“UCSF leadership repeatedly characterized Dr. Marya’s advocacy for marginalized patients as ‘unprofessional,’ ‘aggressive’ and ‘harmful,’” the complaints read. Such targeting was magnified, the complaints argue, when Marya began to speak out on social media against Israel’s offensive in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attacks. After she criticized the school’s silence on the killings of Palestinians in her posts, UCSF Provost Catherine Lucey called Marya in for questioning, according to the state complaint. Marya continued to post about Gaza. She posted a viral tweet calling for solidarity with Gaza’s health care workers, drawing threats of death and rape. Marya notified school officials, including Lucey, about the threats, asking the school to temporarily remove her personal email and her profile from the school’s public website, the complaints said. In the past, Lucey and school officials had taken similar protective measures amid the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. In this instance, however, UCSF officials ignored Marya’s requests. Instead, Talmadge King Jr., the dean of UCSF’s School of Medicine, emailed Marya, informing her that officials would assess whether Marya’s social media posts about Gaza had “violated university policies,” the complaints alleged. Marya had also reported “racist, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian remarks,” including Islamophobic comments made by her colleagues in school email threads to the school’s anti-harassment and discrimination office. The cases were closed without any serious investigations, the complaints alleged. Meanwhile, the university went on to highlight controversial pro-Israeli speakers such as Elan Carr, a U.S. Army veteran and CEO of the Israeli American Council, an influential pro-Israel lobbying and advocacy group, despite complaints from a broad coalition of Jewish, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, LGBTQ+ students and staff at UCSF. A November investigation by The Intercept revealed widespread anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli bias across UCSF, which runs the biggest hospital system in San Francisco. UCSF officials canceled and censored lectures by medical researchers for mentioning health impacts on Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid system and its assault on Gaza. Some doctors were subject to internal investigations after giving talks that mention Palestine. One nurse practitioner, who had previously volunteered in Gaza, was fired earlier this year for wearing a watermelon pin to work. And in April, UCSF fired Denise Caramagno, a therapist and pioneering violence prevention advocate at the school after she spoke out in defense of Marya. UCSF isn’t the only school in the University of California system accused of stifling pro-Palestine speech. A January report issued by the UCLA Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism found similar patterns of bias at UCLA’s medical school, ranging from censoring academic work; suppression of speech of students, medical residents, and faculty around Palestine; and ignoring incidents of racism against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim members of campus. And in early May, UCLA fired a faculty member, Eric Martin, for taking part in UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment one year earlier, the first known faculty firing of its kind across the UC system.
Marya said she hopes her legal fight will help others know they can speak out against Israel’s genocide despite ongoing attacks on pro-Palestine speech by both universities and the federal government…