Faculty of the Ethnic Studies department at UC San Diego are outraged at the vicious suppression of students by our administration under the leadership of Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. This morning, May 6, 2024, Chancellor Khosla called on the UCPD, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, and California Highway Patrol in military riot gear to raid an encampment of peaceful demonstrators exercising their free speech to demand the University’s divestment from the genocide taking place in Gaza. The attack by police led to the violent arrest of 40 students, 2 professors, and 22 community members who were held for hours in the Price student center before being bused to local jails where they remain in custody.
While the Chancellor wrongly claims that the encampment threatened safety, it was the administration’s response that posed the real threat. Hostile actions by the administration and the police they ordered onto campus caused disastrous upheaval, including physical injuries and an authoritarian fracturing of peaceful student organizing and community. The deployment of police, including snipers on top of the Student Health Building, was a shocking abdication of the Chancellor’s mandate to support and protect our students. In response to the administration’s actions under Chancellor Khosla’s leadership, we make the following demands:
1. We demand the immediate resignation of Chancellor Khosla. His actions this morning placed hundreds of students in danger at the hands of aggressive, militantly organized police and resulted in arrests and injuries; violated the constitutional rights of our students to peacefully assemble and protest; and demonstrated a level of hostility against our students that has absolutely no place among University leadership. For all these reasons Chancellor Khosla is unfit to serve UCSD any longer.
2. We demand amnesty for all. The administration must grant amnesty to all students, facuty, and staff associated with the encampment–both those currently detained and any who may be the subject of future investigation–and refrain from retaliation against them through student conduct proceedings. We also demand the reversal of recent suspensions.
3. We demand police be removed from campus immediately and permanently. UCPD, San Diego County Sheriffs, California Highway Patrol, and all other police have no place on the UC San Diego campus and should never be called upon to surveil, repress, and threaten our students. As we have seen across the country in recent weeks and in decades past, the weapons police bring onto campuses inevitably lead to escalation and grievous injury, or worse, and have no place at educational institutions. Moreover, police presence does not make students feel safer–on the contrary, the arrival of police heightens community tensions, worsens relations among community members, and is a chilling act of repression and censorship. The police presence on campus advertises to the world, including parents and prospective students, that UCSD responds to conscientious, peaceful student dissent with clubs rather than dialogue.
The Ethnic Studies department supports the demands outlined by Students for Justice in Palestine and unequivocally condemns today’s attacks by the administration and the San Diego County Sherrifs Department and the California Highway Patrol. We will be closely following the administration’s actions in the coming days and will continue organizing with colleagues to hold the UCSD administration accountable for the protection of our students and their civil rights. Please circulate this statement widely.
A previous version of this statement incorrectly identified the officers present. The attack on May 6 was conducted by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, and the University of California Police Department.
Originally published 5/6/2024, 2:08 PM
Last updated 5/7/2024, 4:02 PM
A Spanish version of the statement is available here.
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