On April 1, the chair of the University of California, Berkeley’s academic senate, Amani Nuru-Jeter, issued a dire warning about academic freedom.
“Recent actions by the federal government,” she told colleagues in an email, “are chilling open inquiry and undermining self-governance at American universities.” She was referring to the Trump administration’s decision to pause $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University until the school agreed, as a precondition for negotiations, to overhaul its Middle Eastern studies department, where professors have equated Israel with Nazi Germany, derided the “Zionist cabal,” and glorified the Oct. 7 attacks.
Critics had framed the administration’s demand as an unprecedented assault on academic freedom. Now Nuru-Jeter, formerly the executive associate dean of Berkeley’s School of Public Health, was joining the pile-on, circulating a statement on behalf of the senate that warned that the “fate of higher education” was at risk.
“Current efforts to curtail academic freedom will stifle the rights of faculty to teach and conduct research without external interference,” the statement read. “If allowed to prevail, these actions will undermine the rights of students to study and learn through free inquiry into controversial material.”
But at UC Berkeley, these rights were under attack long before the Trump administration’s war with Columbia. And the person who initiated the assault was none other than Nuru-Jeter herself, who in 2021 instituted a series of “antiracism” requirements for all courses taught at the school of public health.
Those requirements included that at least 10 percent of course readings “focus on/be authored by people from Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) communities,” and that a third of all guest speakers be “BIPOC.” Professors also needed to update their syllabi with an “antiracism” statement that Nuru-Jeter personally helped draft, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Written in the form of a contract, the statement included a pledge to “disrupt harmful power dynamics” and remove students from class if they used language that could “alienate” others. Professors who did not uphold those pledges could potentially be dinged on their course evaluations, which, Nuru-Jeter announced in a 2021 email, would be updated to include questions on anti-racism.
“How much did the course incorporate an anti-racist/racial equity lens into the course content, course materials, course activities, and course assignments? (not at all, a little, somewhat, a lot OR poor, fair, good, very good, excellent),” one proposed question read. “How effective was the instructor in discussing the significance of race, racism, power, and positionality in the classroom, in the discipline, in the course content?”
Many schools have responded to the Trump administration by invoking their commitment to academic freedom. The mandates put in place by Nuru-Jeter, and her subsequent promotion to senate chair, raise questions about the sincerity of that commitment and underscore how, prior to the administration’s blitz, schools were more than willing to undermine the autonomy of their professors.
“Too many of the university administrators now paying lip service to this pivotal principle previously played a key role in stifling academic freedom,” said Ross Marchand, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “Hollow words are no substitute for firm action to defend academic freedom, and only time will tell how deep this commitment to academic freedom is.”
It is not clear whether the anti-racism requirements are still in force at the school of public health. Nuru-Jeter and UC Berkeley did not respond to requests for comment.
Universities have been fending off charges of hypocrisy ever since the October 7 terrorist attacks, when the same schools that had spent years policing microaggressions took a laissez-faire approach to calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Columbia, for example, refused to discipline a professor, Joseph Massad, who called the attacks “awesome” and “stunning.” But one year earlier, the school had suspended the chair of its psychiatry department, Jeffrey Lieberman, over his inartful praise of a black supermodel on social media.
“Whether a work of art or freak of nature she’s a beautiful sight to behold,” Lieberman had said of Nyakim Gatwech, a South Sudanese model known for her dark skin. Two days later, he was removed from his post as Columbia Medical School’s chief psychiatrist.
The double standards have been particularly glaring at Berkeley, where Nuru-Jeter has issued not one but two statements on academic freedom over the past month.
“We are living through a federal assault on higher education and the values and mission we all hold so dear,” she told faculty in a March email, which was signed “In solidarity.” “This assault is top of mind for all faculty and thus is the Senate’s top priority.”
The April 1 message elaborated those themes, waxing poetic about the “free exchange of ideas.” “The University is not engaged in making ideas safe for students,” Nuru-Jeter said, quoting Berkeley’s first chancellor, Clark Kerr. “It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.”
But in her role at the school of public health, Nuru-Jeter sought to shield students from ideas that did not conform to an “equity-minded lens.” The anti-racist syllabus statement, which Nuru-Jeter described as “a collective effort including me” in a 2021 email, made clear that dissenting views would not be tolerated, declaring that “racism and injustice is [sic] perpetuated by silence.”
“I/we will disrupt harmful power dynamics and engage in active bystander intervention to uncover and dismantle prejudice, bias, and other harmful practices,” the statement read. “Language or comments that alienate, demean, and denigrate other students in the classroom will not be tolerated, and may result in removal from class.”
Efforts to ensure ideological conformity extended to faculty searches, which, at the school of public health, gave diversity statements the same weight as “research and teaching,” according to a 2021 hiring request obtained by the Free Beacon. While the University of California system recently ended its use of diversity statements, Berkeley’s public health program has other ways of screening for DEI, such as a requirement that all job candidates deliver a “diversity talk” as part of their campus visit.
Marchand, the FIRE attorney, said the all-encompassing focus on anti-racism was a serious threat to academic freedom.
“Professors are not actors to be fed an ideologically infused script,” he told the Free Beacon. “When administrators hand them talking points and dictate content, they’re not just micromanaging—they’re censoring.”
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