Not too long ago, a UC Berkeley instructor decided to engage in protest. He fundamentally altered not only the format of his classes but also his very lifestyle for weeks on end. His protest took a physical toll on him, a phenomenon he took great pride in. All the while, the subject of his protest was unrelated to the classes he taught.
The instructor in question is Ron Hassner, a professor of political science and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces — the perpetrators of the genocide in Gaza. During the spring 2024 semester, Hassner holed himself up in his office for two weeks, “informed his […] class” about his sit-in, moved his classes to Zoom and even held his graduate seminars within the office that he was living in. One of Hassner’s primary demands to end his sit-in was for the UC Berkeley administration to prevent pro-Palestine students from protesting at Sather Gate.
Yet campus’s administration did not suspend Hassner — instead, former Chancellor Carol Christ came to personally check on him, a campus spokesperson noted that they held him in “great esteem” and — ultimately — Chancellor Christ and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Benjamin Hermalin called Hassner to inform him that they would meet his demands, prompting him to end his protest.
One and a half years later, Hermalin would go on to write a letter recommending that Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, or EECS, lecturer Peyrin Kao be suspended without pay for “no less than” one semester and that his current classes should be “monitored” because he was “diminish(ing) the quality of education being provided for the purpose of political advocacy,” in violation of Regents Policy 2301.
An examination of Hermalin’s reasoning for his recommendation reveals glaring hypocrisy in how the two protests were treated; indeed, in many cases, not only did Hassner meet Hermalin’s standard for a reduced quality of education for the purpose of political advocacy, he exceeded it.
In his letter, Hermalin cites three factors that establish Kao’s violation of Regents Policy 2301: drawing attention to his hunger strike in class, the “visible physical toll it presumably was taking” on him and the “adverse consequences it may have had on the quality of his instruction.” Putting aside the sheer absurdity of deeming a professor’s malnourished body a symbol of political advocacy — a claim that has profoundly problematic implications as it pertains to the policing of instructors’ physical appearances — if one were to apply these very standards to Hassner’s sit-in, the logical conclusion is that Hassner violated Regents Policy 2301 too.
Indeed, Hassner not only informed his students regarding his sit-in, but he actively involved them in his act of protest by hosting his graduate seminar within the site of the sit-in. His decision to move his other classes to Zoom undoubtedly raises concerns regarding “adverse consequences” on the quality of his instruction, as he changed the format of a class for the sole purpose of engaging in political advocacy. Hassner’s sit-in also took a “visible physical toll” on him, as he refrained from showering for the duration of the sit-in, resulting in — by his own admission — an office that “does not smell particularly nice.”
As ludicrous as it seems to be discussing how a professor smelled when determining whether or not he violated a policy regarding political advocacy, such an assessment was made necessary by Hermalin’s own questionable standards — the very ones that seem to have been concocted for the sole purpose of punishing an instructor for their ideological viewpoint.
These recurring instances of the “Palestine exception,” wherein policies are selectively applied to quell speech and action that would fly under the radar for a myriad of other causes, is a dire threat to the very foundation of free speech. While the target today may be Palestine, the precedent that is being set will be weaponized against any cause that UC Berkeley deems objectionable in the future. Every “update” of time, place, and manner policies, every instructor suspended and every name handed over to the federal government is added to the UC Berkeley administration’s ever-growing arsenal of financial and administrative sanctions it can unsheath against its students and faculty for decades to come.
The pro-Palestine movement is the canary in the coal mine. Despite the fact that public opinion on Palestine has shifted drastically, campus administrators feel empowered by the fact that the majority of federal elected officials continue to maintain a pro-Israel stance. Yet one should not make the mistake of thinking that such administrators are being forced to take the shameful positions they do; examining the history of the repression of the pro-Palestine movement on this campus reveals that Zionism is perhaps the most consistent position that UC Berkeley has taken, regardless of who controls the White House, current political climate or public opinion.
When UC Berkeley suspended a DeCal about Palestine in 2016, Barack Obama was still president. When Chancellor Christ and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky fed into the lies that student groups were creating “Jew-free zones” in 2022, it was in former president Joe Biden’s America, not Donald Trump’s. Indeed, much of the groundwork for the escalating policing and repression of pro-Palestine activism was laid well before Trump commenced his second term in office.
The threats of funding cuts, McCarthyite campaigns against university officials and pressure from donors are cop-out excuses. Campus officials repress pro-Palestine speech because they can, not because anyone is forcing them. The upper echelons of UC Berkeley’s administration includes many outspoken Zionists who have denied the genocide in Gaza, accused their own faculty of celebrating terrorism and even served in the genocidal Israeli Defense Forces.
Hermalin’s double standard reveals how deep the rot lies within UC Berkeley’s leadership; we cannot dream of an equitable campus while our own leaders showcase that they would rather protect the image of a genocidal settler-colony than their students and faculty. Kao’s suspension must be reversed and those responsible for it should instead be investigated for their political advocacy in service of genocide.