History Faculty Support Student Amnesty

/ by

We, the undersigned faculty members of the History Department, support amnesty for student protesters. On Friday, May 24, 2024 UCLA issued notices of disciplinary proceedings to every UCLA student arrested during the University’s disbandment of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment. We members of the History Department protest this action and urge the University to spare students from any disciplinary hearings or charges.

These students are a diverse, multi-racial and multi-faith cross-section of our student body from South and North Campus who share a commitment to human rights. They exercised their constitutionally protected right to protest against a war that has killed thousands of civilians and is being funded in part by the USA. While calling attention to human rights violations in Gaza, these students endured human rights violations on our own campus. They were attacked by a mob that included white supremacists; many were wounded and sent to the hospital with severe injuries. Instead of protecting students from attack, the police waited until the mob had sent some two dozen students to the hospital and had injured many more, and then cleared the attackers without even interrogating them. As far as we know, only one of the many attackers has been arrested. The next day, student protesters were attacked again, this time by police with rubber bullets, stun grenades, and chemical agents. Once again, violence forced students to area hospitals; some required surgery, belying the LAPD’s claim that nobody was injured. Many students were subjected to arrest and now face the beginning of a campus disciplinary process.

UCLA’s students need support, not discipline or policing. The threat of disciplinary punishment does not achieve any educational goal; it only makes matters worse. In addition to meaningful engagement and negotiations to address student concerns, we believe that UCLA should support its students through amnesty and acknowledge their commitment to human rights. UCLA has autonomy to do what is best for its student body and can decline to move forward with disciplinary proceedings. Now that Spring quarter is coming to a close, we ask that these students be allowed to continue their studies without the stress and consequences of a disciplinary hearing. We ask that the chancellor confer degrees on graduating seniors who were arrested. We request that UCLA protect, rather than punish, its students.

Signed

Kevin Terraciano
Katsuya Hirano
Carla Pestana
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Robin Derby
Sebouh Aslanian
Soraya de Chadarevian
Miloš Jovanovic
Elizabeth O’Brien
Muriel McClendon
Minayo Nasiali
Hollian Wint
Andrea Goldman
Choon Hwee Koh
Valerie Matsumoto
Sarah Stein
James Gelvin
Jared McBride
Glenn Penny
Katherine Marino
Brenda Stevenson
Eric Avila
Nile Green
Stefania Tutino
Mary Corey
Greg Woolf
Fernando Pérez Montesinos
Vinay Lal
Kevin Kim
Anthony Vivian
Robin D.G. Kelley
David N. Myers
William Marotti
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Richard Von Glahn
Ghislaine Lydon
Chien-Ling Liu
Andrew Apter
Caroline Ford
Bharat Venkat
Mary Momdjian
Jeremiah Sladeck
Teófilo Ruiz