from across
campus. Residents were required to sign a community
agreement outlining shared principles and behavior,
and those who were willing to risk arrest or assume
security duties underwent training in de-escalation
tactics. All faiths were welcome, and so were families
with children. The encampment fed everyone, thanks to
donations, volunteers, and the labor of Strike
Kitchen—an autonomous student-run outfit formed during
last year’s historic UC-wide graduate student workers’
strike.</p>
<p>Protesters took special care to ensure everyone’s
safety. One member of the community had a banana
allergy, so signs were posted prohibiting bananas in
the encampment. They made art, created a People’s
Library, watched and discussed films, organized
reading groups and teach-ins on a range of topics:
Kashmir, Frantz Fanon’s <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>,
local tenants’ rights struggles, and of course,
Palestine. They never lost sight of why they were: to
stop the genocide in Gaza, divest, and fight for a
free Palestine. The encampment offered a more
enriching and interdisciplinary learning space than
what many students found in their classrooms. As one
fourth-year student explained to me, “My time in the
encampment was actually a very positive experience.
Yes, the shit was scary. I’m not going to lie. . . . I
loved the community, and I felt safer in the
encampment than I felt on any other part of the
campus.” Another young woman, a first-year student of
mine, was awestruck by people’s eagerness to share
with and care for one another, and the fact that she
could eat without having to pull out her meal card or
wallet. “Is this communism?” she asked.</p>
<p>As with any experiment, the encampment was hardly
perfect. Managing security, food, hygiene, health,
space, negotiations, personalities, and political
disagreements while establishing a certain level of
discipline among hundreds of young people is hard
enough. I don’t doubt that there have been tensions,
divisions, and missteps within the ranks, but
encampment leaders created a system of accountability
to address and redirect these disruptions critically
and empathetically.</p>
<p>One agitator shouted at students, “We’re not American
Jews! We’re Israelis! You stand up against us, we’ll
fucking slit your throat.”</p>
<p>They soon had to operate under a state of siege.
Counterprotesters who identified as Zionists began
trickling into the camp around noon on the first day.
They heckled people with racial and homophobic slurs
and comments: “You’re cool with rape?”, “You’re a
jihadist,” “You’re a terrorist,” “Hamas would kill you
fags.” Some entered the encampment without
authorization and physically attacked the students. On
April 25 a man walked through the encampment carrying
a sign that read “Israel is not apartheid. Come talk,”
and proceeded to steal a student’s keffiyeh, pour
water over chalk art, and <a
href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/14V3ZnLoYtbTNx5S8QseoRGfX_g6fkpAI/view"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">assault</a> a Black woman who
tried to take his sign. Even as the harassment
intensified, lead security organizers urged students
to stand down. “By engaging with them we’re only
opening the risk for the community to get hurt,” one
organizer texted me. “I understand they make really
heinous comments, but we need to keep in mind that
these people should not be the focus, we should be the
focus, our community should be the focus, and
sustaining this encampment until we reach FULL
DIVESTMENT is our focus.”</p>
<p>The agitators showed up around 4:00 a.m. the next
morning, shouting “Death to Hamas,” “Wake up commies,
it’s time to work,” and “Fuck Allah” and spraying
students with bear spray and other chemical agents. As
their numbers grew over the next couple of days, the
mob became more aggressive. They sexually harassed
women in the encampment, blasted loud music, screamed
throughout Muslim prayer times, and brought bunches of
bananas to throw into the encampment—which terrified
and drove out the student with the allergy. Instead of
barring the agitators from campus and providing more
security, the UCLA administration granted
counterprotesters a permit to <a
href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/may/under-the-jumbotron"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">assemble</a> a Jumbotron
adjacent to the encampment for a pro-Israel rally on
Sunday, April 28. The massive concert-grade
flat-screen TV equipped with powerful speakers was
paid for by a GoFundMe account that had raised over
$70,000, and was protected by private security guards
employed by the Apex Security Group. Supporters of the
encampment regarded the university’s decision to
permit outside groups to rally against a peaceful
student-run assembly, which the administration refused
to recognize or authorize, as a hostile act of
incitement.</p>
<p>The rally, sponsored by the Israeli American Council,
attracted between eight hundred and one thousand
people. Speakers included State Assembly member Rick
Chavez Zbur, Hillel at UCLA executive director Dan
Gold, student council candidate Eli Tsives (who had
been photographed shaking hands with a UCLA Police
Department (UCPD) officer), regional Consul General of
Israel Israel Bachar, and ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
In between speeches denouncing the encampment as
anti-Semitic and defending Israel’s aggression, the
Jumbotron blasted the U.S. national anthem and clips
about the October 7 attacks, and counterprotesters
carrying Israeli flags verbally and physically <a
href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6XK09SP6aQ/"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">attacked</a> our students.
