September 20, 2017

On Monday, students, workers and members of the community at UC Berkeley and beyond will gather for a "Berkeley Rally Against White Supremacy," called in solidarity with the faculty boycott, starting at noon on the Crescent Lawn at Oxford Street and Addison Street.

In response to this provocation, nearly 200 UC Berkeley professors and graduate students announce plans for an all-campus boycott during the four days of the right's hate-fest--an action designed to defend their students, colleagues and community in the face of the right's provocation. Below, we reprint the faculty's letter to the campus community announcing the boycott, along with its initial signers. If you are a UC Berkeley faculty member or graduate student and would like to add your name, go to this link .

The fact that the organizers of "Free Speech Week" missed multiple deadlines to submit contracts for venues and insurance and that most of the supposed speakers have failed to confirm with the university that they will be speaking led many to wonder if "Free Speech Week." would fold. But UC officials announced they would break their own regulations, allowing a number of the planned events to go forward .

Sponsored by the College Republicans and Berkeley Patriot, next week's carnival of reaction will be arranged around daily themes, including "Islamic Peace and Tolerance," featuring Islamophobic racists like Pamela Geller and David Horowitz and Blackwater/Academi mercenary Erik Prince; and "Mario Savio Is Dead," with Ann Coulter, disgraced former White House strategist Steve Bannon and self-described "American nationalist" Mike Cernovich.

Administrators at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley have said that they will allow much of the alt-right's planned four-day hate-fest-- given the sickening name of "Free Speech Week" --to go forward on September 24 despite its organizers missing multiple deadlines, violating rules and costing the school untold sums of money.

WHILE THERE has still not been an official announcement from campus administrators, we are learning that from September 24-27, the University of California at Berkeley will provide a platform to Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Stephen K. Bannon, Breitbart Media and their far-right audience. A series of explicitly violent alt-right, militia and pro-fascist events are also, again, being scheduled for Civic Center/Martin Luther King Jr. Park in downtown Berkeley on those days.

Once more, signs point towards an escalated and uncontrollable confrontation both on and off campus during these four days. The history of these events has been chilling. Since Inauguration Day, alt-right followers have shot someone at the University of Washington, stabbed two people to death on public transport in Portland, stabbed to death a college senior in Maryland, beaten numerous nonviolent protesters at the University of Virginia, and, most recently, murdered a peaceful protester with an automobile in Charlottesville. Most immediately troubling, given Trump's decision to end [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA], is that these forces have publicly expressed their intent to specifically target "sanctuary campuses" and disclose the identity of undocumented students. As concerned faculty members, we cannot remain silent while students, staff, colleagues, and fellow community members are threatened.

Demonstrators hit the streets of Berkeley to protest the far right (Thomas Hawk | flickr)

Therefore, as faculty committed to the safety of our students and our campus, we are calling for a complete boycott of all classes and campus activities while these alt-right events are taking place at the very center of UC Berkeley's campus. As faculty we cannot ask students and staff to choose between risking their physical and mental safety in order to attend class or come to work in an environment of harassment, intimidation, violence, and militarized policing. The reality is that particularly vulnerable populations (DACA students, non-white, gender queer, Muslims, disabled, feminists, and others) have already been harmed, and are reporting increased levels of fear and anxiety about the upcoming events, the increased police presence on our campus, and how all this will impact their lives and their studies.

It is not just physical violence that our campus faces from this media circus. Many of these provocateurs' most committed audiences are online, and the Breitbart media machine uses that audience to harass, cyberbully, and threaten anyone who speaks out against them. Students and faculty on our campus have already had their lives threatened for speaking out against Milo and his followers. Online threats are real threats, and if we allow this intolerant and bullying version of free speech to take over our campus, then it can only but come at the expense of the free speech rights of the Berkeley community as a whole. In fact, campus safety concerns have already forced the Anthropology Department to cancel a public talk during "Free Speech Week." This makes clear that the administration understands the imminent threat to campus safety while also revealing that the loud demands of the alt-right has the effect of silencing members of our campus community.

What you can do If you are a UC Berkeley faculty member or graduate student and would like to add your name to the call for a boycott, visit this link. In solidarity with the faculty's campus boycott, a coalition of student groups, unions and other organizations is calling a "Berkeley Rally Against White Supremacy" for Monday, September 25, at 12 noon on the Crescent Lawn at Oxford Street and Addison Street.

