On June 24th, nearly five months after opening an investigation of University of California sociology professor William I. Robinson for alleged faculty misconduct, university officials abruptly announced that they have dismissed all charges and terminated the case. Robinson has been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League for forwarding images that made a historical comparison to the state violence of the Israeli military actions in Gaza with that of German Nazi Wehrmacht in Warsaw.

In fact, an ad hoc committee set up by the Academic Senate to investigate the allegations had already reached the conclusion on May 15 that the charges against Robinson were without merit. The committee is “unanimous in finding that his sending the email is in accord with the principles of academic freedom, especially when teaching a class whose content is the sociology of globalization,” stated the report.

For his part, Robinson stated that he is awaiting “a public apology from the university as a first step in clearing my name after it has smeared my reputation and undermined my professional integrity.” He added, “as my supporters and I have documented from the start, university officials have acted deceitfully and shamelessly. It is now time for amends.” Read more

UCSB Professor Investigated for Antisemitism for Criticizing Israel | ADL Hate Laws Hate Freedom of Speech | Judge rules that judgment against ADL stands | The Anti Defamation League: Censoring the Internet on Behalf of Israel | UC Santa Barbara Students Confront ADL’s Genocide Denial | Abe Foxman's 'Anti-Semitic Pandemic' | Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL

For 30 years, Life Lab Science Program has been helping educators and students bring learning to life in the garden. Based in Santa Cruz, Life Lab has been a leader in the garden-based learning movement locally and across the nation.

On May 30th, Life Lab celebrated its 30-year history with a birthday party in and around the Garden Classroom, located on the UCSC Farm, and featured garden crafts, visiting the chickens and goats, honey tasting, wheat threshing, tractor rides, and carrot birthday cake. Woodoven pizzas, strawberry tarts, fresh squeezed lemonade and hand-cranked ice cream were also available. Read more and view photos

On May 28th, students, staff, workers, and faculty rallied at the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus to protest the UC administration’s decision to cut Community Studies department staff, Latin American Latina/o Studies professors, and director positions at the American Indian Resource Center and the Women’s Center. The rally was organized by the New UC, a coalition that seeks to save quality of education in the UC from regressive, belt-tightening attacks, to ensure universal access to education, and to promote freedom of thought in the university.

Since May 26th, members of the Student of Color Collective (SOCC) have been on a hunger strike at the base of campus to protest budget cuts to underserved communities. In addition to the hunger strike and rally at the base of campus, resisidents of UCSC's Family Student Housing (FSH) held a demonstration with tents to protest inadequate living conditions and a rent hike. Read more and view photos

Also see: UC Santa Cruz Hunger Stike Ends | Community Studies at Santa Cruz to Be Eliminated

At the May 16th ceremony for UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school graduates, World Can't Wait protested against Boalt Hall Law Professor and author of legal justifications for the Bush administration to torture detainees. Graduates were greeted by people calling on them to wear orange ribbons and demand the firing and prosecution of John Yoo. Dozens of demonstrators mingled with graduates and their families along a mile stretch of Berkeley's Piedmont Avenue. The protest against torture called on graduates and now alumni to demand that the UC law school not tolerate torture and those who are apologists for torture policies.

Photos 1 | 2 || World Can't Wait

The Rock n' Roll On the Knoll Benefit Concert scheduled to occur on the UC Santa Cruz campus on Sunday, May 17th has been canceled. This was announced with very short notice on the afternoon of May 14th. Apparently, UCSC had to export some of it's police force to a graduation ceremony at UC Merced where Mrs. Obama will be speaking.

This all-day concert featuring eight bands was to be a benefit for the Homeless Community Resource Center of Santa Cruz, and was expecting to draw over 1,000 students to attend. Planning has been in the works for over three months. This is the second time that the University has botched the scheduling of this concert, this time canceling it with less than a three-days notice. Read more

UCSC is seeking to meet budget deficits by cutting health care coverage and benefits to its graduate students, including those with families and dependents. Lisa Sloan, Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences, asked the Graduate Student Association to approve cuts to current levels of coverage for the Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan (GSHIP). These cuts could increase the cost of co-pays for doctor visits and emergency care, decrease life-time coverage limits and probably, and most significantly, increase co-pays for prescription drugs, even those taken on a regular basis for chronic conditions.

