The office of Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi of the University of California at Davis circulated to administrators this week a Jewish advocacy group’s guidance for dealing with debates and protests over Israel, prompting a pro-Palestinian group to complain that its free-speech rights were being attacked.
Karen Nikos-Rose, a spokeswoman for the Davis campus, on Tuesday described as a matter of routine the chancellor’s decision to have a staff member forward the emailed guidance. “The chancellor’s office frequently forwards information out to campus leaders to make them aware,” she said. “It is an FYI.”
But Kristin Szremski, a spokeswoman for American Muslims for Palestine, which is cited in the guidance as likely to soon cause problems on the campus, described the forwarded email as part of a concerted effort “to chill or inhibit the free speech of college students.”
A university official’s forwarding of the guidance to administrators “is basically telling them that they should pay heed” in dealing with controversies within the classroom or at campus events, Ms. Szremski said on Tuesday. “The ultimate result,” she said, “is a chilling of the free speech of certain groups of students, primarily Arab and Muslim students.”
The emailed guidance accuses American Muslims for Palestine of seeking “to isolate and demonize Israel and Jewish communal organizations.”
“These efforts serve only to polarize students on campus, inflame existing tensions, and often isolate and intimidate Jewish students,” said the email, sent to Chancellor Katehi on Friday by Seth Brysk, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s regional office in San Francisco.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Brysk called assertions that the email sought to chill speech “a very odd characterization.” Instead, he said, the message sought to keep the exchange of ideas from being stifled by advocates of an academic boycott of Israel.
Controversial ‘Day of Action’
The email urges Ms. Katehi to take steps to ensure that students are protected from any hostile environment, as defined by federal antidiscrimination laws, and to prohibit and discipline any student behavior “detrimental to the free exchange of ideas.”
The message specifically cites the American Muslims for Palestine’s plans to hold, on September 23, an “International Day of Action on College Campuses” to promote the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. The academic boycotts being advocated as part of the movement, it says, “disrupt campus life and stifle the ideals of inquiry, free expression, and the civil exchange of ideas.”
The email accuses American Muslims for Palestine of timing the “day of action” to take place the evening before the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Ms. Szremski on Tuesday denied that assertion and said the event had been timed for the beginning of the academic year on most college campuses.
“Be aware of the discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that takes place on your campus and the potential for escalation,” said the email, reprinted in an article published on Tuesday on the Electronic Intifada, a blog supportive of the Palestinians and critical of Israel.
The email said the ADL strongly supports free speech, but “no university should countenance attempts to discourage and suppress free speech, or harass and intimidate Jewish and other students.”
Among the more than two dozen top administrators at Davis who were forwarded the email on Monday were deans, vice chancellors, and Nick Crossley, the emergency manager for the campus’s police department.
The ADL’s Mr. Brysk said that he had sent the guidance to the chancellors of other campuses of the University of California and that several had sent him positive replies, although he did not know how they planned to use the document.
Steve Montiel, director of media relations for the University of California, declined on Tuesday to comment on the forwarded email, saying he had too little information on the email or the context in which it was sent.
“Our campuses are operated pretty independently,” Mr. Montiel said. The university president’s office, for its part, had no role in circulating the document, he added.
Chancellor Katehi of the Davis campus has come under fire before for her handling of free speech on the campus. She was harshly criticized in an April 2012 investigative report in connection with a November 2011 incident in which campus police officers pepper-sprayed students protesting tuition increases. The report said she had failed to communicate that police officers should avoid using physical force and had made decisions related to the timing of the protesters’ removal that should have been left to law enforcement.
