A bill making its way through California’s legislature would stifle free speech on public university and college campuses, specifically around protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestine, according to civil rights advocates.
As state lawmakers head back to Sacramento for the final stretch of the year’s legislative session, which often ends in a flurry of last-minute votes in mid-September, the American Civil Liberties Union in California is ringing the alarm bell on Senate Bill 1287, saying that it will “set a dangerous precedent of chilling speech on campuses across the state.”
The bill, introduced in February by Democratic state Sen. Steve Glazer, would require schools to adopt and enforce rules against harassment, discrimination, or any behavior that “creates a hostile environment on campus.”
Glazer and the bill’s supporters, which include a host of pro-Israel advocacy groups, say the bill protects all students’ safety and free speech, regardless of their positions. Glazer has defended his bill from critics who view the measure as a part of a larger effort to curb free speech of the student activists who voice support for Palestine, and has amended it to remove some of its most targeted language.
Still, Glazer’s approach to the issue of protests against Israel is clear, even if he argues it has nothing to do with the bill. “I’m not trying to hide my opinion, I just haven’t said a lot about it because I know why people want to make this be about pro-Palestinian, anti-Palestinian bill,” Glazer told The Intercept. “I would argue, pro-Hamas, anti-Hamas,” Glazer continued, referring to how he would frame the debate, before immediately disavowing the idea that he was framing the debate at all.
“Whatever framing you want to use to make your case, people are doing that — I’m not,” Glazer said.
The original version of the bill was bluntly aimed at criminalizing pro-Palestine protests when it was drafted, said Leena Sabagh, an advocate and a policy manager with the Council on Islamic-American Relations.
The original bill included a proposed ban on a “call for or support of genocide,” which Sabagh took as a direct attempt to prohibit the common protest slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The “genocide” language was eventually cut from the bill after pushback by free speech advocates and state assembly members who were concerned the ban would violate First Amendment rights.
“It was very clear who this bill was targeting,” Sabagh said, pointing to the original “genocide” provision. Students who support Palestine have already been met with intense pushback from schools, including police violence, arrests, and suspensions. The bill would give universities even more tools to punish students who are protesting in support of Palestine, she added.
“There’s both aspects — it’s generally unconstitutional, and on top of that, we know what the application of this bill would lead to,” Sabagh said. “We see who’s currently being targeted and suppressed by universities: It’s the Palestinian students, it’s Arab students, it’s Muslim students, and the Jewish students who support Palestine, and all other students who are protesting in support of Palestine.”
Among the bill’s most vocal detractors has been ACLU California Action, which said in a letter sent last week to Glazer’s office that the amended bill would still suppress free speech. In the letter, obtained by The Intercept, the ACLU highlighted areas of the bill that are “overly broad” and vague, such as leaving terms like “harassment,” “discrimination,” and “hostile environment” with no clear definitions that may allow institutions to apply them in ways that prohibit students’ free speech.
Glazer’s bill would also require students to acknowledge the new set of rules as a condition of their enrollment at a school. It also institutes a training program that would “educate students on how to exchange views in an atmosphere of mutual respect and civility.” If the bill passes a vote in the state Assembly and is signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it would apply to the state’s community colleges, California State University’s 23 campuses, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system, which together enroll more than 2.6 million students each year.
“We foresee this mandate being applied in ways that unnecessarily restrict protected speech,” the ACLU wrote, “resulting in both indefensible censorship and administrative discipline.” The group also anticipated costly lawsuits as a possible outcome from uneven enforcement of the policy across the dozens of state campuses.
Apartheid Then, but Not Now
The state Senate passed the bill with a near-unanimous vote in late May, as student encampments and demonstrations calling for institutional divestment from Israel sprouted on campuses across the U.S. How schools have responded to campus protests — some promised to consider divesting, others called in police raids in which hundreds of students and faculty faced violence, arrest, and suspension — has been the subject of widespread debate and scrutiny over free speech rights of students. Reports of antisemitic incidents at schools have also raised questions around free speech and double standards.
When advocating for his bill ahead of the vote, Glazer mentioned his own record of activism, having led a movement against South African apartheid while a student at San Diego State University, advocating for schools to divest from banks that had investments in South Africa. Advocates for the ongoing divestment movement against Israel’s government have drawn inspiration from the South Africa divestment movement of the late 1980s. The United Nation’s top court recently declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank illegal and said that it amounts to apartheid of the Palestinian people.