Nellie Chu, graduate student in the Department of Anthropology and member of the Protect GSHIP Committee, underwent surgery last year to remove a 10cm tumor from her adrenal gland. Chu says, “GSHIP provided me with the affordable health care I needed to save my life.” With these cuts to GSHIP, however, Chu worries that access to healthcare will be out of reach for graduate students with serious illnesses such as hers. “We simply cannot afford to pay more for healthcare on our small salaries as Teaching Assistants,” Chu says. Read more

Previous coverage: Student Health Insurance at UCSC will Cover Transgender Healthcare

On Thursday, April 30th, students at UC Santa Barbara demanded a meeting with UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang. They asked for an end to the witch-hunt against Professor William Robinson. Robinson has been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League because of his forwarding of images that made a historical comparison to the state violence of the Israeli military actions in Gaza with the state violence of the German Nazi Wehrmacht in Warsaw.

Professor William I. Robinson is scholar who has written books and articles on the subject of globalization, economics, and the third world struggle against imperialism and for social justice.

Students, faculty, and scholars have called on UCSB to end its investigation of Professor Robinson. “It’s nobody’s business -- especially when we’re talking about organizations outside of the university administration -- to try to dictate the content of his course,” Noam Chomsky said. “The course structure is up to the professor.” Chomsky added, "Charges of “anti-Semitism” are part of the ADL’s long-standing strategy to equate any criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bias."

On Thursday, May 21st, a forum will be held at UCSB to discuss the principles and practices of academic freedom and the university’s related obligations. Read More

See also: Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB | Interview with William I. Robinson, The Battle for Global Civil Society | Transnational Capitalism, William Robinson | Democracy, Polyarchy, and U.S. Policy Towards Latin America

On Wednesday, April 29, UC Berkeley Police, apparently acting on behalf of ICE and introducing themselves as ICE agents, arrested Jesús Gutiérrez, a worker at the Clark Kerr Campus Dining Commons and a union activist in AFSCME Local 3299. Acting on information alleging that Gutierrez was using false papers to work at UC Berkeley, the UCPD charged him with identity fraud. Gutiérrez has been placed under ICE immigration hold as he sits in Santa Rita Jail.

Gutiérrez is suspected of no crime apart from the allegation of working using false identification. He is currently charged with felony identity fraud, a charge that is reserved for people who use identity information to steal money.

In a statement, Ronald Cruz, a member of BAMN, writes, “There is a strong likelihood this is an effort by UC Berkeley to intimidate organized labor. Jesús was a rank-and-file union activist in AFSCME Local 3299, which just had a strong one-week strike in summer 2008 and won a contract that includes language requiring ICE to contact AFSCME before arresting a worker. Surprisingly, the arrest has come from UC Berkeley itself.” Read More

On Wednesday, May 13th, a rally and a march was held at Sproul Plaza, UC-Berkeley, to demand the release of Jesús Gutiérrez from ICE custody. Video

ICE kidnaps UC Berkeley employee | Berkeley Protests ICE Raids | AFSCME Strike Postponed -- What's Next?

The Project is a newspaper created by an open collective of UCSC students and allies to document and inspire strategic radical actions that are relevant to local, regional, and global socioeconomic justice. The Project collective has published their second issue since being resurrected in the Fall.

Those interested in contributing can attend meetings on Fridays at 5:00pm at SubRosa (Pacific and Spruce). Articles, opinion, art and poetry can be submitted to: theproject [at] riseup.net

Volume 5, Issue 2 of The Project

The Watsonville Brown Berets celebrated their 15th anniversary with a dinner and salsa dance on Saturday, April 25th from 7-11pm at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Aptos. The Brown Berets have worked in their own community and built solidarity with others for the past 15 years. With a focus on youth, education, social justice, direct action and community events, thousands of people have participated in, or been affected by, their grassroots activities.

