UCR Against Criminalization of Irvine Eleven

Regardless of our varying perspectives on the students’ political views, or on the propriety of the strategies used to express their views, we are unified in our common belief that the decision to criminally prosecute these students is a grave mistake. Rather than protect free speech, this prosecution will likely silence and intimidate those who wish to express their political dissent thus posing a real threat to our constitutional right to organize, meet, and protest in the pursuit of political goals.

These charges are a form of selective prosecution. They are discriminatory and designed to produce a chilling effect on all subsequent exercise of free speech rights and public dissent. Organized student protest has long been a part of American campus culture. If these students are guilty of conspiracy, what group of people who meet to discuss forms of protest is not? Indeed, heckling, shouting and interrupting are standard actions in public protest by the left and right. Prosecuting these students—while thousands of other such similar acts go unprosecuted—suggests that the prosecution of the Irvine 11 appears discriminatory, based either on identity of protestors or on the specific content of their protest. Such prosecutorial bias would, to say the least, be unconstitutional. It is also an unduly harsh and selective response, completely out of proportion to the peaceful expression of dissent by our students.

Furthermore, criminal prosecution of these students is an inexplicable waste of limited public resources, particularly because the students have already paid dearly for their actions, and have been disciplined by their campuses. It is not in the public interest to waste taxpayer funds in prosecuting an act that was benign, poses no real threat to the public and has already been punished.

Most importantly, criminalizing this sort of peaceful protest on a university campus—or indeed anywhere—would establish a damaging precedent that would resonate far beyond Southern California. Such selective prosecution creates chilling effects, not just for students, Arab-Americans, or Muslim-Americans, but for all citizens, who will be made wary of exercising their ability to organize politically and dissent peacefully. Universities are spaces where public dissent and freedom of expression are learned, and where our democratic traditions are thus developed and refined. Should we constrain that development by threatening our students’ ability to express themselves, and inculcating a climate of self-censorship and fear?

The prosecution of these students would have profound implications for the democratic traditions of our entire nation. We urge you to immediately drop these charges against the Irvine 11.