We recognize that as a public institution, we are legally bound by the Constitution to allow all viewpoints on campus. However, there are forms of speech that are not protected under the First Amendment. These include speech that presents imminent physical danger and speech that disrupts the university's mission to educate. Milo, Coulter and Bannon do not come to educate; they and their followers come to humiliate and incite. If the administration insists upon allowing the alt-right to occupy the center of our campus for four days to harass, threaten and intimidate us, as they did during Milo's visit in February, then faculty cannot teach, staff cannot work and students cannot learn.

We refuse to grant the alt-right the media spectacle that they so desperately desire. This strategy responds to the concerns voiced in the letter authored by the chairs of the three departments most impacted--Gender and Women's Studies, African American Studies and Ethnic Studies--and also follows the lead of the [Southern Poverty Law Center] advice to ignore these agitators. As faculty, we reject both the administration's rhetoric of false equivalency that all speech--including "hate speech"--merits value and respect and also the impulse to see direct confrontation as the only strategy of resistance. A boycott of all campus activities during these days is the only responsible course of action.

Therefore we are calling upon faculty to take the following steps:

1. Cancel classes and tell students to stay home. A boycott of classes affirms that our fundamental responsibility as faculty is to protect the safety and well-being of all our students. While we understand the argument that canceling classes might be seen as a penalty to students who want to learn, by holding class when some students CANNOT attend by virtue of their DACA status and the imminent threat that these campus events hold, faculty who DO hold classes are disadvantaging DACA students and others who will feel threatened by being on campus.

2. Close buildings, close departments and let staff stay home. If the campus is unsafe for student learning then it is unsafe for staff members to work. We should work with campus maintenance and building managers to close as many departments and buildings as possible, starting with those in the immediate vicinity of Sproul Plaza. No one should be forced to work surrounded by men with clubs, police with guns and the sting of teargas.

3. Faculty who decide to hold class during this week, in the face of these explicit threats, should not penalize students who are afraid to come to campus. It is unfair and discriminatory for faculty to schedule exams or require attendance during this week. Such an expectation forces students to choose between their physical safety, their mental well-being and a grade. Consider making a video lecture available, giving the students a take-home assignment, or creating another alternative class plan. If you decide you must hold class, please do it away from campus, away from the Telegraph Avenue point of campus entry, and away from downtown.

The administration, in failing to halt these events, has left concerned faculty with no other choice than to act to prevent further harm to our community. We urge you to join us in keeping our students and our campus safe by signing on to this call for a campus-wide boycott.

(For a full list of signatories, or to add your name to this letter, follow this link and sign at the bottom.)

Michael Mark Cohen, Associate Teaching Professor, American Studies and African American Studies

Leigh Raiford, Associate Professor, African American Studies

Juana María Rodríguez, Professor, Ethnic Studies

Charis Thompson, Chancellor's Professor, Gender and Women's Studies and Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society

Leslie Salzinger, Associate Professor, Gender and Women's Studies

Jeffrey Skoller, Associate Professor, Film and Media

Natalia Brizuela, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese and Film and Media

Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor, History of Art

Katrin Wehrheim, Associate Professor, Mathematics

Allan Desouza, Associate Professor and Chair, Art Practice

Victoria E. Robinson, Lecturer, Ethnic Studies

John A. Powell, Director, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society

Ramona Naddaff, Associate Professor, Rhetoric

Peter Glazer, Associate Professor, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies

Mary Ann Doane, Class of 1937, Professor of Film and Media

Anne Walsh, Associate Professor, Art Practice

Jake Kosek, Associate Professor, Geography

Stephanie Syjuco, Assistant Professor, Art Practice

Mel Y. Chen, Associate Professor, Gender and Women's Studies

Cori Hayden, Associate Professor, Anthropology

Gregory Levine, Professor, Art and Architecture of Japan and Buddhist Visual Cultures

James Vernon, Professor, Department of History

Samera Esmeir, Associate Professor, Rhetoric

Richard B. Norgaard, Professor Emeritus, Energy and Resources Group

Rachel Morello-Frosch, Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and School of Public Health

Christy Getz, Cooperative Extension Specialist, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Stefannia Mambelli, Integrative Biology

Lauren Kroiz, Associate Professor, History of Art

Evan Bissell, Instructor, Art Practice, UCB/Fall Program for Freshman

Paola Bacchetta, Professor, Department of Gender and Women's Studies

Minoo Moallem, Professor, Department of Gender and Women's Studies

Déborah Blocker, Associate Professor, Department of French

Carlos Muñoz, Jr., Edward A. Dickson Distinguished Emeriti Professor, Ethnic Studies

