Statement of the undersigned UCLA Law Faculty and Staff on the Events of April 30–May 2

Statement of the undersigned UCLA Law faculty and staff: At the UCLA School of Law, we study the ways constitutional democracies constrain state power and protect the ability of citizens to express their views free from violent reprisal. We also recognize that our freedoms do not protect themselves, but must be guaranteed every day by those public officials authorized to exercise power in the public interest. Such protections are particularly essential to the functioning of a university, which is a large community of people with strong and diverse views. Whatever our personal views on the current situation in Israel/Palestine, we are united in our commitment to ensure that everyone in our community, including students, faculty, and staff, may protest peacefully without suffering violence at the hands of armed mobs, our own police force, or police forces called in on our behalf.  

We strongly condemn the violent attack on UCLA students by a mob of outsiders unaffiliated with UCLA, and the use of police violence to harm members of our community, and we especially condemn the failure of campus security to arrest members of the mob who were committing crimes of violence against our students in plain sight on the night of April 30. And although we recognize that the university administration faced a challenging situation, we deplore the university’s failure to take the steps necessary to protect our students’ peaceful protest, despite the administration’s being on notice well before April 30 of the imminent risk of serious violence against the students in the encampment.

The university administration did not orchestrate the violence endured by the students who were peacefully demonstrating on the Royce Quad. We nonetheless believe it bears ultimate responsibility for what occurred. Even before the events of April 30, the counter-protestors had been allowed to install themselves right next to the student encampment and to take a variety of actions that went well beyond ordinary counter-protest, such as setting up a Jumbotron which blared violent images and sound day and night directly into the encampment and launching physical attacks late at night on the students in the encampment. In response to this overtly aggressive behavior, the University should have taken steps to physically separate the counter-protestors from the student encampment and to remove from campus anyone who became violent. The university’s failure to impose such a separation or to put into place a de-escalation strategy in case the counter-protesters returned seems to us to have contributed to the circumstances of the four-hour long violent attack perpetrated by vigilante opponents of the encampment.

Faculty present the night of April 30 described the treatment of the students in the encampment by these vigilantes as “brutal,” an assessment confirmed by video documentation. Although security personnel and police officers were present and were even joking with the vigilantes, according to faculty witnesses, it took several hours for them to step in and protect the protestors and student reporters, who in the meantime were attacked with chemical sprays, fireworks, metal pipes, wood, and metal barricades. And even then, not one of the perpetrators of this attack was arrested. This dereliction of duty was indefensible.

So too was the violence that occurred during the night of May 1, when militarized police in full riot gear used brute force, stun grenades, rubber bullets, and zip ties to intimidate UCLA students, faculty, and staff in the encampment for several hours before storming the encampment and violently arresting 200 of the students, faculty, and staff who were peacefully protesting. We hope there will be a full inquiry into the conduct of the police officers on both April 30 and May 1. But here too, the university bears some responsibility; if campus administrators felt steps were necessary to ensure that the encampment operated consistently with allowing classes to continue and university business to be conducted, there were innumerable ways this effort might have been managed short of inviting armed police officers to launch a violent attack.

The signatories below join with other faculty on campus in asking the UCLA administration to:

1. Stand by the students, faculty, and staff who were violently attacked by outsiders, and/or were forcibly removed from the encampment through:

• Assistance with unreimbursed medical expenses associated with injuries sustained by student, staff, and faculty protesters.

• A commitment on the part of the university to not take any disciplinary or other actions (such as student suspensions and expulsions or retaliation against employees) for peaceful protest activities by those who took part in the Royce Quad encampment during the events of April 30-May 2. We do not dispute that the university can enforce reasonable and neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. But because of the violence committed against the student protesters on the nights of April 30 and May 1, we believe it best for the university as a whole if the administration were to forebear from taking this step against those students who participated in the encampment disbanded on May 2.

• Advocacy on the part of the university in support of the students, faculty, and staff facing legal jeopardy for their peaceful participation in the protest (including requests for charges to be dropped, and help securing legal representation).

2. Launch an independent investigation into  

• The administration’s activities from the time the camp started until the clearance of the camp on May 2.

• The role of the police on the campus, including their seeming unwillingness to protect students on the night of April 30,  their failure to arrest any of the vigilantes who were committing crimes in plain sight, and the conduct in the clearing of the encampment on May 1.

The ultimate goal should be to provide the university community with a full and complete understanding of the events surrounding the encampment from the moment of its inception through its disbanding in the early hours of May 2. 

3. Finally, we call upon the UCLA administration and faculty to work together to develop strategies that allow protests and counter-protests to occur safely in the future and to ensure that nothing like the terrible events of April 30-May 2 ever occurs again.