However, Glazer in his interview with The Intercept was quick to shoot down any suggestion that he was drawing a connection between South Africa and Israel.
“I brought up my own activism to show that I’m not immune to seeing injustices in the world — I’ve been very active in my own life in trying to advance justice,” Glazer told The Intercept, “but we didn’t do it by denying other students their free speech rights. We didn’t do it with intimidation and harassment and violence against those who had a different view.”
The bill mirrors a larger trend within the University of California school system and among lawmakers to suppress protests that are in support of Palestine and are critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, said Constance Penley, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, the political arm of faculty members across the UC system. The group also opposes the bill.
Penley pointed to a new rule that bans departments from posting political statements on UC departmental websites after several ethnic studies departments expressed support for Palestinian “freedom from an apartheid system” and condemned Israel for its “genocidal attack on Gaza.” The UC regents issued the ban in July amid concern that anti-Israel views on school sites could be construed as an official UC stance.
State lawmakers are also withholding $25 million in funds from the UC until it enacts and enforces new rules around free speech in response to campus protests from the spring. Glazer said his bill is complementary to the legislature’s rules mandate, through the state budget, but clarified that he was not a part of the budgeting decision.
Across the U.S., lawmakers on the state and federal level have introduced bills cracking down on campus protests. In Congress, Republican lawmakers proposed a slate of bills, including measures that would revoke visas and deport any international student convicted of a crime related to protests on campus; bar students convicted of a protest-related crime from receiving financial aid; make federal accreditation and funding for schools contingent on their policies toward protests; barring a student of faculty member from student loan forgiveness if they are expelled or fired due to protests; and withholding federal funds from schools that don’t clear encampments. Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee who is behind several of the bills, also introduced one that would require a student convicted of a protest-related offense to do community service in Gaza for six months.
Pennsylvania is mirroring several of the congressional bills, such as a measure withholding financial aid from student protesters convicted of a crime, and a bill that would withhold state funding to any institution that boycotts or divests from Israel. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was among Kamala Harris’s top picks for running mate, has reportedly said he would sign the anti-divestment bill into law if passed.
“It’s part and parcel,” Penley said of S.B. 1287 and the nationwide crackdown on protests and effort to force universities to institute new policies around campus speech.
The Palestine Exception
Even before October 7, UC officials made their position on Israel and Palestine known in a controversial 2018 letter signed by chancellors from all 10 of its campuses, which opposed an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions despite growing calls from their students to do so. The majority of the system’s student bodies have passed resolutions in support of divestment and the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. In 2015, the UC Student Association passed an unprecedented call to divest from corporations that “profit from violations of Palestinian human rights.” The chancellors published their letter after lobbying by the AMCHA Initiative, which considers movements critical of the state of Israel, such as BDS, to be antisemitic. School officials once again rejected boycotts of Israel earlier this year responding to the majority of campus student governments who passed similar resolutions supporting BDS boycotts. AMCHA also pushed for the ban on comments posted to department websites, with the support of a coalition of UC faculty, breaking from the faculty’s governing bodies.
“There is something about S.B. 1287 that you can’t understand unless you understand how entwined it is with this ongoing fight around the Palestine exception to [free speech],” Penley said.
She referred to a 2015 report by Palestine Legal and the Center of Constitutional Rights, “The Palestine Exception,” a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed 300 incidents across 65 U.S. college campuses in which schools or government officials suppressed Palestinian human rights advocacy from students and professors. Pushback included event cancellations, legal complaints, administrative discipline, firings, and “false accusations of terrorism and antisemitism.”
The study focuses on instances in which statements critical of Israeli policy were construed as antisemitism. It’s a tactic employed by various pro-Israeli advocacy groups that are among S.B. 1287’s most ardent supporters. Among them is the Anti-Defamation League, which has a history of advocating for post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws to undermine support for Palestinians in the U.S. Earlier this year the group leveled the unsubstantiated accusation that Students for Justice in Palestine had sent money to Hamas, urging schools to investigate students without providing evidence.
Defining Antisemitism
Although Glazer has been adamant that the bill itself is “content-neutral” and doesn’t favor any particular side, he has said he was motivated by reports of incidents of antisemitism on college campuses.