Patricia Penn Hilden, Professor Emerita, Ethnic Studies

Chris Zepeda-Millan, Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies

Mark Goble, Associate Professor, English

Keith P. Feldman, Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies

Nadia Ellis, Associate Professor, English

Nikki Jones, Associate Professor, African American Studies

Susan Schweik, Professor, English

Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Associate Professor, English

Emily O'Rourke, GSI, Rhetoric

Beezer de Martelly, PhD Candidate, Music/Ethnomusicology

Laleh Behbehanian, Lecturer, Department Of Sociology

Suzanne Guerlac, Professor, French Department

Ivonne del Valle, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese

Janelle Scott, Associate Professor

Soraya Tlatli, Associate Professor, French

Peter Teichner, Professor of Mathematics

Michael J. Dumas, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Education, African American Studies

Akua Ofori, Postdoctoral Scholar

Ayse Agis, Continuing Lecturer, Gender and Women's Studies

Maria Faini, CRG Specialist/PhD candidate, Ethnic Studies/Critical Theory

Scott Hewicker, Lecturer, First Year Program

Caroline Lemak Brickman, PhD candidate, Slavic Department

Sima Belmar, Lecturer, TDPS

Bryan Wagner, Associate Professor, English

Todd P. Olson, Professor, History of Art

Anne-Lise Francois, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and English

Jovan Lewis, Assistant Professor, Geography and African American Studies

Jodi Halpern, Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities

Donna Honarpisheh, Comparative Literature

Debarati Sanyal, Professor, Department of French

Abigail De Kosnik, Associate Professor, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies

Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, Professor, Education

T. Carlis Roberts, Associate Professor, Music

Ana Belén Redondo Campillos, Lecturer, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities, History of Art

Andy Shenken, Professor, Architecture

Celeste Langan, Associate Professor, Department of English

Erin M. Kerrison, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare

Jean-Paul Bourdier, Professor, Architecture

Brandi Catanese, Associate Professor, African American Studies

Tina Sacks, Assistant Professor, School of Social Welfare

Riva Bruenn, Lecturer, Plant and Microbial Biology

Zara Kadkani Schmitt, PhD candidate, Architecture

Stephanie Mech, Student Services and Admissions, School of Public Health

Bryce Becker, PhD student, Graduate School of Education

Ash Lynette, Masters candidate, School of Social Welfare

Katy Fox-Hodess, PhD student, Sociology

Irene Calimlim, MPH/MCP candidate, School of Public Health, Department of City and Regional Planning

Azin Seraj, Lecturer, Art Department

Joanna Mandell, Lecturer, UCB-UCSF Joint Medical Program

Xavier Perrone, Programs manager, Center for Latino Policy Research

Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee, PhD candidate, Spanish and Portuguese

Adeola Oni-Orisan, PhD candidate, Medical Anthropology

Raty Syka, Folklore Masters Program

Angus Reid, PhD candidate, English

Ricky Vides, Academic Advisor, College of Natural Resources

Zilose Lyons, Program manager, Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases

Phoebe Parker-Shames, PhD student, Environmental Science Policy and Management

Joshua Anderson, GSI, English

Erin Greer, GSI, Department of English

Manuel Rosaldo, PhD candidate, Sociology

Laila Riazi, PhD student, Comparative Literature

Alex Bush, PhD candidate, Film and Media

Seth Holmes, Associate Professor, Public Health and Medical Anthropology

Maya Kronfeld, PhD candidate, Comparative Literature

Johnathan Vaknin, PhD candidate, Comparative Literature

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, PhD student, East Asian Languages and Cultures

Kathryn Levine, Ph.D. candidate, French

Hallie Wells, PhD candidate, Anthropology

Daniel Benjamin, GSI, English

Ernest Artiz, GSI, Department of English

Eric Peterson, PhD student, Deptartment of Architecture

Christian Nagler, PhD candidate, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies

Zachary Levenson, PhD candidate, Sociology

Lida Zeitlin Wu, PhD candidate, Film and Media

Elias Lawliet, PhD student, Jurisprudence and Social Policy

John Mundell, PhD student, African American and African Diaspora Studies

Pedro Rolon, GSI/PhD student, Comparative Literature

Alex Brostoff, GSI and PhD student, Comparative Literature

Click here for the letter and full list of signatories.