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UC approves policy limiting faculty speech on university websites

Screenshot of Regent Jay Sures during a joint committee meeting of the UC Board of Regents on July 17.
Elena Neale-Sacks
/
KAZU News
Screenshot of Regent Jay Sures during a joint committee meeting of the UC Board of Regents on July 17.

After months of delays, the University of California Board of Regents voted Thursday to approve a watered-down version of a controversial policy that limits where and how faculty can post political statements.

The policy was initially set for a vote in March, but underwent changes after members of the Academic Senate — made up of faculty — expressed concerns over how the policy would be enforced and which statements it would apply to.

“This whole topic about free speech is all BS, because what we’re trying to do is show transparency,” said Regent Richard Leib during a joint committee meeting Wednesday before the vote.

The version of the policy that ultimately passed prevents academic departments from posting “discretionary” statements on the homepages of their websites. Statements concerning academic research — even if the research touches on political topics — would be exempt.

The regents also removed a sentence from a previous version of the policy that implied that any statement that could be viewed as controversial would be prohibited from a unit’s homepage. Regent Jay Sures, who co-authored the policy, said that won’t be the case now.

For example, commentary on the value of vaccines by the School of Public Health, that would be allowed under this policy,” Sures explained during the Wednesday meeting.

Under the policy, political statements are still allowed on department web pages, as long as they aren’t published on the homepage and come with a disclaimer that the opinions don’t represent the entire campus or UC.

The Senate considers the current draft a marked improvement over previous drafts and generally consonant with free expression and academic freedom,” James Steintrager, Chair of the Academic Senate, said during the Wednesday meeting. “Now, I will say that the Senate continues to have concerns about implementation and enforcement.”

Screenshot of James Steintrager, chair of the Academic Senate, during a joint committee meeting of the UC Board of Regents on July 17.
Elena Neale-Sacks
/
KAZU News
Screenshot of James Steintrager, chair of the Academic Senate, during a joint committee meeting of the UC Board of Regents on July 17.

The policy has received especially strong rebukes from the UC’s ethnic studies departments, including at UC Santa Cruz.

“It’s very clear what this was motivated by,” Christine Hong, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UCSC, told KAZU in March. In Hong’s view, the timing of the policy — introduced in January — is no coincidence. She sees it as an effort to censor faculty who have criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.

“I don’t trust these regents not to exercise repression,” she said.

Sures has denied that the policy is a response to any particular statement or political issue.

“Anybody can post anything if they go through the process and adhere to the guidelines,” Sures said during the regents’ March meeting.

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, Sures and the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council have publicly criticized each other’s stance on the war in Gaza. Members of the council called on Sures to resign, while Sures called the council’s use of the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s retaliation “inflammatory and out of touch rhetoric.”

During the meeting this week, Regent Greg Sarris alluded to the policy’s undertones.

“While I still have a little bit of concerns about how this is going to be implemented and overseen by units, and I am concerned about the overall impression of us escalating tensions at the moment, I will support this,” he said.

The policy is now in effect across the UC system.

Related reading: UC regents postpone vote on contentious policy that would limit faculty speech

Elena is a reporter and California Local News Fellow at KAZU. Before that, they worked as a podcast producer at The Oregonian. Their reporting and research has been featured on NPR's Code Switch, KQED, Netflix, Reveal, CalMatters, and more. Elena is an alum of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and UC Santa Cruz.