UCLA Faculty Defend Student Activists
Just as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) began resuming classes after a week of violent attacks on students from vigilantes and law enforcement, police arrested 43 people in a campus parking garage on charges of “conspiracy to commit burglary.” An encampment set up by student activists to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been at the center of campus tensions.
Late in the evening on April 30, into the early morning hours of May 1, a group of pro-Israel supporters destroyed parts of the encampment and injured dozens of students, while police took no action for hours. Then, on May 2, Los Angeles police destroyed the camp, arresting more than 200 students. The university announced it would create a new Office of Campus Safety in response to accusations of exposing students to violence.
Members of the UCLA community are outraged over the violence, and many faculty members have stepped forward to defend students. Among them are Robin D. G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. Kelley, who is known for his acclaimed book Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the significance of the attacks on UCLA’s anti-genocide activists.
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Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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