After watching for over a year as the leaders of the University of California (UC) failed to condemn genocide or reckon with the implications of the university’s investments, research, and donor complicity in the destruction and devastation of the Palestinian people, a systemwide collective of faculty, students, staff, and community members launched the UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine on November 11, 2024. UC leaders normalized the Israeli state and defended Zionism while restricting speech and employing militarized police power against those who spoke out against the genocide.
Our first session focused on the inaction of UCSF, the sole UC campus dedicated to healthcare, to condemn the targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers, as well as Zionist donor pressure and influence. We are holding a second session in southern California on May 9-10. This session will focus on (1) UC investments in and research collusion with war industries, (2) racialized and militarized police repression of Palestinian solidarity, and (3) Zionist policing of forms of knowledge with the complicity of the university.
In addition to our live sessions, the UC People’s Tribunal serves as a repository for independent research about complicity of the UC in aiding and abetting Zionist aggression.
We’ve begun to build a broad-based popular curriculum based on the archive.
Though 2024’s Palestine solidarity camps were crushed or disbanded, the tribunal continues their demands for divestment and anti-imperialist education. Campus-based struggle for divestment from apartheid South Africa lasted for years. We are in it for the long haul. For more info: ucpeoplestribunal.org