Breaking BDS-related news from UCLA

My name is Milan Chatterjee and I served as UCLA’s Graduate Student Body President for the 2015-16 term. I’m entering mythird year at UCLA School of Law. For the past 7 months, I've been relentlessly harassed by the "Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel" (BDS) movement; especially through the organization"Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP). In October 2015, my administration received a funding request for $2,000 to finance a Diversity event featuring Jerry Kang, UCLA’s Vice Chancellor ofEquity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Since the BDS movement has been rampant at UCLA, a member of my cabinet had concerns about the movement’s engagement in this event, which would hurt thesentiments of the Jewish student body. I agreed that this member’s concern was legitimate. Hence, we made it clear to the organizer that both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine students canparticipate in this event. Nonetheless, a condition of us providing funding is that the Graduate Student Association cannot sponsor the BDS platform, or any counter movement.

The organizer accepted the funding, and held the event with the involvement of both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine students. However, they turned around and selectively distributed correspondenceto the ACLU and Palestine Legal for a Pro-BDS PR campaign. ACLU and Palestine Legal then circulated a legal letter, falsely accusing me of engaging in viewpoint discrimination. This letter wascirculated to pro-BDS blogs and publications (e.g., Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada) and the Daily Bruin (UCLA’s Student Newspaper). All of these publicationstargeted me, and continued the false rhetoric that I engaged viewpoint discrimination. This accusation has been thoroughly debunked by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. The UCLA administration refused toprovide me with any counsel or support when I was being targeted by BDS’s national legal and media campaign.

BDS activists have also filed harassing complaints against me with UCLA, for which the UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusioninvestigated me. This investigation occurred in spite of the fact that UCLA administrators knew and approved the funding condition. Dennis Prager’s organization circulated a petition callingfor this investigation to shut down, which received over 11k signatures. With the nonstop attacks, I’ve been required to get legal representation. Hence, Glaser Weil (a prominent LA lawfirm) is providing me with legal representation, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Chairman, Dean Schramm is co-representing me.

On June 2016, UCLA released a report to me and SJP—since they were a complainant—finding that I was not viewpoint neutral in allocating funds, which they claim violated UCOP policy. My attorneyhas carefully reviewed the report and found it to be “deeply and fatally flawed” for a number of reasons.

First, the UCOP policy that UCLA claims I violated does not apply to students (like myself). Rather, it applies to the UCLA campus, requiring them to create policies and procedures to ensureviewpoint neutrality in the funding of student activities. UCLA has failed to enact these policies and procedures. The UCLA General Counsel has even gone on record stating that UCLA isconducting an extensive review of its current policies to ensure that they reflect viewpoint neutrality, and that the UCOP policy in question is fully implemented, which is currently not thecase. UCLA made a gross error by applying a policy to me (as a student) that only applies to UCLA as a campus. Moreover, UCLA was the entity that violated this policy by not enacting policiesand procedures that follow UCOP policy. Rather than correcting this violation, UCLA chose to shift the blame onto me.

Second, the report demonstrated that a number of UCLA administrators were negligent in this entire process by being completely non-responsive to the request for guidance from students regardingthis funding condition. If the administration had concerns about the condition, they had clear opportunities to take pre-emptive action. They chose not to do so. In spite of the reportacknowledging administrative negligence, UCLA has chosen not to hold its administrators accountable, and has instead shifted the blame onto me.

Third, the UCLA investigation process denied me procedural due process rights, which I am entitled to under UC policy.

Fourth, the investigators did not give consideration to extensive evidence demonstrating that the funding stipulation presented was viewpoint neutral. The report also fails to take intoconsideration that a UCLA administrator expressly informed me that the funding condition was legal.

Fifth, The UCLA report was clearly marked confidential and the administration provided policies that prevented the use of the report in a retaliatory manner. In spite of these conditions, SJPopenly leaked this confidential report through its website and to the Daily Bruin student newspaper, in an effort to defame me. I filed a complaint with the administration toinvestigate the leakage and take necessary action, but the UCLA administration declined to do so.