CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Letter to Richard Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley; Ben Herman, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, UC Berkeley and Board of Regents, University of California Deploring UC Berkeley’s Capitulation in the Litigation Brought by the Brandeis Center

April 7, 2026

Richard Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley

Ben Hermalin, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, University of California, Berkeley

Board of Regents of the University of California

Cc: Academic Senate, University of California, Berkeley

Dear Madams/Sirs,

On behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom,** an organization of over 200 scholars in higher education in California dedicated to the defense of academic freedom, we write to deplore UC Berkeley’s capitulation in the litigation brought by the Brandeis Center. The Regents have handed over the university’s most basic right, that of academic freedom, to an external entity, in a secretly negotiated settlement released on the eve of Spring Break. In doing so, UC Berkeley agrees to promote and enforce anti-democratic and contradictory restrictions on speech and protest with respect to Zionism. We ask you: can a public institution decide that the Constitution will be ignored and indeed violated on its campus? Can an ethnonationalist ideology of a foreign country be institutionalized as the official viewpoint of the University of California, such that disagreement with that ideology is subject to severe punishment? Can a partisan advocacy organization be granted the right to police and control instructional content and speech, both in the classroom and outside of it, for example in university public spaces?

Among its many deleterious consequences, we note that the agreement constitutes an assault on shared governance in faculty oversight of curriculum, and an interference with disciplinary processes. First, it undermines the Academic Senate’s delegated authority to oversee the curriculum, as well as the role of individual departments and college/school curriculum committees in determining the content of their programs, by granting the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee (CAC) on Jewish Life and Campus Climate (an opaquely constituted committee whose membership is not publicly disclosed) the authority to review and recommend on curricula, “educational offerings” and “leadership”. Second, by requiring reporting by OPHD on cases of faculty misconduct not only to said CAC but to the Brandeis Center itself, the agreement seriously weakens the ability of the Academic Senate to protect academic freedom and to ensure faculty due process during investigations of violations of the faculty code of conduct.

Most egregiously of all, the Settlement puts the deeply contested IHRA definition of antisemitism at the core of the university’s disciplinary standards.

The problem with the IHRA definition, and the reason it has been roundly rejected by Berkeley faculty and – until now – the UC Regents, lies in the examples through which it is adumbrated, which are explicitly required by the Settlement to be used in disciplinary cases. Under that definition, the following statements would be considered cases of antisemitism:

Saying that no state should be defined by religion or relegate people of different faiths to second-class status (because this would “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination”).

Saying that the Israeli government’s encouragement of West Bank settler violence amounts to promotion of a corps of ethnic-cleansing Brown Shirts (because “Israeli policy” must not be compared “to that of the Nazis.”)

Saying that Israel’s Jewish values should mean that it must be held to the highest possible standards of human rights and compassion for the vulnerable (because Israel should not be “required or expected to meet a standard not expected of any other democratic nation.”)

Agree or disagree with these statements, in a sane and just world it should be possible to offer and defend them, as a student or teacher, in research, teaching, and political expression, without fear of being subjected to a disciplinary charge. This is the beating heart not only of academic freedom but of political freedom in the broadest sense. And while the 1^st Amendment might ultimately protect faculty should they be ensnared by a legal challenge, this settlement constitutes nothing less than an incitement to ideological harassment through legally dubious complaints, brought by zealots who may be prepared to destroy the university itself rather than tolerate the free exchange of ideas that the 1960s Free Speech Movement bequeathed to the nation and world. Indeed, these enemies of academic freedom appear to be repeating the missteps of a far less glorious past, that of the dark days of Spring 1942, when UC Berkeley expelled its Japanese American students and provided information on them to the US War Department, leading to their internment in concentration camps. The decisions to release the names of 160 students, faculty, and staff to the Trump Administration, and to suspend the accomplished and beloved lecturer Peyrin Kao for classroom and extramural speech, have already demonstrated the Berkeley administration’s obtuseness—or obliviousness—toward the lessons of its own history. Having now set in motion an insidious administrative architecture for engaging in McCarthy-style witch hunts on its own campus, this agreement may go down in history as matching or even exceeding the betrayal of its Japanese-American students during World War II.

By signing on to this document, the University, its Regents, President, legal counsel, and other parties have abandoned fundamental principles that have undergirded American academia for well over a century. Their support for this settlement has sullied their own names as well as the reputation of this beloved institution.

We urge you to rescind your capitulation to the Brandeis Center and its chairman and CEO, Kenneth Marcus, infamous for his decades-long efforts to undermine academic freedom. Please withdraw from this agreement, heed the pleas of the great majority of UC faculty, students, and alumni who fear for the future of the university under this draconian regime of censorship, and restore faith in your leadership.

Sincerely,

Sang Hea Kil, Co-Chair of CS4AF Executive Committee, Professor of Justice Studies (fired for Palestine activism), San José State University

Stephen Roddy, Co-Chair of CS4AF Executive Committee, Professor of Asian Studies, University of San Francisco

Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University & Research Fellow, Orfalea Center, UC Santa Barbara

Rabab Abdulhadi, Director and Senior Scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED Studies), San Francisco State University

Nancy Gallagher, Professor of History, Emerita, UC Santa Barbara

Vida Samiian, Professor and Dean Emerita, CSU Fresno

Dennis Kortheuer, Department of History, Emeritus, CSU Long Beach

Lisa Rofel, Professor Emerita and Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz

Rupa Marya, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, fired illegally in 2025 for speaking out about Israel’s genocide.

Aline Hitti, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of San Francisco

Carole H. Browner, Professor, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and Departments of Anthropology and Gender Studies

Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, University of California, Davis

Jonathan Graubart, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University, JD University of California-Berkeley 1989

Brian Dolber, Associate Professor of Communication, California State University, San Marcos

Mark LeVine, Professor of History, UC Irvine

Catherine Liu, Professor, Film and Media Studies, UC Irvine

Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, UC Santa Barbara

Christine Hong, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Literature, UC Santa Cruz

Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English and Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Letter to Governor Newsom Urging Him to Veto AB 715 which Still Conflates Antisemitism with Protected Speech Thus Censoring K-12 Education Critical of Israeli Government Policies and Actions by Conflating it with Antisemitism

September 13, 2025

Governor Gavin Newsom

gavin.newsom@gov.ca.gov

Dear Governor Newsom,

On behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom,** an organization of over 200 scholars in higher education in California dedicated to the defense of academic freedom, we write to emphatically urge you to veto AB 715. The Senate Education Committee passed AB 715 on September 10, 2025 under the false pretense that a definition of antisemitism with grave constitutional concerns had been removed from the bill. Whether disingenuously or genuinely confused, Sen. Sasha Renée Perez, the chair of said committee, stated that the problematic definition of antisemitism previously included in the language had been removed from the final version. However, AB 715 still gives a greenlight to conflating antisemitism with protected speech critical of Israel, by citing the same highly contested IHRA definition that was incorporated into the 2023 Biden National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

Among the many deeply problematic features of AB 715, we note that it

creates an “Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator” to be appointed by the Governor, whose professional training, competence and impartiality are in no way assured;
asserts without a shred of credible evidence that “Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California are facing a widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying. In many cases, such discrimination, harassment, and bullying have been so severe and pervasive that it has placed Jewish pupils at risk and limited, or completely impeded, their ability to learn or engage in school programs or activities;”
declares that “discriminatory bias in instruction and school-sponsored activities does not require a showing of direct harm to members of a protected group,” which opens up almost any criticism of Israel to claims of discrimination;
declares that “Discrimination, harassment, and bullying of Jewish pupils has included antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories; discriminatory slurs, symbols, and expressions; physical and verbal assaults; discrimination by proxy and through the use of coded language; collective blame and generalizations about Jewish people; vilification of Jews and Israelis; and distortions of Jewish religion, ancestry, history, and identity. This discrimination, harassment, and bullying, including the use of inappropriate instructional materials and instruction, has deeply impacted Jewish pupils across California and the nation resulting in the vilification and ostracization of Jewish pupils.” Most of these statements are so vague as to be open to misuse and abuse against faculty, teachers, students or others merely for expressing legally protected views and/or criticism of or opposition to Israeli policies;
threatens to censor critical education about Palestine by referring to the 2023 Biden National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which embraces the controversial IHRA Definition of antisemitism, “as a basis to inform schools on how to identify, respond to, prevent, and counter antisemitism.” The IHRA Definition conflates protected speech critical of Israel with antisemitism, and has been opposed for the serious constitutional concerns it raises by hundreds of civil rights organizations internationally, including the ACLU and the original author of the definition, Kenneth Stern, who warns against its use as educational policy for purposes of censorship;
continues to exceptionalize antisemitism as a form of discrimination to be treated differently than all other forms. Rather than creating an Anti-Discrimination Coordinator to address all forms of discrimination complaints equally under the law, it creates a one-of-a-kind Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator with no other equivalent positions for other protected classes.