They were pushed, punched, spat upon, called “dogs,”
“whores” (<em>sharmuta</em> in Hebrew), “bitch-ass
n—,” and told to “listen to your master” and that
“Hamas would rape and murder you for what you’re
wearing, sweetheart.” One agitator shouted, “We’re not
American Jews! We’re Israelis! You stand up against
us, we’ll fucking slit your throat.” The attacks
continued well into the night. At around 1:30 a.m.
someone <a
href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6WwbyQy8fe/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">emptied</a> a backpack full
of mice injected with an unknown substance into the
encampment.</p>
<p>The permit for the Jumbotron expired Sunday
afternoon, but the university allowed it to remain,
where it continued to be weaponized against the
encampment. All students passing by the quad, whether
or not they had anything to do with the encampment,
endured near-continuous video loops of the October 7
attacks, audio clips with graphic descriptions of rape
and sexual violence, sounds of gunshots and screaming
babies, clips of President Biden pledging
unconditional support for Israel, and loud music,
including the children’s song “Mamtera Im Matara,”
which Israeli soldiers and West Bank settlers have
been documented playing on hours-long loops for
captive Palestinians. The taunts and harassment
continued throughout the day. One inebriated agitator
harassed several Black women and femmes working
security, calling them “slaves” and threatening rape.
Later that night, several agitators broke through the
encampment barriers and attacked students and pepper
sprayed one of the security guards hired by UCLA.</p>
<p>Students complained about the attacks to UCPD,
administrators, and trusted faculty. Several filed
reports to our office of Equity, Diversity, and
Inclusion. Campus security’s failure to protect our
students prompted a faculty walkout on Monday, April
29. The next day Block issued a <a
href="https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/affirming-our-values-in-a-challenging-time/"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">statement</a> calling the
encampment “unauthorized” and condemning tactics he
found “shocking and shameful.” He did not mention the
violence committed by the Zionists, the slurs and
epithets, the Jumbotron, or the mice attack. Instead,
he only identifies reports that “students on their way
to class have been physically blocked from accessing
parts of the campus. . . . These incidents have put
many on our campus, especially our Jewish students, in
a state of anxiety and fear.”</p>
<p>The problem is, it wasn’t true. All buildings and
classrooms remained accessible. Campus security closed
off particular entrances to buildings facing the quad,
but that decision was authorized by the
administration. Student-appointed security leads asked
passers-by to go around the encampment in order to
limit congestion and the risk of Covid infection
(masks were required). Nevertheless, a video taken by
a Jewish student demanding to pass through the
encampment rather than walk around went viral. The
student’s mother <a
href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-10/how-social-media-rumors-sparked-a-night-of-mayhem-at-ucla"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">circulated</a> the video as
evidence that Jews were being denied access to
classrooms. This was Block’s smoking gun. Soon it
would become Virginia Foxx’s as well, evidence that
Jewish students were subject to “pervasive civil
rights violations and harassment.”</p>
<p>If Block’s statement was intended to quell potential
violence, it had the opposite effect. The video and
the message paved the way for the April 30 assault.
That night Zionist agitators, alongside Proud Boys and
other neo-Nazis, came armed with bear mace and other
chemical irritants, hammers, knives, stink bombs,
high-grade fireworks, metal and wooden rods, and,
according to some reports, a gun. The attack began
with loud recordings of screaming babies, followed by
a fusillade of fireworks shot directly into the
encampment. Men in full-faced white masks broke down
the barriers and began attacking students with metal
rods, chunks of wood, stink bombs, bear mace and tear
gas. One student recalled seeing “planks of wood come
sailing into the camp and strike some girl in the back
of the head and she just fell to the ground.” Another
student was struck in the back of the head by
fireworks and had to be hospitalized. The medics were
simply overwhelmed, forcing students with little
experience to attend to wounds. “People were crying
and being like, ‘Can you call my mom, I need to call
my mom, please help me’. . . . We were trying to do
the best that we could but we ran out of saline needed
to flush the chemicals out of people’s eyes,” one told
me.</p>
<p>As of this writing, not a single assailant has been
arrested or questioned.</p>
<p>As objects rained down on them, the leads shouted
“Don’t throw back! Don’t engage!” and implored campus
security to intervene. They refused, choosing instead
to retreat inside of Royce Hall. UCLA alumnus Ismael
Sindha, who was later treated for chemical burns,
heard attackers shout, “I’ll kill you,” “I’ll rape
your sister,” and “What Israel does to Gaza, we’ll do
to you.” Students under siege and their family and
friends inundated UCPD with calls for help, only to be
told that the situation was “under control” and for
the operators to hang up on them. The California
Highway Patrol and LAPD showed up just before midnight
but sat idle for three hours watching the violence
unfold. People inside the encampment were left on
their own to care for the wounded and protect the
barricades.</p>
<p>One student was rushed to the hospital by his
classmates after being struck twice in the head. His
injuries were serious enough to require stitches and
staples. “I thought I was going to die. I thought I’d
never see my family again,” the student <a
href="https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/07/i-thought-i-was-going-to-die-ucla-encampment-protesters-recall-april-30-attack"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">recalled</a>. “The only thing
that kept me moving forward was my . . . classmates
who were brave enough to protect the encampment from
these terrorists.” What also kept him going was
remembering why they were there in the first place: “I
had the luxury of getting sedated as they stapled my
head back together. Currently, in Gaza, there are zero
fully functioning hospitals.”</p>
<p>It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when CHP officers began
moving in to quell the violence. They permitted the
mob to leave without questioning or arresting a single
assailant. The next day, Block issued a statement
bemoaning the violent attack on the encampment by “a
group of instigators.” While acknowledging that the
students and faculty protecting the encampment were
the victims of violence, he refused to link the
pro-Israel rally that the university authorized to the
attack or to recognize that the attacks had been
ongoing since April 25. “Physical violence ensued,” he
<a
href="https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/condemning-violence-in-our-community/#:~:text=Physical%20violence%20ensued%2C%20and%20our,community%20members%20was%20utterly%20unacceptable"
target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer"
moz-do-not-send="true">declared</a>, “and our campus
requested support from external law enforcement
agencies to help end this appalling assault, quell the
fighting and protect our community.” The
administration issued all sorts of excuses for the
failure of campus security and the UCPD to act. But we
were especially outraged by the inaction of our
Chancellor, who, along with the Executive Vice
Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt, watched the
violence unfold in real time via a security camera.
Members of our Task Force texted back and forth with
Hunt into the early morning hours. He was responsive
and seemed genuinely concerned, but explained that
once the police are called in there is nothing they
can do. The claim strained credulity; if it is indeed
true, then it exposes a dangerous imbalance in
university-police relations.</p>
<p>In yet another statement, issued on May 1, Block
condemned the attacks, acknowledged the trauma our
students experienced, and expressed “sympathy” for
those injured. He called for an investigation, urging
“those who have experienced violence to report what
they encountered to UCPD, and those who have faced
discrimination to contact the Civil Rights Office.”
