Members of the California Faculty Association support faculty and students’ rights to protest free from brutal aggression by militarized police, free from academic retaliation and repression by university officials, and without being confined into artificially constructed “free speech areas.” The entire university is a free speech area.

CFA members are committed to defending the health, safety, and academic freedom of students, faculty, staff, and community members in the CSU advocating for justice in Palestine.

We demand of all administrators in the California State University system:

  • protection of students’ rights to walkout of classes, rally, protest, hold teach-ins and other protected free-speech activities;
  • offer immediate sanctuary (i.e., spaces free from harassment and detention on campus) to all Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members in the CSU, as well as to any other students, faculty, staff, and community members who speak or act in solidarity with Palestine, or against the ongoing criminalization of Palestine advocacy;
  • clearly reaffirm CSU management’s commitment to enforcing the principles of academic freedom for those teaching on Palestine and Israel and/or for those using the principles of anti-racism and social justice, as laid out in the CFA-CSU Collective Bargaining Agreement and the Academic Senate of the CSU Academic Freedom Policy (2017);
  • proactively counter any intimidation or doxxing campaigns against any student, faculty, or staff member, by mobilizing the CSU’s legal resources to protect them;
  • provide the necessary university support and resources to protect faculty, staff, students, and community members who show up against the genocide of Palestinians, as well as faculty, students, and staff whose families and communities are directly impacted by the siege on Gaza; the university will do this irrespective of donor-driven pressures and the corporatization of public institutions.

Academic freedom is under attack in our nation. We are witness to the criminalization of feminist, queer, trans, and critical race scholarship and of reproductive health. In the CSU, we are witness to repression against members of our campus communities who are protesting for human rights.

We take this opportunity to proclaim again that academic freedom must be the cornerstone of the university. As educators, we recognize now, as ever, the critical need for us to defend this imperative right. Our students, our faculty, and our communities cannot function under the repression and brutality we are witnessing at places of learning across California and the nation.

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