The AMCHA Initiative has achieved
an important victory!
April 19 2012
UC President and UCLA Faculty Leader say anti-Israel proselytizing by professors is inappropriate
Three weeks ago, AMCHA initiative co-founders Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith posed a simple but very significant question to top University of California administrators and faculty. They asked whether UCLA Professor David Delgado Shorter’s promotion of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel on his official UCLA class website was protected by the University of California rules of academic freedom. (For screenshots of Professor Shorter's class website see HERE and HERE).

Their question succeeded in eliciting a statement from Dr. Andrew Leuchter, head of the UCLA Academic Senate. After consulting with top UCLA administrators, he wrote in an email to the AMCHA Initiative that “it is not appropriate for a faculty member to post a political petition on which he is a signatory as part of a course…and that posting of such materials was a serious error in judgment.” Professor Shorter, at the request of Dr. Leuchter, was then counseled by his department chair not to repeat the mistake.

Dr. Leuchter's statement is an implicit acknowledgement by UC faculty and administration, for the first time, that promoting the boycott of Israel is a political action and therefore subject to state laws and university policies that prohibit the use of public resources for political activities.

Dr. Leuchter's email to AMCHA generated significant media coverage in the Los Angeles Times and Inside Higher Education.

On Tuesday, UC President Mark Yudof also spoke out publicly about this issue for the first time. In a talk to the Chico Chamber of Commerce, which was reported in the Oroville Mercury Register, President Yudof condemned UC faculty who use their classrooms or class websites to promote their own political beliefs, stating: "professors are there to educate -- not to rouse the troops for their cause."

The AMCHA Initiative is continuing to move forward on this matter by seeking further clarification of the University's position regarding faculty who use their classroom and university resources for anti-Israel proselytizing, as well as steps the University intends to take to curb such behavior.

The Amcha Initiative
PO Box 7041
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7041