In sum, this proposed legislation would censor K-12 education critical of Israeli governmental policies and actions by conflating it with antisemitism. We are hardly alone in urging a rejection of this bill. Because of the serious constitutional and procedural concerns it raises, it continues to be opposed by all major statewide educational associations and labor unions, including the California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, California Faculty Association, Association of California School Administrators and California County Superintendents, California School Boards Association, and Council of UC Faculty Associations; as well as over 110 racial justice organizations representing Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Jewish Americans, Black Americans, Latinx, API and LGBTQI organizations.

As educators of current and future generations of California college students, we join our fellow Californians in warning you about the threat posed by AB 715. It would significantly undermine the citizenry’s opportunities to gain an unbiased, accurate understanding of issues of critical importance to the future of our world. Please join us in saying NO to this naked attempt to strangle academic freedom, stifle the diverse voices of our communities, and impose a foreign ideology on the youth of our state.

Sang Hea Kil

[Currently job suspended for Palestine and signing as an individual and not as a SJSU representative]

Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF

Professor, Justice Studies Department

San José State University

Stephen Roddy

Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF

Professor, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

University of San Francisco

Dennis Kortheuer,

Department of History, Emeritus,

California State University, Long Beach

Vida Samiian

Professor & Dean Emerita

CSU Fresno

Lisa Rofel

Professor Emerita and Research Professor, Department of Anthropology

University of California, Santa Cruz

Nancy Gallagher

Professor Emerita, History

University of California, Santa Barbara

Rabab Abdulhadi

Director, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies

San Francisco State University

Richard Falk

Professor of International Law Emeritus,

Princeton University

Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sondra Hale

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Gender Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Mark LeVine

Professor of History

UC Irvine

Letter to University of California President Milliken and UC Berkeley Chancellor Lyons Condemning Their Decision to Report 160 Members of the UC Berkeley Faculty, Students and Staff to the Federal Government for Investigation on False Accusations of Antisemitism

September 15,2025

Dear President Milliken and Chancellor Lyons,

On behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom,* an organization of over 200 scholars in higher education in California dedicated to the defense of academic freedom, we condemn your decision to report 160 members of the UC Berkeley faculty, students, and staff to the federal government for investigation on false accusations of antisemitism. In doing so, you have violated their first amendment right to free speech, and other constitutional rights to due process, and endangered their well-being and safety. This report exposes our colleagues to harassment, intimidation, and reputational damage that may follow them throughout their careers. It creates a chilling effect on campus, silencing political expression and endangering the very principles of academic freedom. Particularly vulnerable are international scholars and students, who face heightened risks in the current anti-immigrant climate, especially those from Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities already facing a climate of xenophobic discrimination, surveillance, and ideological deportation. You have endangered UC lecturers and contingent staff whose positions are already precarious in this anti-intellectual era. Your campus has collaborated in this witch hunt that targets speech in solidarity with Palestinians and turns it into a federal offense.

The Biden and Trump administrations have baselessly accused UC Berkeley of antisemitism. In particular the targeting of your Jewish faculty, for example the esteemed professor Judith Butler, reveals the absurdity of these accusations. The federal government is exploiting the ill-intentioned, highly contested IHRA definition, which conflates and criminalizes anti-zionism and speech in support of Palestinian rights, with antisemitism. Placing pressure on the administration of the University of California to spy on, deem “illegal” and report faculty, students, and staff for their speech and advocacy amounts to ideological targeting, a reminder of McCarthyism. It is appalling that the University has condoned it.

