On the first day of the Trump administration, a dystopian scene unfolded at UC San Diego. Under the watchful gaze of newly-installed surveillance cameras, students gathered in front of Geisel Library to rally for Palestinian liberation and call for divestment from companies supporting Israel’s genocide. The moment a microphone was raised to amplify their voices, a UCSD administrator approached and threatened to call the police. This incident highlights UCSD’s draconian “Interim Policy on Expressive Activity Time, Place, and Manner,” enacted this academic year to stifle protests following last year’s nationwide surge in college demonstrations.
UCSD’s new interim policy limits the average sound level at demonstrations to 75 dBA over any 15-second period — comparable to the noise of a dishwasher or the sound of traffic — effectively banning amplified protests. Additionally, spontaneous events, such as protests, are restricted to a single location on campus: the “Silent Tree” in front of Geisel Library. These measures infringe upon students’ First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful assembly, prioritizing UCSD’s commitment to Zionism over students’ fundamental rights.
UCSD has already shown it is willing to pay a steep price to silence anti-Zionist voices. Last spring, UCSD spent over $260,000 on the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office and California Highway Patrol to shut down the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. This does not even include the costs of private security, funding the UC Police Department, and other policing costs associated with the brutalization and arrests by riot police against the protestors.
Concerns about UCSD’s willingness to suppress protests with police force have taken on new urgency in light of the election of President Donald Trump. His pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has publicly entertained the idea of ordering soldiers to shoot protesters in the knees — an act that calls to mind the well-documented, intentional shooting of Palestinian protesters in the kneecaps by Israeli Occupation Forces snipers in Gaza in 2018. This explicit endorsement of violent repression at the highest levels of government foreshadows a broader agenda targeting civil liberties locally.
On his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders aggressively promoting fracking and drilling, closing off the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers, initiating the process to end birthright citizenship, and falsely declaring that the only two genders are male and female. Universities like UCSD may become battlegrounds where movements against racism, sexism, transphobia, mass deportation, climate change, and other critical issues are suppressed under the same policies employed to crack down on Palestinian liberation efforts. The principle that “none of us are free until all of us are free” underscores the interconnectedness of these struggles and the measures used to repress them.
Lest it seem that matters at UCSD exist in a vacuum or that the Trump administration is entirely disconnected from the everyday workings of the university, let’s consider an example that highlights the intimacies of the University with the workings of empire. Vice President JD Vance’s mother-in-law, Lakshmi Chilukuri, is the provost of Sixth College at UCSD. In his 2018 appointment of Chilukuri to provost, Chancellor Pradeep Khosla noted: “She is one of the founding members of the pilot course in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Biology and Medicine, exploring the practice and philosophy of science from a multicultural perspective, the historical use and misuse of science in biomedical research and social policies, and issues of race and medicine in a post-genomic age.”
The fact that the mother and mother-in-law of two very powerful Republicans researches race in science does not sanitize her connection to her daughter and son-in-law. Rather, highlighting this fact should put us on a more stringent guard against two troubling dynamics: how watered-down diversity, equity, and inclusion modalities of race legitimize fascist currencies, and how the University’s growing entanglements with far-right Republicans may influence its governance and decisions. How will UCSD assure its students that Chilukuri’s personal relationship with noted anti-higher education activist Vance will not impact the policies and practices it exercises against its students? The onus is on Khosla to outline the ways that he is actively putting up a firewall to protect students, learning, and education at UCSD from the repercussions of this proximity.
UCSD students deserve an administration that values — rather than policing and defunding — the life of the mind and heart. In urgently demanding that their university divests from companies profiting from Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza, students are acting on their political conscience and ethical obligations to their fellow human beings in Palestine and around the word. A chorus of prominent human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders, have unequivocally labeled Israel’s actions as genocide. Reports detail the systematic destruction of the conditions of life in Gaza, with 92% of homes damaged or destroyed, all universities decimated, and at least 47,283 people killed by bullets and bombs, including approximately 18,000 children. The actual number of fatalities is certainly much higher.
Israel’s ecocide has been ongoing since the start of its colonial project, but the systematic bombings, use of white phosphorous, intentional destruction of water sources, colonization of the sea, threats of nuclear annihilation, flooding of Gaza with seawater, destruction of reserves to construct military infrastructure, and more, link this genocide to the acceleration of the climate catastrophe that we have seen play out with devastating consequences in the Los Angeles wildfires. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the first two months alone unleashed greenhouse gas emissions that surpassed the annual carbon footprints of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-threatened nations.
As Israeli settlers and the military have been escalating attacks on the occupied West Bank, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, stated in her Senate confirmation hearing that she believes Israel has “biblical” dominion over the Palestinian territory. Meanwhile, Trump has floated a proposal to “clean out” the Gaza Strip, which he describes as “literally a demolition site,” by displacing Palestinians yet again, forcing them to move to neighboring countries — the definition of ethnic cleansing. These ongoing violations of international law demand robust and nimble responses from student activists; yet, UCSD, complicit in genocide and land theft, enforces policies that silence opposition and conceal these crimes.
Further, students are calling on UCSD to drop disciplinary investigations into those allegedly involved in last spring’s encampment. Despite the San Diego City Attorney’s Office deciding to not press charges against 64 pro-Palestine protesters arrested on campus in May, the University continues to pursue charges based on generic and unsubstantiated police reports. UCSD’s persistence in prosecuting students for engaging in protest against the most despicable acts of genocide and settler colonialism silences dissent and perpetuates an environment of fear and oppression.
UCSD’s tyrannical restrictions on protests, coupled with the Trump administration’s authoritarian agenda, threaten the entire community. By safeguarding its investment in Israel’s genocide at any cost, UCSD actively undermines the constitutional rights of students to stand against all forms of state violence and oppression, from the denial of reproductive and immigration rights to genocide. In this critical moment, it is imperative that UCSD dismantle its barriers to protesting and allow students to act on their consciences without fear of arrest or worse. History is watching.
Signed,
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UCSD
