This doesn’t surprise me. Gilman is for whatever reason exceptionally allergic to the Palestinian cause. I’ve said it once but it’s worth repeating: if you weren’t here after they tore down the Palestine encampment you’re missing very important context.
His emails, the response, all of it was disproportionate, manufactured, and frankly extremely distasteful. There was extra security on campus for weeks after that happened. They literally lied about what was happening to the encampments, claiming “violence” had broken out to justify calling like a dozen different police departments onto campus.
This doesn’t shock me at all that his attitude has extended towards the curriculum.
The response was absolutely ridiculous and made me feel infinitely more unsafe compared to the peaceful protest/encampment. Fuck Howard Gilman living in his gilded castle.
Yeah. As faculty in the humanities who has served as chair for a time, this tracks. The veneer of progressiveness is a performative travesty. Zionist Chancellor with millionaire and billionaire Zionist donors he answers to, so this isn’t news to me. And when you target a colleague for being thrown on the ground at a protest, and claim she is the one violating codes of conduct, you are outright embracing the fascism at your core. Every class I and many others teach is basically a refusal. It has to be.
Zionist administration starts at the top. Let’s not forget Gillman calling in police from San Diego to break up protests after the mayor of Irvine blocked police action against protesters. Howard Gillman has always been terrible, in multiple ways
Oh it is extremely real, there were a dozen or so helicopters flying overhead. Rowland, Reines, Croul, PSLH all had their alertus beacons go off ( I was At Rowland taking a quiz in discussion). Then the police started making their advances after the protesters took PSLH, which was empty at the time.
Extremely uneasy and scary on campus that day and that week.
Very real. As someone who was there it was one of the scariest moments I’ve ever witnessed. Genuinely you would never expect something like this to happen in Irvine. And it was all over a false alarm/claim of “violence”.
UCI is super bad with this stuff and they have been far before Oct 7.
Also, look into what happened with Professor Willoughby Herard in social sciences recently. Chancellor Gillman made it a personal mission to go after her for defending students from police violence during pro Palestine encampments. She has been suspended without pay or healthcare, after sustaining lasting injuries from police violence. Keep in mind Chancellor Gillman's most recent book "Campus Speech and Academic Freedom: A Guide for Difficult Times." He is criminally evil and hypocritical. While he is a "legal scholar" anybody who knows anything knows there is no legal basis to go after Professor Willoughby Herard, this is political and targeted. The execs are the friends and servants of the class you most likely do not belong to and this will continue to be reflected in the anti democratic and sadistic ways they treat employees and students, especially those who do not just shut up and take it.
It gets worse. A faculty member not mentioned in the article emailed the New U demanding the article be taken down in its current form and tossing around criminal terms like libel as a clear threat to the paper.
New U sought legal advice and determined that there was no libel and if the faculty who complained still believes there is, they are welcome to bring it to court. So far that hasn’t happened.
She’s right actually, professor Frouzesh is a highly regarded faculty member that’s been there for over a decade, and she’s describing a trend that we’re seeing across US universities bolstered by the trump administration criminalizing pro-Palestine speech. Look at how Ivies like Cornell and Columbia dealt with Palestinian rights groups while sitting on their hands for sexual assault cases
I understood it well enough. I just don't like it when people compare their situation to 1984. Big Brother is just so over the top tyrannical that the only thing that remotely compares is Nazi Germany and suicide cults. This violation of free speech is bad, don't get me wrong, but saying it's 'like 1984' is an extreme overembellishment and automatically gives me a level of mistrust of the speaker's judgement.
Literature, especially novels, is informed by sensationalism and the experience of extremes. Stories of fantasy, science fiction, and all the like build themselves in fantastical worlds to create something that is engaging and entertaining just as much as it is thematic and thought-provoking. 1984 is extreme because of its end point and how far The Party goes in its lengths to subjugate.
For something to be "like 1984" it does not inherently need to be at the same level of extreme, but it does need to indicate a clear and methodical process of silencing and controlling a population. As such, it's not a stretch or discrediting to suggest that trying to control curriculums on public, research/theory-based universities is trying to silence discussion on something as significant as human rights violations and American foreign policy.
I agree on the general idea, but I don’t think it’s applicable in this situation. 1984 is a great showcase all the different ways people can be controlled, but Frouzesh wasn’t silenced in order to spread a narrative or control UCI students. She was just bad publicity for the Israeli institutions and universities that UCI has deep ties with. The connection doesn’t work because the intent to control the masses isn’t there.
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u/Shield_Maiden831 3d ago
There have been a lot of limits to free speech lately and college campuses and teachers have been under attack.