Statement by the Executive Council, Berkeley Initiative for Free Inquiry
In response to the UC Berkeley settlement with the Brandeis Center, we write to endorse the statement by the Academic Senate’s Divisional Council (DIVCO) reasserting faculty authority regarding curricular and disciplinary matters, and the Academic Freedom committee (ACFR) Recommended Procedural Changes to Faculty Code of Conduct investigations. Taken together, they underscore the importance of faculty oversight in the substance and procedures of disciplinary activity to safeguard academic freedom.
We acknowledge the underlying concerns motivating the Brandeis Center’s case. Harassment continues on our campus in the form of heckler’s veto attempts, which have been disproportionately directed at Jewish and Israeli speakers and those wishing to hear them. The University also notably failed to take appropriate action to address discrimination against Israeli dance scholar Yael Nativ, who was denied the opportunity to teach at Berkeley due to her national origin. The settlement is right to establish that anti-discrimination policies must be applied equally, and that the University must provide adequate security to ensure civil liberties are not abridged by vigilante censorship.
We are nevertheless concerned about the settlement’s potential to erode faculty governance, as expressed in the DIVCO statement, and in particular about UC Berkeley’s commitment to “consider” in disciplinary investigations the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) illustrative examples of antisemitism, which include “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” Whether one agrees or disagrees with statements like these, the University must remain a place where they can be openly and vigorously debated both inside and outside of the classroom without fear of disciplinary consequences. Additionally, while we recognize that historically anti-Jewish discrimination has sometimes been masked through proxies for Jewish identity, such as support for the state of Israel, we are troubled by the precedent that would be set by investigators consulting a specific list of statements as presumptive proxies for discrimination.
The Brandeis settlement does not, and legally cannot, affect UC Berkeley’s First Amendment obligations vis-a-vis student and faculty speech. Neither does it negate or diminish Berkeley’s commitment in APM-010 to “foster in its students a mature independence of mind,” by protecting the freedom within the classroom “to express the widest range of viewpoints in accord with the standards of scholarly inquiry and professional ethics.” For such protection to be meaningful it must extend to viewpoints that others may find controversial or upsetting.
Accordingly, the campus must ensure that its implementation of policies on harassment and discrimination does not invite complaints about controversial scholarship or classroom speech. To this end, the Academic Senate must remain vigilant in its protection of academic freedom interests, and ACFR’s recommended procedural reforms offer key safeguards.