The sun illuminates the Koret Quad at UC San Francisco (UCSF) as UC faculty and pro-Palestine protestors read aloud symbolic charges against the Regents of the University of California and UCSF leadership. After each charge is read, a resounding call echoes across the quad.
“Guilty as charged!”
Organizers brought massive puppets made in the likeness of UC Regents Gavin Newsom, Jay Sures, and Michael Drake. A fourth puppet was made in the likeness of a Palestinian mother, Zaynab, to represent the disproportionate killing of women and children within the conflict that Regents refuse divestment from. Puppets of Newsom (front right) and Zaynab (back left) pictured at UCSF.
Prior to the UC Regents meeting on Nov. 12, UC faculty, students, and community members gathered in Koret Quad for a rally and teach-ins centered around the UC Regents, pro-Palestine labor efforts, and UC’s “complicity in genocide and ongoing Nakba.”
“[The UC] pitches itself to the world as a leader in research. It also pitches itself to the people of California as a kind of democratizing step toward a future for [its] people,” said Christine Hong, UCSC critical race & ethnic studies faculty member. “But we have to realize that this is a university that was transformed during the Cold War into an essential part of the military, industrial academic complex. This [university] is part of an imperial infrastructure that is responsible for violence around the globe.”
The charges read aloud were deliberated the day before when a coalition of UC faculty and student pro-Palestine organizations held a UC People’s Tribunal, livestreamed on YouTube and held in person at UC Berkeley.
The judges at the tribunal were made up of a mix of community members, alumni, and UC faculty. They included Jalil Muntaqim, a veteran member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army; Jess Ghannam from UCSF, a Palestinian-American psychologist and professor; Corrina Gould, the Tribal Chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone; and Susan Abulhawa, a human rights activist and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine.
Rally organizers address the crowd consisting of students, faculty, and community members outside of William J. Rutter center at UC San Francisco.
The judges declared the Regents guilty as charged on all counts. Their verdict stated that the UC leadership was guilty of direct and indirect complicity in the crimes of ongoing Nakba and genocide, which they said includes — but is not limited to — investments and financial ties to Israel.
Hong, one of the organizers of the tribunal, spoke at the beginning of the rally at UCSF, introducing the charges and giving context to them.
“UC leadership has remained silent in the face of scholasticide, ecocide, and the murder of health care and humanitarian workers, and the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza,” Hong said. “[They are] unwilling to lend its considerable resources to protecting and rebuilding the Palestinian educational and healthcare infrastructure and supporting scholars, students and health care workers impacted by the genocide and ongoing Nakba.”
Christine Hong speaks to rally attendees highlighting the charges brought forward by The People’s Tribunal.
After the charges were vocalized, speakers read several testimonials from students and faculty, as well as people in Palestine.
Members of UCSC Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS) mentioned a specific UC financial tie they opposed: The Helen Diller Family Foundation.
“Between 2010 and 2021, the Helen Diller Foundation has given $600,000 to JINSA [Jewish Institution for the National Security of America], the imperialist military alliance between the Zionist state and the U.S., through facilitating collaboration and unconditional allegiance between the IOF and the US military industrial complex,” a JAWS speaker said. “Diller funds hospitals at UCSF to mask the blood that flows from the bombed hospitals of Gaza it directly facilitates through its funding of JINSA.”
According to UCSC’s Humanities Institute website, each year the foundation donates money to UCSC’s Jewish Studies Program. UCSC also honors Helen Diller by hosting a public lecture on campus annually.
There are also UCSF-specific charges directed toward the aforementioned UC leaders as well as the UCSF leadership, which included but was not limited to the school’s chancellor and the president of UCSF Health.
“We have a particular responsibility as the only campus that is purely a health professions campus, to speak about health, locally and globally and about health equity, locally and globally. It is part of our sacred oath. We take an oath to do no harm,” said Dr. Leigh Kimberg, professor of medicine at UCSF. “And that declaration specifically states that we will oppose harm to human rights. And that is our professional duty and part of our sacred oath to oppose human rights violations.”
Dr. Leigh Kimberg speaks to rally attendees, highlighting their sworn duty to “cause no harm,” and how investments by the UC contradict this oath.
There was also a cohort of students from UCSC’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment who went on stage to share their experiences of repression and police brutality. The accounts focused on May 31, when UCSC called 150 police officers to break up the encampment and arrest over 100 students.
“At 7:30 a.m., I was arrested … By the time the [zip tie] cuffs were removed, my hands were black and purple, and the damage had been done. I had a fractured wrist and extensive nerve damage in my hands,” said a former encampment member. “To this day, the effects of the UC’s violence does not end. I have physical damage, nerve damage, mental damage. I cannot think, read, learn, or love the same way I did before this event … I have never experienced this kind of violence, it is nothing in comparison to everything Palestinians have faced, and the UCPD and the UC’s complicity in all of this is atrocious.”
Public Comment
The UC Regents and its committees held a meeting in person and by teleconference Nov. 12-14. Each day consisted of committees and board meetings, with public comment only offered during the Health Services Committee’s meeting on Nov. 12.
At the rally, 20 students and faculty signed up to speak at the public comment, many of which were a part of the tribunal and rally. Each individual had up to one minute to address the Regents, and attendees both in person and over the phone had the ability to speak.
As their names were called, members of the pro-Palestine coalition took turns reading aloud their charges against the UC Regents and UCSF leadership.
The public comment also included a first-hand account of loss in Palestine and calls to the university to take steps to support Palestine. Maya, a student from UC Berkeley took the stand to vocalize their perspective.
“I’m a Palestinian student. Members of my family were killed in Gaza at the hand of IDF soldiers and at the hands of the Israeli state, and I stand here before you all today with the weight of that unimaginable loss. I am asking you UC Regents to take a stand against the ongoing genocide unfolding in Palestine right now,” Maya said. “If you care for humanity, stick on the right side of history and divest for weapons manufacturers and genocide enablers.”
Student protesters and members of The People’s Tribunal address the Board of Regents, announcing their verdict to the accused.