The program featured presentations by the Brown Berets, Betita Martinez, and Simón Sedillo, followed by live musical performances. The event is a benefit for the Watsonville Bike Shack, new music and art programs, and ongoing education and community outreach. Read more

Watsonville Brown Berets Anniversary Radio Show

Will & Darwin write: Our intention in publishing here it is to generate a greater level of critical reflection and discussion concerning the dominant role of the politics of “greening” and communitarian “collaboration-with-the-powers-that-be” approaches that characterize campus-based environmental organizations as well as an increasing number of those in society at large. We can think of few more timely priorities for those who would use university campuses as organizing bases [than] to challenge the system of authoritarian power that is in the process of destroying the ecological basis for the existence of life on earth. “We must name that system,” as a student radical named Paul Potter stated in a different context nearly 35 years ago. In short, we offer this essay as a starting point toward naming the role of modern research universities in perpetuating ecological holocausts large and small.

In October 2007, the magazine of the country’s longest-running conservationist organization, the Sierra Club, published its inaugural listing of the country’s “greenest campuses.” The rankings were assigned based on each campus’ building designs, energy policies, bike facilities, and food purchasing contracts.... [Yet to] call it a “zero waste” institution would be akin to labeling McDonalds a vegetarian restaurant now that it’s added salads to its menu. The UC co-manages the largest nuclear waste dump in New Mexico.

The UC: America's Most Ecocidal "Green" University: Part I | Part II

Previous coverage: The University is Unsustainable

There will be a meeting on Tuesday, April 7th at 6:00pm at UCSC's Oakes College room 105 to discuss the defense of the Community Studies department. A post on the SC-IMC calendar states, "Proposed budget cuts at UCSC to come into effect July 2009 'disband the administration' at Community Studies, 'laying off' lecturers and cutting the Field Study program. This program benefits not only students, but various community organizations in Santa Cruz, all over the state, nation and the world." Read more

see also: Community Studies department being cut from UCSC?

Peter Herlihy and Jerome Dobson, professors of Geography at Kansas University, received funding from the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO), located at the Fort Leavenworth U.S. Army base in Leavenworth, Kansas, to map communally held indigenous land in the states of San Luis Potosi, and in Oaxaca, Mexico. The project, named the Bowman Expeditions or México Indígena, began mapping in 2005 in an indigenous region known as La Husteca, which is partially located in the state of San Luis Potosi, and then moved their operation to the state of Oaxaca amidst the statewide popular uprising of the Oaxacan Peoples’ Popular Assembly (APPO) in 2006.

On January 14th, 2009, the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) released a communique in which the organization expresses concerns of geopiracy in the México Indígena mapping project, cites a clear lack of transparency, and claims that communities were deceived, having no idea that a primary funder of the project was the FMSO.

The FMSO official assigned to the Bowman Expeditions is Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey B. Demarest. During a 23-year military career, Dr. Demarest served in multiple assignments in Latin America and is also a graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. He has written numerous articles dealing with internal conflict including “The Overlap of Military and Police Responsibilities in Latin America.” Dr. Demarest’s first book, Geoproperty, considers property ownership as an issue of national security and strategy. Read more

On March 16th, UCSC administrators and Vice Chancellors held a meeting to discuss rent hikes at UCSC's Family Student Housing (FSH). A hundred tenants, from a community of 200 rental units, showed up to demand affordable rents.

The officials told everyone that the rent needs to go up another 7.5%. They explained that due to the Long Range Development Plan, residents need to pay much of their rent into future housing costs, some of which would go into doubling the units at FSH. This proposed budget leaves many families, living off grad student wages, with $250 a month to live on. All of this is taking place with aging housing stock that the university defines as "substandard" and which has ongoing issues with mold, asbestos, and rodents.

On Monday, March 30th various Associate Vice Chancellors and Directors of UCSC Housing are holding a second meeting to discuss their proposed rent increase of 7.5% with the FSH tenants. This will be an increase of 62% over the last nine years.

In a year when many spouses have been laid off, when jobs in town and at the university are growing scarcer every day, the families who live at FSH are calling foul play. Ninety-eight percent of the households at FSH have signed a petition demanding affordable family student housing at UCSC. Read more