Labor

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

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

July 27, 2025

Dr. Dominico Grasso, President

University of Michigan

Dear President Grasso, 

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 express our deep concern for two UM Ann Arbor postdoctoral researchers, Yunqing Jian and Chengxuan Han.

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