A Chancellor’s Appeasement

While the national media have given extensive coverage to the violent removal of “pro-Palestinian” encampments at Columbia, UCLA and other universities, a far different yet also troubling scenario has played out on my home campus, the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Our chancellor, Kim A. Wilcox, recently reached an agreement with the campus Students for Justice in Palestine leaders to end their encampment. The university agreed to consider divesting from companies that do business in Israel and to consider banning Israeli products on campus and study abroad programs in Israel.  Those who like the deal think the chancellor managed to clear the encampments peacefully without anyone getting hurt and without giving away much in return.

The videos of the scene, however, tell a different story, one of administrators who lack moral compasses. They point to the bias, expediency, and dishonesty surrounding their actions. A video prior to the announcement shows the SJP leading chants, including “Israeli Settlers Leave Us Alone.  Palestine is Ours Alone” and “The Only Solution is Intifada Revolution.” As he takes up the microphone, the chancellor then praises the chanting students. The video then shows the administrators standing solemnly as the SJP leaders hail the campus for “robustly meeting our demands,” promising an “academic boycott” of Israel, and standing with “the student intifada.”  The chancellor then embraces the student activists, affirming their harangues.  This public embrace will haunt the campus long after the protesters have departed. 

Like most on my campus, I am a critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition and am sickened by the number of innocent people who have died in this war, including the many whose deaths are due to preventable failures of the Israeli military. I support a ceasefire if the hostages are part of the agreement. But it is also sickening (though at a far lesser scale of course) to see a University of California chancellor aligning his campus publicly with the goals of Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to erase the State of Israel.

The agreement, we are now told, was about clearing the encampment a day before thousands of parents and prospective students were slated to visit the campus.  The chancellor may not have wanted tents and chants to overshadow the day-long recruitment events, but he had other options for handling the issue. He could have told the parents that he supports students’ rights to protest and that he is talking with them. He could have favorably compared UC Riverside to the chaos at UCLA, and he could have said that it is not the role of the university to take stands on foreign policy.  Institutional neutrality is a principle and asset many university presidents understand and have applied to the “pro-Palestinian” protests.

Wilcox’s capitulation is not an isolated event or even surprising. Rather, it is the culmination of a long series of failures by the administration to protect the rights of Jewish students. Hillel has been vandalized.  Speakers have been prevented from speaking due to the failure of the UCR police to provide security. Jewish students have been harassed. Posters that violate university policy have been allowed to stand.  Protesters have marched through campus repeatedly chanting slogans the administration knows are heard by Jews as threatening, yet no efforts have been made to educate the student population about how Jews hear the chants. Scores of emails sent to the chancellor raising these concerns have gone unanswered.  

Following their disgraceful public capitulation, Wilcox and other administrators scurried to a private meeting with a few Jewish faculty and students. They apologized for not alerting them to the impending announcement and then told them that the agreement would have little impact. A cancelled study abroad program it seems was already going to be closed and no decisions on divestment can be made that violate a UC policy that currently prevents these actions. The provost told Jewish students to be “resilient” in the face of antisemitism. Chancellor Wilcox promised to take into consideration demands from Hillel students. But surely some must have wondered why sincerity would suddenly enter into any agreement with students at Hillel when he had just admitted to dealing cynically with SJP.

Wilcox and his subordinates have damaged the University’s reputation. Many faculty and students feel betrayed and donors are threatening to withhold donations and good will. Compounding the damage, Wilcox seems to have done nothing to prepare his staff from the blowback now occurring. Depending on what happens in the war, the cycle could begin again in the fall. At UC Riverside, we’ve seen our Chamberlain in action. What we hope for now is a Churchill in response.

Steven Brint is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Riverside and director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 Project.  He is the author, most recently, of “Two Cheers for Higher Education” (Princeton University Press, 2019).