UC regents right to be ashamed of faculty

“University of California faculty and other staff could be banned from publishing political statements,” reports Edsource, “on university websites and other university channels under a policy brought to UC’S board of regents.”

While the UC’S regents have punted a decision on the proposal until next month, it’s clear why the board is making this move.

Across the state university system, radical faculty members have used UC websites to promote extremist rhetoric. Edsource highlights the official website of the ethnic studies department of University of California, Santa Cruz, describing Israel’s actions against terrorists in Gaza as an “ongoing genocide.”

More locally, there’s the example of University of California, Riverside’s gender and sexuality studies department, which likewise describes Israel’s actions as an act of “genocide,” and notably says not a single word about Hamas’ slaughter of innocents on Oct. 7.

As this editorial board has written in a previous editorial, “UC Riverside is becoming a home for embarrassing extremists.” As noted, “Previously, at least two members of the [Gender and sexuality studies] department, Jack Cáraves and Sherine Hafez, signed a letter, along with many other UC academics, blaming Israel for the actions of Hamas terrorists: ‘To blame anyone other than the Zionist Israeli government and its settlers mischaracterizes this struggle and fuels the ongoing violence.’”

UC officials are no doubt feeling the pressure to finally contain the reputational damage the UC system inflicted on it by far-left faculty. Of course, this is a problem of their own making, with the UC system employing vast numbers of professional propagandists pushing radical agendas.

Superficially, the UC regent proposal makes sense. Official channels shouldn’t be used to promote particular points of view. That should be left for unofficial channels and other outlets for faculty to voice their views, if they must.

There is an argument that, perhaps, the UC should continue to allow the extremist faculty members on UC campuses to continue to hijack official websites to promote farleft propaganda. That way parents can steer their kids to more reputable schools or less ridiculous fields of “study.”