We, the faculty of the UCI Asian American Studies Department, express our solidarity with the Palestine Solidarity Encampment launched by the UCI Divest Coalition in response to the nationwide call for the Popular University for Gaza Movement. In contrast to the University’s description of the encampment as “unauthorized,” we view their presence and their voices as legitimate expressions of free speech and a fully appropriate response to Israel’s ongoing violent devastation against the Palestinian people, especially those in Gaza. We also express our outrage over the series of events that occurred at UCLA last week, which included violent attacks on its encampment by a mob on April 30, 2024, and which culminated in law enforcement’s violent clearing of the encampment on May 2, 2024. We endorse this letter signed by UC faculty in their condemnation of Chancellor Gene Block’s handling of the situation at UCLA, and urge Chancellor Howard Gillman and the UCI administration to take a different, more productive, and collaborative course of action.

We join the students’ call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the occupation and genocide in Palestine; for UCI to provide full transparency to all UC-wide and UCI Foundation assets including, investments, donations, and grants in order that it may divest from companies and institutions that are complicit in the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide of the Palestinian people; for no punitive actions to be made by either law enforcement agencies or the University against student protestors; and for any current disciplinary actions against student protestors to be revoked. We also align with statements of solidarity from the Association of Asian American Studies, as well as from Asian American Studies departments and programs at UCLA, UCSB, UC Davis, CSUN, and Northwestern University. We believe these demands will allow UCI to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and “to dismantling the systemic barriers of racism and discrimination that have too long been the norm in higher learning and our broader communities.”

Asian American Studies exists because of student activism and protest. It is rooted in a tradition of opposition to war, imperialism, racism, settler colonialism, and police violence in the United States, its territories, and abroad. Anti-colonial critique is a legitimate and rigorous scholarly pursuit with a long history in our academic institutions. It is a central part of our field's commitment to solidarity with the oppressed and forms the basis of core values that cultivate self-determination, liberation, and justice. The Palestine Solidarity Encampment is part of a longer history of student activism at UCI and throughout the UCs. Given this history, we are committed to the right for our students to exercise their free speech, safely and without fear of retaliation. We support student-led efforts that advance human rights and social change, and in this time, for justice, peace, and sovereignty for the people of Palestine.

Signed,

Dorothy Fujita-Rony

Claire Jean Kim

James Kyung-Jin Lee

Julia H. Lee

Isabela Quintana

Linda Trinh Vo

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu