More than two dozen protesters attended the rally, some wearing keffiyeh and using speakers to amplify chants of “Howard Gillman you won’t rest until UCI divest.” They carried posters with messages such as “Over 40,000 dead, UCI painted red,” and “Get out Gillman” accompanied by a depiction of Gillman’s face and bloody handprints.
The protesters gathered outside the gates to Gillman’s house from around 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. before voluntarily dispersing. UCI spokesperson Michael Uhlenkamp said the university was continuing to monitor the area and had no further information to share at this time.
The action comes twelve days after law enforcement cleared the UCI Palestine solidarity encampment and arrested 47 protesters on May 15.
“We wanted to show him (Gillman) that we are not going to sit still and be quiet about what happened on May 15 and what is still happening in Palestine,” said Sarah Khalil, a fourth year undergraduate student at UCI, explaining the intent of Monday’s protest.
Prior to May 15, students occupied the lawn outside the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall for a little over two weeks to demand that UCI disclose any financial ties with Israel and divest from all companies that do business with Israel. They also sought “an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the occupation and genocide in Palestine.” On the morning of the 15th, a group of protesters occupied the inside of the lecture hall, prompting Gillman to call for police intervention.
“Gillman continues to punish students for protesting UC complicity in genocide and (for) demanding divestment,” said Em Wang, a fourth year undergraduate student at UCI. “We recognize that the people in Palestine and Gaza are being bombed and cannot rest. And so we won’t let Gillman rest either.”
Khalil said she was disappointed that the university chose to engage the police on May 15 instead of continuing negotiations with student leaders. She also said she was heartbroken by news that an Israeli airstrike killed 45 people at a Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah on Monday.
“We’re angry because after everything that has been happening our school still refuses to divest from a genocide, divest from an apartheid state,” she said.
In a statement on May 15, Gillman said protesters’ move to take over the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall justified a police response as it infringed on the academic freedom and free speech rights of students and faculty.
“My concern now is not the unreasonableness of their demands,” said Gillman in the statement. “It is their decision to transform a manageable situation that did not have to involve police into a situation that required a different response. I never wanted that.”
In the aftermath, many protesters and faculty members have questioned whether the escalated response — which resulted in the arrest of 26 students, two employees and 19 people unaffiliated with the university — was necessary.
The administration admitted that the school’s communications officials overstated claims about pro-Palestinian protesters and about the level of violence on campus May 15, but nevertheless insisted that the police response was appropriate and necessary.
These admissions came following a series of detailed questions posed by members of the UCLA Academic Senate who were seeking to better understand the reasoning behind the police response, the university’s negotiations with protesters, and the disciplinary actions taken against students. The Senate is scheduled to discuss these responses in a special meeting on May 31.
In a letter to the Senate, officials admitted that they accidentally exaggerated the number of students occupying the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall and that language in an emergency campus wide alert describing a “violent protest” was later clarified as “civil unrest.” At the same time, officials emphasized that there were incidents of confrontation between protesters and police, including activists spitting at, and throwing objects at, officers.
Khalil said she was grateful that faculty are posing detailed questions to the administration and seeking to hold university leaders accountable for the events of May 15.
She also said that the student movement for a liberated Palestine “has only just begun.”
“It will continue to grow stronger and stronger,” she said, “in spite of student repression, of police brutality and in spite of Gilman’s tactics of retaliation, until Palestine is free.”