University of California Community Members Launch People’s Tribunal

Oakland, CA, October 14, 2024, 9 am–Today at 9 am, faculty, staff, and students of the University of California and concerned community members launched the UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine to hold their leadership–UC President Michael Drake, the UC Regents, and Governor Gavin Newsom–accountable for complicity in the devastation and destruction of the Palestinian people. Beginning on November 11, 2024, members of the UC community will assemble to charge UC leaders with direct and indirect complicity in genocide and Nakba, the ongoing process of dislocation, fragmentation, and mass killing that seeks to complete the work of erasing the existence of the Palestinian people that began in 1948.

Tribunal organizers chose Indigenous Peoples’ Day for their launch to acknowledge and honor the Lisjan Ohlone people on whose unceded lands the UC Office of the President sits and to call attention to Israel’s unceasing genocide of Palestinians as the Indigenous people of historic Palestine. “The reciprocity between Indigenous land and peoples and solidarity with ongoing global struggles for land rights and resistance to occupation and militarism are foundational to the health of humanity and our planet,” stated Mienah Z. Sharif, faculty in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley and a member of the UC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

The UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine follows on a year of escalating protest across all UC campuses against the unceasing Israeli genocide in occupied Palestine and beyond. Over the past year, UC leadership has failed to condemn genocide or reckon with the implications of its investment, research, and donor complicity in the destruction and devastation of the Palestinian people. Instead, UC leaders have normalized the Israeli state and defended Zionism while restricting speech and using militarized police power, exclusion orders, and other modes of repression against students, faculty, and community members for speaking out against the genocide. “These are times that call for clarity,” stated Christine Hong, a UC Santa Cruz ethnic studies professor. “In the absence of justice, we turn to the mechanism of the people’s tribunal in order to reassert our right to hold systems and structures of power accountable.”

"If truth is the first casualty of war, the lies told by the Regents and the UC bosses show that they have declared war on students, faculty, and staff,” stated Mark Kleiman, a human rights lawyer who has defended numerous members of the UC community who have been targeted by the UC administration for protesting the genocide. “Thousands have been shot and beaten by police, fired, threatened, and suspended by UC, and defamed by Israel-directed character assassination squads,” he stated. “We deserve to have the truth exposed and the record established. Make no mistake. The tide is turning and the people behind these attacks and smear campaigns will be exposed, and these tribunals will hold them all to account."

The November 11 tribunal session will also consider specific charges against the leadership of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for their complicity in the destruction of the health care system in Gaza, their violations of the Hippocratic oath, and their repression of faculty, staff, and students who have called attention to these crimes. Subsequent tribunal sessions, at dates to be announced, will focus on the financial complicity of the UC as well as its role in police repression. “In charging the leadership of the UC with complicity with genocide and Nakba, we seek not only to hold these individuals accountable, but also to provide an example of how people can collectively organize to bring justice to their own institutions, no matter how big or small,” stated Sean Malloy, a UC Merced historian and tribunal organizer.

Website: http://ucpeoplestribunal.org/
Twitter: @uctribunal4pali
IG: @peoples_tribunal_uc