Dear Chancellor Block,

We, the undersigned UCLA faculty, are writing to express our profound dismay at your communication with the campus regarding the ongoing catastrophe unfolding in and around the occupied Gaza Strip.  

Your recent statements make it clear that, as far as you and hence this university are concerned, not all life is equally valuable.  

Your second statement, in particular, denounces the “heinous assault” on Israeli civilians “by the terror organization Hamas, a despicable attack that included the killing of children and the elderly.”  It was, you add, “a grievous act of malice and hate.”  As for the ongoing Israeli attack on all of the Gaza Strip, you say merely that this is a “response” that has led to “a significant loss of Palestinian lives and the troubling displacement of large numbers of innocent individuals.”  

One set of attacks, in other words, is “heinous,” “despicable,” “a grievous act of malice and hate.”  The other set of attacks—on a far greater scale and now into their second week—are, at most, “troubling.”  

The duality of your statements leaves no room for interpretation.  

That the entire population of the Gaza Strip—two million people, half of them children—are trapped and besieged, cut off from all supplies of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine and subjected to relentless and indiscriminate bombardment; that Israeli bombers have to date killed almost 3,000 people including 1,000 children and wiped out 47 entire multigenerational families; that high explosives, phosphorous and incendiary bombs are being rained down on crowded neighborhoods in one of the most densely populated communities in the world; that whole urban districts are being demolished at a time; that hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead and injured, short of medical supplies and fuel for their emergency generators; that 700,000 people have been driven from their homes; that cabinet ministers and advisors to the Israeli state have referred to their civilian victims as “human animals” and have said that they intend to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist;”—all of this is to you, insofar as you even acknowledge it at all, merely “troubling.”  It is obviously not heinous, despicable and grievous; if anything, your statements normalize this kind of racial and colonial violence. 

Your statements speak of ethics and feelings and community, but they betray a profoundly unethical stance. They have inflicted injury and harm to the many Arab, Muslim and above all Palestinian and Palestinian-Americans on campus and the members of other communities of color who stand in solidarity with them.  Your statements make it clear that their feelings, their thoughts, their concerns, their anxious worries for mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters trapped and under bombardment in Gaza, mean next to nothing.  

In short, your statements contribute to making UCLA a hostile work and study environment for all these communities.  

You and your leadership team speak often of diversity, equity and inclusion.  Arab Americans in general and Palestinian Americans in particular—students, faculty and staff alike—have never felt more excluded, disregarded and unequal than at any other time under your administration. 

Above all, perhaps, when the administration takes the position that it has taken, the public safety of students, faculty and staff who protest the escalation of violence is at stake. Last week, some of us conducted a teach-in on the situation in Palestine and all concerned were harassed. Most worryingly of all, students (and one parent) watching the teach-in, which we were forced to move online due to the climate of hostility, were verbally abused and their computers were thrown in the trash by those expressing the same sentiments and value judgments as are expressed in your statements.  You may have heard that, amid the anti-Palestinian atmosphere enveloping the country, a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy was recently stabbed—26 times—and killed by his landlord in Chicago.  This is the climate we are forced to try to work and study and teach in.  

We are deeply concerned for the safety of students, staff and faculty alike at UCLA. Without a signal from you that you condemn this kind of violence and that you regard all human life as equally valuable, it may continue as though incited from the top.

Sincerely,