By Bella Garcia
Warning emails sent by campus administrators to professors who attended the May 2 teach-in in support of Palestine have created controversy over free speech restrictions at Long Beach State.
The professors, reprimanded for participating in the student-organized event, have since filed a grievance with the university.
Araceli Esparza, associate professor in the department of English, was one of several faculty members invited to participate in the teach-in which aimed to reframe Palestine as a feminist issue.
As a result, she and four other CSULB professors who participated in the event were sent warning emails on Aug. 19, the first day of the fall semester.
The email alleged the professors violated the 2023-2024 Time, Place and Manner policy by utilizing sound amplification devices without approval.
It also stated the policy’s goal and warned of potential disciplinary action against any person who does not adhere to the policy in the future.
“It doesn’t come as a surprise,” Esparza said. “However, given the political context and the bias that exists around Palestine and free speech, I don’t think that I did anything that goes against what my job is. I was teaching, and I was drawing on my research.”
The four other professors who received warning emails include Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Sabrina Alimahomed-Wilson, Azza Basarudin and Steven Osuna. Esparza said they are the only five faculty members believed to have been targeted using the TPM policy.
Known as the “CSU-5” by supporters, the majority are professors of color and predominantly Muslim.
The CSU-5 all co-authored an article examining the university’s partnership with Boeing, a leading American multinational corporation known for manufacturing aircrafts and supplying weapons to the Israel Defense Forces.
Esparza said it is difficult to avoid linking the warning emails to the free speech and academic freedom they were exercising at the teach-ins and their research on Boeing.
Associate Professor of International Studies Yousef Baker said CSULB officials, including President Jane Close Conoley, created a new TPM policy to regulate outside entities coming onto campus without distinction between non-CSULB affiliates, students, faculty and staff.
“In effect, what they did was use the excuse of outside agitators to curtail the speech of people within our campus,” Baker said. “I think we need to deal with students and faculty and staff, the campus community, differently than when we’re dealing with outside entities.”
A letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized CSULB for enforcing the amended TPM policy, asserting it violates the First Amendment.
The ACLU encouraged CSULB to “cease” enforcement of the sound amplification policy and to “excise” it from the university’s protest regulations.
Staff Attorney Jonathan Markovitz said the university’s updated policy is “Unconstitutional On Its Face,” in the letter.
Jeff Klaus, associate vice president of Student Affairs and dean of students, said, “If you do a side-by-side comparison, the big difference is just a chart that shows what’s public, what’s not public,” he said. “So there’s not a drastic change at all.”
With only two weeks to release the updated campus-specific addendum, CSULB utilized the campus regulations from previous years. Thus, Klaus said it can be modified and campus officials are open to conversations with students and faculty who do not agree with any part of it.
Baker said CSU and CSULB leadership has drifted from the tradition of allowing the university space to be a place of innovation and experimentation with freedom of speech, political thought and political expression.
As a faculty expert on anti-Muslim racism and Middle East studies, he said they are attempting to transform the campus into a laboratory for tactics and maximum constraint against political expression and critique.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and co-author of an op-ed story published in the Current, Steven Rousso-Schindler, believes that as the TPM policy is constructed now, disciplining students and faculty for participation in protests undermines CSULB’s mission of promoting the public good.
“The administration created these rules on their own without any input from faculty,” he said. “We have a shared governance and believe that there should be shared governance between faculty and the administration, but they just handed down these rules without any cogent disciplinary actions.”
Rousso-Schindler said there needs to be a clearer understanding of what happens if the TPM rules are broken, including how they will be enforced and what disciplinary measures will be applied.
Jeffrey Blutinger, director and associate professor of Jewish studies, viewed the pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus as violent rhetoric. In response, he organized a letter campaign on behalf of Jewish faculty and staff throughout the CSU urging the Chancellor to adopt Time, Place and Manner regulations and anti-bias training that includes antisemitism.
Blutinger does not believe the CSULB TPM addendum will stop student political expression, activism and experimentation on campus.
“We’re a state institution. We can’t regulate speech. We have to allow protests. Even stuff that is horrible, even stuff that horrifies me,” Blutinger said.
However, according to Baker, the administration is attempting to shut down and control free speech on campus.
Baker said students, staff and faculty have a responsibility to deliberate, discuss, assert and demand from the government in the name of security and interest.
Currently, the California Faculty Association and local chapter union representatives are identifying the areas of the union’s contract that the university has violated by sending out warning emails to the professors.
“This is again at a university that purports to value diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and now there’s this policy that seems to go against those purported values,” Esparza said.
Esparza still awaits clarification on what part of the policy she violated.
