Associate Vice President Patricia A. Pérez:

We, the undersigned faculty, students, and community members, write to denounce your decision to censure and issue violation notices to five CSU Long Beach faculty members from the College of Liberal Arts: Drs. Araceli Esparza, Steven Osuna, Azza Basarudin, Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, and Jake Alimahomed-Wilson. We call (1) for the immediate rescinding of the violation notices against these five faculty members and (2) for a moratorium on the enforcement of all CSULB Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) policies while an open, public, and transparent reevaluation that prioritizes faculty, student, and staff input is conducted. 

Predominantly faculty of color and disproportionately Muslim, the five CSULB professors have been singled out by you and your administrative office for allegedly violating CSULB’s TPM “Amplification Policies” following a May 2, 2024, student teach-in on Palestine, where they shared their scholarly expertise with a gathering of over 500 students. Many other faculty spoke at this teach-in, and at other campus demonstrations during the past academic year, using amplified sound. Yet, in what appears to be a  prejudicial and biased manner, you issued censure notices only to Drs. Esparza, Osuna, Basarudin, and the Alimahomed-Wilsons for allegedly violating the university’s TPM policy. 

It is no coincidence that these five targeted faculty are the authors of a widely circulated op-ed piece, “Boeing University: How the California State University became Complicit in Palestinian Genocide,” that was published on May 20, 2024. “Boeing University” exposes CSULB’s deep ties to the Boeing Corporation and other weapons and defense contractors that are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In a recent letter addressed to you, Jonathan Markovitz, Senior Staff Attorney at the Southern California ACLU, voiced his concerns over the “troubling indications that the warning letters may have been sent in retaliation for speech that the university disagrees with or because the Alimahomed-Wilsons and the other faculty members who received warnings co-authored a recent article accusing the University of complicity in Palestinian genocide.” Likewise, we are dismayed at what plainly appears to be a retaliatory act against these faculty members, one that infringes on their academic freedom and freedom of expression as they raise their voices, along with millions across the United States and the world, against the ongoing and intensifying genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. 

We understand that your office’s attack against these five faculty members is part of a nationwide crackdown on the part of university administrations to intimidate and silence faculty and students in the face of U.S. institutional complicity in the war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out by Israel against Palestinians. The decision of the CSU – the nation’s largest public university system – to adopt new “zero tolerance” TPM policies reflects a saddening and hypocritical abandonment of the public university’s mission to foster independent and unfettered research, discourse, and knowledge in service of the public good. The approach reflects  a draconian and authoritarian effort to suppress voices of dissent in a critical time for our nation and the world. 

As the American Association for University Professors recently stated: “At this critical moment, too many cowardly university leaders are responding to largely peaceful, outdoor protests by inviting law enforcement in riot gear to campus and condoning violent arrests. These administrators are failing in their duty to their institutions, their faculty, their students, and their central obligation to our democratic society.”  

The Southern California ACLU has called CSULB’s TPM sound amplification policy “unconstitutional on its face.” The California Faculty Association – which represents 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors, and coaches who teach and provide services to the CSU system’s 485,000 students – filed a Public Employment Relations Board charge over the implementation of the CSU’s new TPM policy. In addition, California Scholars for Academic Freedom addressed an open letter to CSU Chancellor Mildred García that calls the new TPM policies “a broad attack on academic freedom, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, worker rights to concerted activity and of freedom of speech on all CSU campuses.”

The constitutionally protected freedoms of faculty, students, and staff at universities must be defended, and the right to voice loudly and forcefully our collective condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Palestine and of the U.S.’s complicity must be preserved. The only appropriate action on the part of universities when confronted with outside political and ideological pressure is to defend steadfastly the academic freedoms of faculty, staff, and students. CSULB and your office of Faculty Affairs have flagrantly failed in this duty.

For these reasons, we demand (1) the immediate rescinding of the violation notices against the five CSULB faculty members that have been targeted and (2) a moratorium on the enforcement of all CSULB TPM policies while an open, public, and transparent reevaluation that prioritizes faculty, student, and staff input is conducted.

CC: 

Jane Conoley, President, California State University, Long Beach, Jane.Conoley@csulb.edu, 

Karyn Scissum Gunn, Provost and Senior Vice President, Karyn.ScissumGunn@csulb.edu 

Deborah Thien, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Deborah.Thien@csulb.edu 

Donna Nicol, Associate Dean for Personnel and Curriculum, Donna.Nicol@csulb.edu 

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Additional Informational Links:

• CSU Faculty for Free Speech

 

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