Statement from UCI Department of African American Studies
We of the Department of African American Studies at UCI echo our colleagues here and elsewhere in expressing our unequivocal solidarity with our students, faculty, staff, and community members, especially as they are suspended, threatened with arrest, arrested, beaten, or otherwise intimidated and brutalized while they peacefully protest. As is the case with the University of California system writ large, as is the case with the world itself, UCI owes a profound debt to the devotional ethics and unflinching political movements of students, faculty, alumni, community members—movements much like this one. In UCI’s case, centers like the Cross-Cultural Center, the Student Outreach and Retention Center, and the Center for Black Cultures, Research, and Resources only exist as a result of the immense efforts of such collaborative, communal organizing and moving.
Alongside UCI’s Department of History, we endorse the statements of April 30 and May 2 of UCLA's History Department, including their six core demands, and express our full solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff at UCLA.
We make the following demands:
1 We demand that UCI act to preserve and protect the physical safety of students at the encampment, including from outside attackers. We do not want a repeat of the mob attack of May 2nd and 3rd at UCLA, nor should the police be called in to “sweep” the encampment. Students, faculty, and community members–including members of our department–have spent day and night watching over UCI students and maintained open dialogue between the encampment, UCPD, and administrators. We applaud our department community members for protecting our students and ensuring that all who visit the encampment are treated with respect and empathy. Many of our students are working-class people of color and are thus particularly vulnerable to police violence. The safety of those in the encampment must be the university administration’s top priority.
2 We demand that UCI affirm the fundamental right to protest and free speech, which are currently being celebrated in this “Year of Free Speech.” We, as historians, remind you that disruption is non-violent and an integral part of the act of communication in social movements, whether marches, sit-ins, or encampments. Again, disruption and discomfort are not violence.
3 We demand that UCI engage in good-faith negotiations with the encampment student organizers and their faculty liaisons–one of whom is a historian from our department–with the goal of achieving a just resolution.
4 We demand that UCI commit to refrain from taking any disciplinary or criminal action against any student, faculty, or staff involved in the encampment. We further demand a full amnesty across our sister campuses.
5 We demand an independent investigation, led by faculty and including students, into the events of April 29, 2024, when multiple police forces as well as the Orange County Sheriff's Department were called to campus until Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan called for them to de-escalate and step down. The full facts of what happened that day, including the decision-making at the highest levels, should be established and transparently shared with our community. UCI, led by the Academic Senate, can then develop appropriate policies and procedures for approving any police intervention in cases involving issues of free speech and protest.
6 We demand that UCI and UCOP fully disclose all their investments so that students, faculty, and staff across the UC may understand how the university prioritizes its finances. We call on UCI and UCOP to divest from all military weapons production companies and supporting systems. Such disclosure should also be accompanied by a larger process, involving students and faculty, of developing ethical investment protocols more suitable to the values and principles of peace and higher education.
Whatever good remains present and possible in this moment and in the world owes itself to the informed and devotional movement of people weaving their politics into an unwavering ethics and mobilizing that ethics in the names of justice and freedom. We call on Chancellor Gillman to understand this truth, to recognize the ways this very campus is indebted to it, and to act ethically by ensuring the safety of the protesters risking so much and insisting upon a world that does not apologize for or support genocide.
Signed,
The UCI Department of African American Studies