Glazer has cited an incident where students at UC Berkeley shut down a speaker event for an Israeli attorney and former Israel Defense Forces soldier, Ran Bar-Yoshafat, who described himself as “right-wing, hawkish Israeli.” The university said windows were broken and protesters intimidated students attending the event, which was organized by Zionist, pro-Israel student groups. Glazer has also pointed to a now-deleted tweet from a UC Davis professor who posted a threat toward “Zionist journalists who spread propaganda and misinformation,” and continued, “they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more,” alongside emojis of a knife, an ax, and a drop of blood. Glazer, who is Jewish, has condemned both incidents as examples of antisemitism on college campuses.
The Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, a pro-Israel lobbying group, which used to offer annual trips for California lawmakers to Israel to promote the Israeli government, is one of the bill’s biggest backers and has echoed Glazer’s concerns. A lobbyist for the group, Cliff Berg, has been present at each of the bill’s eight committee hearings since it was introduced, praising the bill for its ability to “fight antisemitism in higher education campuses,” and referencing an ADL report that said antisemitic incidents on campuses more than doubled since October 7.
Both the ADL and JPAC adhere to the International Holocaust Remembrance Association definition of antisemitism, which many Zionist groups and lawmakers across the U.S. have interpreted to include criticism against the state of Israel, an interpretation decried even by the author of the definition. JPAC is also among top donors to Glazer’s campaign for state treasurer, contributing $5,000 in late June and $2,350 for Glazer’s reelection in 2020, according to state records.
JPAC is also lobbying for a number of separate California bills focused on education policy, including A.B. 2918, which would set up stricter oversight of ethnic studies curriculum in K-12 public schools. The law is meant to address, in part, course materials like those from the Santa Ana Unified School District in Southern California, which included lessons on Israel’s history of occupation in Palestine’s West Bank, the impacts of its blockade in Gaza, and human rights violations committed in both regions. The ADL has criticized the lessons as being antisemitic and one-sided.
Rebecca Arvizu, a board member of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace — which includes leaders from Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim faiths and also opposed S.B. 1287 — said such bills are a part of “the weaponization of antisemitism” to “dehumanize and suppress” those who support the rights of Palestinians.
“These false narratives running through the press dehumanize and suppress these voices,” she said.
Arvizu and her group have been tracking lawmakers and organizations that try to discredit the pro-Palestine movement by conflating criticisms of Israeli policy with antisemitism.
She pointed to a letter drafted by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus in January that raised the alarm about rising antisemitism, but went on to attack K-12 school districts for teaching history lessons that were critical of Israel as “bigoted, inaccurate, discriminatory, and deeply offensive anti-Jewish and anti-Israel propaganda.” The caucus decried local resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza from the cities of Oakland and Long Beach as providing “a platform for “bigots to express hateful conspiracy theories and extreme anti-Jewish vitriol,” without providing examples to back their claim. It also criticized protesters advocating for a ceasefire for shutting down the California Democratic Party Convention in November.
Finishing What Reagan Started
S.B. 1287 must pass through its final hurdle on Thursday when the California State Assembly’s appropriations committee votes on the bill, before reaching the assembly floor for a final vote. Although Glazer’s bill continues to pass through assembly committees with near-unanimous votes, support from assembly members has often been conditional.
Some lawmakers have likened the bill to Ronald Reagan’s calls, when he was California’s governor, for crackdowns on civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protesters in 1967 with new rules that would limit speech on campuses.
“SB 1287 (Glazer) would effectively constitute a policy that aligns with then-Governor Reagan’s plea to the campus Chancellor, to ‘lay down some rules of conduct for the students comparable to what we’d expect in our own families’ by curtailing the freedom of speech on campus and the freedom to assemble,” members of the assembly committee on higher education wrote in their analysis of the bill.
Other lawmakers and opponents of the bill also said the bill was redundant and did little to add to existing law around harassment and other incidents of violence on campuses.
Sen. Aisha Wahab, the first and only Muslim member of the state Senate, gave the sole vote in opposition to the bill in that chamber. While recognizing Glazer’s intention to protect free speech rights of all students, she raised concerns over its punitive measures.
“What happens to that particular student?” she said on the Senate floor in May before casting her “no” vote, referring to a student who violates the provisions in the bill. “How are they affected in the academic arena? Are they going to be blacklisted? Are they allowed in the UCs?”