Neither UC Berkeley nor the US government seems capable of acknowledging that criticism of the state of Israel–a genocidal military power–is not antisemitic. In this troubling context, scholars, students, and staff simply performing their work and degree obligations are risking their livelihood and safety for speaking up. Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and targeting members of your campus community for their political expression is a way of silencing opposition against Israel’s ongoing, horrific starvation of Gaza and violence against the Palestinian people, and protecting the UC’s complicit investment in the world’s first livestreamed genocide, as millions of people suffer under siege and threat of mass displacement.

The Free Speech movement, a source of pride for UC Berkeley now, began under similar circumstances of repression. It is our view that your campus administration is failing to honor UC-Berkeley’s historical struggle and legacy and instead has chosen to repress the campus resistance movement against these Israeli international crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians.

We demand that you immediately 1) rescind your report to DOE, 2) disclose fully all files you have passed on to affected faculty, staff, and students with a full written apology, and 3) inform all additional individuals whose privacy you have violated in this way. Further, we demand you cease your shameful collaboration with these federal agencies, and instead stand up for UC by taking concrete actions to guarantee First Amendment rights and academic freedom in your community. In doing so, you should collaborate with UC communities to protect them from further harm, and deepen your understanding of academic freedom through structured conversation with UC students, faculty, and staff.

Failure to comply with our recommendations will force us to advise students against choosing your institution for further study, as your campus does not seem to promote academic freedom and these potential students will face a campus climate where they cannot engage in intellectual debate and learning given your collaboration with the federal government.

Your office has very recently asked California educators to “stand up for UC” against illegal federal action; you have failed to do the same. We ask you to restore the UC as it has historically served the people of California. In closing, we remind you, as UC President Clark Kerr put it: “The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas. Thus it permits the freest expression of views before students, trusting to their good sense in passing judgment on these views. Only in this way can it best serve American democracy.”

Fiat Lux,

Sang Hea Kil

[Currently under job dismissal for Palestine and signing as an individual and not as a SJSU representative]

Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF

Professor, Justice Studies Department

San José State University

Stephen Roddy

Co-Coordinator, Executive Board, CS4AF

Professor, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

University of San Francisco

Dennis Kortheuer,

Department of History, Emeritus,

California State University, Long Beach

Vida Samiian

Professor & Dean Emerita

CSU Fresno

Lisa Rofel

Professor Emerita and Research Professor, Department of Anthropology

University of California, Santa Cruz

Nancy Gallagher

Professor Emerita, History

University of California, Santa Barbara

Rabab Abdulhadi

Director, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies

San Francisco State University

Richard Falk

Professor of International Law Emeritus,

Princeton University

Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sondra Hale

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Gender Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

David Klein

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics

California State University Northridge

Jamal Nassar

Dean Emeritus

California State University San Bernardino

Rouhollah Aghasaleh

Associate Professor- School of Education

California State Polytechnic University- Humboldt

Stephen Zunes
Professor of Politics and Program Director of Middle Eastern Studies
University of San Francisco

Catherine Liu

Professor

Film and Media Studies

UC Irvine

Jonathan Graubart

Professor of Political Science

San Diego State University

Brian Dolber

Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies

CSU San Marcos

Suad Joseph

Distinguished Research Professor

University of California, Davis

Ahlam Muhtaseb

Professor of Media

California State University, San Bernardino

Senior Data Justice Fellow, Princeton University

Carole H. Browner,

Professor

Semel Institute,

UCLA Geffen School of Medicine

Stacy D. Fahrenthold

Professor of History and Middle East/South Asia Studies

University of California, Davis

Walid A. Afifi

Professor, Dept of Communication

University of California, Santa Barbara

Ronald Loewe

Professor of Anthropology

California State University, Long Beach.

Robin D. G. Kelley

Distinguished Professor, Dept of History

University of California, Los Angeles

Dina Al-Kassim

University of California, Berkeley Alumna

Associate Professor

University of California, Irvine, Retired

Professor, English Department of Literature and Social Justice Institute

University of British Columbia

Flagg Miller

Professor
Department of Religion, Culture and Society and Middle East / South Asia Studies Program
University of California, Davis

Sherene Seikaly

Associate Professor of History

University of California, Santa Barbara

Piya Chatterjee

Backstrand Chair in Gender and Women’s Studies

Professor, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Scripps College

The Claremont Consortium

Patricia Morton

Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies Department

University of California, Riverside

Kevin B Anderson

Sociology

UC-Santa Barbara

Donna Haraway

Distinguished Professor Emerita

History of Consciousness

UC Santa Cruz

Rupa Marya

Former Professor of Medicine

University of California, San Francisco

Fired May 2025 without Due Process for Palestine Advocacy

Ece Algan

Professor, Department of Communication & Media

California State University, San Bernardino

Nathan Whitworth

Lecturer, Rhetoric and Writing Studies,

San Diego State University

David Pellow

Distinguished Professor, Environmental Studies

University of California Santa Barbara

Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus,

University of California, Santa Barbara

David Lloyd,

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English

University of California, Riverside

Bishnupriya Ghosh,

Professor, English and Global Studies

University of California, Santa Barbara

Letter to Dr. Dominico Grasso, President, University of Michigan Expressing Our Deep Concern for Two University of Michigan Ann Arbor Postdoctoral Researchers Xunqing Jian and Chengxuan Han Who Have Been Arrested for Agroterrorism

July 27, 2025

Dr. Dominico Grasso, President

University of Michigan

Dear President Grasso,

Yunqing Jian has been accused of bringing a fungus (Fusarium graminearum) into the US without prior authorization, for which she has been arrested on charges of “agroterrorism” that carry a prison term of up to 20 years. While she may have failed to adhere to regulatory requirements in handling the fungus, the accusation of conspiracy to commit agricultural terrorism is absurd on its face. Several experts on the fungus have disputed the claim that it can be used as a weapon, stating that it is widely prevalent in the U.S. and even originated in North America. Even if it were to be released into the wild, they agree, it would have no impact whatsoever. Ironically, Jian’s past and current research centers on finding ways to mitigate the damage to crops caused by this fungus. What motive would a promising young researcher have to inflict the very harms which she has devoted years of hard work to eliminate?

A second researcher affiliated with the University of Michigan, Chengxuan Han, was arrested for sending roundworms through the mail, something many speculate she did not know she needed a permit for. Han’s case follows the same disturbing pattern: suspicion merely because she is Chinese, exaggerated charges, and devastating consequences for what appear to be honest mistakes by a young researcher making her way up the career ladder. We note that adjudication of similar cases has typically resulted at most in the levying of a fine, and certainly not criminal liability. In short, the claim that either Jian’s or Han’s actions represent a plot by the Chinese government to commit agroterrorism against the U.S. is unadulterated nonsense.

We see no indication that the University of Michigan has done anything to support its Chinese scholars in the face of this heavy-handed persecution by federal authorities. Each passing day makes it more obvious that these women have been caught up in a broader campaign of surveillance and demonization of Chinese academics that dates back to the China Initiative of the first Trump administration. Amid increasingly hysterical accusations made by politicians such as Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Tim Walberg, and John Moolenaar, the number of Chinese academics subjected to such treatment is rising, once again, with considerable costs not only to individuals but to the institutions that host them.

UM Ann Arbor must not enable this ongoing witch hunt through its inaction, but stand up for these and other students and scholars who contribute substantially to the intellectual life of the institution. If you don’t, your negligence risks degrading the quality of your own research programs, and sullying your reputation with a moral stain that will be difficult to fully erase. That would be a betrayal of the legacy of Michigan’s long and storied history of educating Chinese students like John C. H. Wu (1899-1986), who went on to make indelible contributions to the US, China, and the entire world.

Sincerely,

Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University & Research Fellow, Orfalea Center, UC Santa Barbara

Rabab Abdulhadi, Director and Senior Scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED Studies), San Francisco State University

Nancy Gallagher, Professor of History, Emerita, UC Santa Barbara

Stephen Roddy, Professor of Asian Studies, University of San Francisco

Vida Samiian, Professor and Dean Emerita, CSU Fresno

Dennis Kortheuer, Department of History, Emeritus, CSU Long Beach

Lisa Rofel, Professor Emerita and Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz

Carole H. Browner, Distinguished Research Professor, Center for Culture and Health
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA

Letter to Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President of San José State University, Provost Del Casino and V.P. Durr in Objection to the Disparate Treatment Accorded to Professor Sang Hea Kil Who is to be Terminated from Her Position Vs the Reinstatement of Professor Jonathan Roth Who Physically Assaulted a Protester but Will Return to Teaching in Fall 2025

July 28, 2025

Cynthia Teniente-Matson

President

San José State University

sjsupres@sjsu.edu

Vincent Del Casino

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

San José State University

provost@sjsu.edu

Jeanne Durr

Interim Senior Associate Vice President, University Personnel

San José State University

jeanne.durr@sjsu.edu

President Teniente-Matson, Provost Del Casino, and Vice President Durr:

It has come to our attention that Prof. Jonathan Roth of the Department of History has been relieved of the suspension he has been under since February 2024, and will return to teaching in Fall 2025. Prof. Roth was reportedly barred from campus for his behavior during a protest against Jeffrey Blutinger’s lecture on February 20, 2024. Specifically, as this video documents, Prof. Roth physically assaulted one of the protesters. We understand this to be the direct cause of his being placed on paid leave.

Prof. Kil was subsequently suspended in May 2024 for her actions at this same February 20 protest. In her case, however, no charges of violence or assault were made against her. Instead, the provost has accused her of attempting to enter the classroom where the Blutinger lecture was to be held, and of ordering students to enter with her, in violation of established policy. This appears to be a deliberate distortion of the facts. She reportedly requested the Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) policy from campus authorities that morning, but it was not provided to her before the event began. Since she had received no guidance from the administration on what was or was not permitted, she informed protesting students that they should assume they could exercise their constitutional rights. In spite of having been provided with zero administrative guidance about any restrictions on protests prior to this incident, she was later told she had violated TPM by allegedly orchestrating the entire protest. We note that this demonstration was neither organized nor sponsored by the SJP chapter, of which Prof. Kil served as faculty advisor. She joined as an observer and supporter of students, and played no role in their organizing efforts, whether of the counter demonstration in February, the sit-in in March, or at the encampment in May.

Now, Prof. Roth has been permitted to return to the classroom in spite of his documented record of physical aggression against students, while Prof. Kil has been placed under Article 19 in preparation for terminating her from the university. The disparate treatment accorded to Prof. Kil appears prima facie to be both egregious and deeply unjust. We look forward to your expeditious rectification of this wrong and the full restoration of her rights as a tenured member of the faculty.

Sincerely,

Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University & Research Fellow, Orfalea Center, UC Santa Barbara

Rabab Abdulhadi, Director and Senior Scholar of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED Studies), San Francisco State University

Nancy Gallagher, Professor of History, Emerita, UC Santa Barbara

Stephen Roddy, Professor of Asian Studies, University of San Francisco

Vida Samiian, Professor and Dean Emerita, CSU Fresno

Dennis Kortheuer, Department of History, Emeritus, CSU Long Beach

Lisa Rofel, Professor Emerita and Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz

Rupa Marya, MD, former Professor of Medicine, UCSF (fired for Palestine Advocacy)

David Klein, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics, CSU Northridge

Margaret Ferguson, Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC Davis

David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Stanford University

Carole H. Browner, Distinguished Research Professor, Center for Culture and Health
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA

Mark LeVine, Professor of Middle Eastern and African Histories and Cultures, UC Irvine

Manzar Foroohar, Professor of History, Emerita, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Jamal R. Nassar, Dean Emeritus, CSU San Bernardino

Robin D. G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Endowed Professor of U.S. History, UCLA

Christine Hong, Professor, UC Santa Cruz

Brian Dolber, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies,

CSU San Marcos

Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor, UC Davis

Shahla Razavi, Associate Professor of Mathematics (retired), Mt. San Jacinto College

