Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association of North America | –
Letter to the Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, concerning threatened sanctions against Professor Tiffany Willoughby-Herard
Howard Gillman
Chancellor, University of California, Irvine
chancellor@uci.edu
Dear Chancellor Gillman:
We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave and urgent concern about the sanctions which your university threatens to impose on Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Associate Professor of Global and International Studies at UC Irvine. Those sanctions include her suspension without pay for one quarter and the issuance of a letter of censure. There is good reason to believe that Professor Willoughby-Herard has been singled out for her efforts to support and protect students who were nonviolently protesting the Israeli war on Gaza on the UC Irvine campus in May 2024, and the investigative and disciplinary processes to which she has been subjected are therefore a violation of her academic freedom and her right to freedom of speech.
Founded in 1966, MESA promotes scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. As the preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. We are committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region of the Middle East and North Africa and in connection with the study of that region in North America and beyond.
On 15 May 2024, as documented by numerous videos, local and state police officers, many clad in riot gear, attacked the nonviolent student encampments on the UC Irvine campus. Among those arrested was Professor Willoughby-Herard, who had been trying to protect the students through widely recognized practices of conflict de-escalation. In the weeks that followed Professor Willoughby-Herard not only suffered from serious health issues as a result of the treatment she experienced at the time of her arrest, but she was also subjected to an extensive campaign of harassment, including doxxing as well as threats of murder and sexual violence.
Though legal charges against Professor Willoughby-Herard were eventually dismissed, your administration later decided to initiate disciplinary proceedings against her, apparently succumbing to external pressure to punish Professor Willoughby-Herard for supporting students’ right to protest and to criticize Israel. We regard your effort to sanction this distinguished scholar for trying to de-escalate conflict on campus, and for engaging in activities that are regarded as entirely legitimate when they concern any contentious topic other than Palestine, as a violation of the norms of academic freedom and of your institution’s avowed commitment to respecting the First Amendment rights of your faculty, students and staff.
We therefore urge you to immediately dismiss all charges and threatened sanctions against Professor Willoughby-Herard. We further call on you to issue an official apology on behalf of UC Irvine for the way Professor Willoughby-Herard has been treated, by the university as well as well by the police officers who violently detained her on 15 May 2024, causing her long-term physical and mental harm.
We look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Ussama Makdisi
MESA President
Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Judith E. Tucker
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, Georgetown University
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