The Ukrainian student community is watching as every city in their home country is being bombed daily. Contacting relatives and friends hourly to see if they are okay, instead of having a normal Berkeley student life. Berkeley has been at the forefront of all social justice and political issues around the world.

The academic community holds an unprecedented amount of political and social influence, and we demand for the intellectual elites at the world’s leading higher institutions to use their platform to take a definitive stance today. The inaction of universities, as well as their cooperation with the aggressor states, legitimizes the power of such regimes and their actions.

We demand a statement from UC Berkeley which condemns the Russian aggression and show its support for the victims of this unprovoked war, which is unleashing a humanitarian crisis.