Students and faculty not only found Block’s concern to
be disingenuous but suspected that by declaring the
encampment “unauthorized” he actually emboldened the
mob. Our suspicions were confirmed when, shortly after
issuing his statement, he announced plans to clear the
encampment by 6:00 p.m. that day. The timing is
important: UC Divest and SJP were scheduled to begin
negotiations with Hunt at 4:00 p.m. The meeting was
doomed to fail, in part because the administration did
not try to negotiate in good faith and gave students
no time to recover from the horrific violence they had
suffered just hours before. Angry and disenchanted,
organizers refused to give up.</p>
<p>With the encampment slated for destruction, the mob
grew, as did the number of police officers. The
encampment population also grew, as faculty showed up
in significant numbers in an effort to protect
students. One<span> colleague was shocked to see
assailants viciously attacking students in front of
the police. “Not one of the attackers was detained
or arrested. Some of the attackers were
older—definitely not students. Some of them looked
like they had militia training.” When police finally
intervened, LAPD snipers on the roof of Royce Hall
trained their guns on the people defending the
encampment, and California Highway Patrol officers
in riot gear moved within close range and allowed
the mob, once again, to pass by unmolested. Once in
formation, they fired stun grenades and rubber
bullets at students and faculty, hitting them in the
face, head, legs, and chest. The police command
blocked EMS from entering the encampment to aid the
injured. The medics were already overwhelmed,
leaving the remaining students and faculty to
administer first aid.</span></p>
<p>Police arrested over two hundred people, the vast
majority of them students. As of this writing, not a
single assailant has been arrested or questioned.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Aftermath</strong></p>
<p>If Chancellor Block believed clearing the camp would
restore order and balance, allowing him to enjoy a
hero’s retirement, he was mistaken. UC Divest, SJP,
and Faculty for Justice in Palestine continue to push
for divestment and focus on ending the genocide in
Gaza.</p>
<p>Our students did not pitch tents and risk arrest to
save the university; they’re trying to save lives.</p>
<p>On May 6 students attempted what has long been an
effective strategy of university-based civil
disobedience by occupying Moore Hall, a large building
at the center of campus that houses the School of
Education and Information Studies—but with an expanded
police presence on campus, the administration has
ramped up repression. The LA County Sheriff and the
LAPD arrested some forty-three students as well as
legal observers, confiscated their cell phones, and
plan to charge them with conspiracy to commit
burglary. Block also announced plans to expand and
reorganize UCPD under a newly created Office of Campus
Safety. The proposal is wildly unpopular, as is the
expanded police presence on UCLA’s campus right now.
As we state in our report:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With such a heavy police presence, students and
faculty reported feeling unsafe and on high alert.
As visibly armed police patrol near classrooms and
student centers, immigrant, undocumented, and
formerly incarcerated students have reported feeling
afraid to be on campus. Staff have also expressed
reluctance to report to work. UCLA has become a
militarized space, where peaceful protest and the
right to free speech have become pervasively
criminalized. They have alienated and isolated
students from their right to learn and from each
other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chancellor Block represents the status quo in U.S.
higher education, which not only has a record of
stifling criticism of Israel and initiatives in
support of Palestinian freedom but is also heavily
invested in firms with ties to Israel and weapons
manufacturers fueling the ongoing war in Gaza. The
rise of the Palestine solidarity encampments, a
UC-wide graduate workers strike, and the proliferation
of acts of civil disobedience led by organizations
such as Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now are
proof that the status quo is no longer tenable. But
rather than reinvent higher education—modeled for us
by the encampments as a free space of deep learning,
dissent, and experimentation, divested of all ties to
militarism and state violence and genocide—our
universities are becoming police states. Policing is
not just armed uniformed officers. Policing entails
monitoring our communications and classrooms, doxxing,
intimidation, curtailing academic freedom, maintaining
the Palestine exception, and refusing to grant amnesty
for those arrested for trying to stop a genocide.
Chancellor Block’s right-wing inquisitors encourage
the repressive turn; they want to lock up our
students, crush dissent, and replace the university
with fortresses of “patriotic” Christian education. </p>
<p>But our students did not pitch tents and risk arrest
to save the university; they’re trying to save
lives. Their eyes are trained of the people of
Palestine, on the rubble where universities and
schools and libraries and homes once stood, on the
young people who continue to believe liberation is
possible. Our students refuse to be complicit with
their own universities in the unimaginable death and
destruction occurring in Gaza right now. They have
challenged all of us in the academy to ask the
question Noam Chomsky posed in 1967 in the face of
America’s war on Vietnam: “As for those of us who
stood by in silence and apathy as this catastrophe
slowly took shape over the past dozen years—on what
page of history do we find our proper place?”</p>
<p><em>Independent and nonprofit, </em>Boston Review<em>
relies on reader funding. To support work like this,
please <a
href="https://www.bostonreview.net/donations/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener"
moz-do-not-send="true">donate</a> here.</em></p>
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