86 total signatories

Richard L. Abel, Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor

Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of Law

Tendayi Achiume, Professor of Law

Alexander Arnold, Assistant Professor of Law

Ahilan Arulanatham, Professor from Practice, Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy

Shirin Bakhshay, Assistant Professor of Law

LaToya Baldwin Clark, Professor of Law

Cara A. Barnhardt, Executive Administrator

Amanda Barrow, Senior Staff Attorney, Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy

Max Belasco, Manager of Bruin Learn and Clinical IT

Joseph Berra, Human Rights in the Americas Project Director

Kris Bicknell, Graphic Designer

Gary Blasi, Professor of Law Emeritus

William Boyd, Professor of Law

Taimie Bryant, Professor of Law

Hayley Burgess, Senior Communications Strategist, Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP)

Casey Caprioglio, Faculty Support Assistant

Devon Carbado, The Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of Law

Kim Chatham, Educational Programs Coordinator and Administrative Specialist

Kerith Jane Conron, Blachford-Cooper Research Director and Distinguished Scholar

Gerloni Cotton, Lecturer in Law

Evan Coulter, Faculty Assistant

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Promise Institute Chair in Human Rights

Sharon Dolovich, Professor of Law, Faculty Director, UCLA Prison Law & Policy Program, Director, UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project

Rachel Dowd, Communications Director, The Williams Institute

Blake Emerson, Professor of Law

Joseph Fishkin, Professor of Law

Cary Franklin, McDonald/Wright Chair of Law, Faculty Director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy, Faculty Director of the Williams Institute

Fanna Gamal, Assistant Professor, UCLA School of Law

Hannah Garry, Professor from Practice, Executive Director The Promise Institute for Human Rights,

Evan George, Communications Director, Emmett Institute

Laura Gomez, Rachel F. Moran Endowed Chair in Law

Melissa Goodman, Executive Director, Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy

Ariela Gross, Distinguished Professor of Law

Cheryl Harris, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Professor in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Barbara Herman, Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law

Christopher Hsieh, Faculty Assistant

Talia Inlender, Deputy Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy

Jerry Kang, Distinguished Professor of Law

Michael Karanicolas, Executive Director - Institute for Technology, Law & Policy

Jasleen Kohli, Executive Director, Critical Race Studies Program

Monika Langarica, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Immigration Law and Policy

Jamie Libonate, Manager of Operations and Events, Office of Public Interest Programs

Chloe Lin, Program Coordinator at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law

Aaron Littman, Assistant Professor of Law

Mica Llerandi, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Director of the Tribal Legal Development Clinic

Sofia Lopez Franco, Staff Attorney, Center for Immigration Law and Policy

Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director, Promise Institute Europe, Professor from Practice

Emmanuel Mauleón, Greenberg Teaching Fellow, UCLA School of Law

Grace Meng, Director, Schrader Pro Bono Program

Cynthia Merrill, Lecturer in Law

Bahar Mirhosseni, Lecturer in Law

S. Priya Morley, Director, International Human Rights Clinic & Racial Justice Policy Counsel, Promise Institute for Human Rights

Heather Morphew, Progam Manager, Emmett Institute

Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy

Victor Narro, Core Faculty, Public Interest Law and Policy Program (PILP)

Jeanne Nishimoto, Executive Director, UCLA Veterans Legal Clinic

K-Sue Park, Professor of Law

Sunita Patel, Assistant Professor

Jess Peake, Assistant Director, the Promise Institute for Human Rights

Laura Pedraza-Fariña, Professor of Law

Nina Rabin, Clinical Professor of Law

Megha Ram, Lecturer in Law

Brian Raphael, Reference Librarian

Elana Redfield, The Williams Institute

Angela R. Riley, Professor of Law & American Indian Studies

Brad Sears, Associate Dean UCLA School of Law

Andrew D. Selbst, Assistant Professor of Law

Seana Shiffrin, Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice and Professor of Philosophy

Anna Spain Bradley, Professor of Law

Clyde Spillenger, Professor of Law

Brenda Suttonwills, Asst. Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives

Catherine Sweetser, Director, Human Rights Litigation Clinic

Tony Tolbert, Assistant Adjunct Professor

Carley Towne, Programs and Communications Coordinator

Maria Tsiao, Fundraising Coordinator

Lauren van Schilfgaarde, Assistant Professor of Law

Alicia Virani, Director, Criminal Justice Program

Thomas Wanebo, Lecturer in Law

Alex Wang, Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

Karin Wang, Executive Director and Professor from Practice

Andrew Whitcup, Associate Director, Office of Public Interest Programs

Lindsay Wiley, Professor of Law

Sanford Williams, Lecturer in Law

Noah Zatz, Professor of Law and Labor Studies

Leah Zeidler-Ordaz, Youth Justice Policy Lead, Criminal Justice Program