Stacy D. Fahrenthold, Professor of History and Middle East/South Asia Studies, UC Davis

Mohammad Subeh, MD, Ultrasound Director, Vituity

Edmund Burke, III, Research Professor and Emeritus Professor of History, UC Santa Cruz

Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and Chancellor’s Chair, UC Berkeley

Dorinne Kondo, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Professor of Anthropology, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Sadia Saeed, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco

Wendy Matsumura, Associate Professor, UC San Diego

Letter to President Teniente-Matson, Provost Del Casino and V.P. Durr, San José State University, Decrying Their Decision to Seek the Termination of Dr. Sang Hea Kil, a Tenured Full Professor of Justice Studies for Allegedly Violating the Time, Place and Manner Policies Adopted by CSU Campuses in Spring 2024

June 27, 2025

Cynthia Teniente-Matson

President

San José State University

sjsupres@sjsu.edu

Vincent Del Casino

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

San José State University

provost@sjsu.edu

Jeanne Durr

Interim Senior Associate Vice President, University Personnel

San José State University

jeanne.durr@sjsu.edu

President Teniente-Matson, Provost Del Casino, and Vice President Durr:

On behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom,** an organization of over 200 scholars in higher education in California dedicated to the defense of academic freedom, we decry your decision to seek the termination of Dr. Sang Hea Kil, a tenured Full Professor of Justice Studies, for allegedly violating the Time, Place, and Manner policies adopted by CSU campuses in Spring 2024.

According to Article 17 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the California Faculty Association and the California State University system, “strong and compelling evidence” is required to justify the suspension let alone the termination of a faculty member. Such evidence has not been provided. Instead, she has been subjected to dubious accusations of inciting violence, harassing fellow community members, violating the privacy of her colleagues, and exploiting students. Over the past several years, Professor Kil has served as a faculty advisor to SJSU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and acted as a liaison between the students and the university administration until she was suspended in May 2024. It was in this capacity that she attended the campus events of February, April, and May of 2024, that have served as the basis for the allegations against her. She was fulfilling her professional obligations by attending these meetings; in stark contrast, your punitive responses appear to have sprung from political calculations antithetical to a public university’s duty to safeguard the civil rights of its students and faculty. By suspending and now initiating the process to terminate Dr. Kil, a vital source of support for students raising their voices against injustice, you are acting against your obligation to protect extramural speech against reprisal, suppressing free speech and advocacy on your campus, forcefully silencing an important source of humanitarian activism on campus, and depriving students, faculty, and the San Jose community of an outstanding and accomplished scholar and valued mentor.

We remind you that the published policy of the Office of the President states: “Though we are proud to be one of the most diverse campus communities in the nation, action is needed more than ever to address systemic racism at San Jose State University. And action is what we are taking.” Racism, itself a manifestation and vector of systemic violence, can only be countered by a position that abhors equally all systemic forms of violence, including the apartheid regime imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories. Dr. Kil’s principled support for her students’ activism against the genocide surely adheres to the same antiracist principles your Office claims to uphold. How can you address systemic racism while actively repressing voices supportive of Palestine, which belong to SJSU’s diverse communities, including Jewish, Black and brown members? Your actions toward Dr. Kil reek of rank hypocrisy.

We note that this is to our knowledge the first case of a tenured faculty member at a public university to be threatened with termination over her support for student activism in the wake of October 7, 2023. Setting this sort of horrific precedent will give SJSU the dubious distinction of taking aim at tenured faculty for their political views, undermining the protections afforded by universities which administrations are obligated to uphold. Such an action would shake the very foundations of both academic freedom and freedom of speech, sully the reputation of your administration and SJSU as a whole for generations to come, and weaken the crucial link between academic freedom in universities and truly democratic societies. The SJSU and larger Bay Area communities will rightly condemn this action, not only because of their shared revulsion for Israel’s genocide and US support for it, but because it violates fundamental principles by which we all seek to live and work.

We demand that our colleague Dr. Kil, who co-chairs CS4AF, be cleared of the charges against her, reinstated to her position, and allowed to resume her role as a cherished member of the SJSU community and other academic institutions across the United States and elsewhere.