Hate-Free UC Davis

Our Campus Our World

The University of California, Davis has been recognized nationally as a leader for inclusiveness, diversity and internationalization in rankings.

As part of UC Davis and citizens of the world, we acknowledge the hurt and suffering among people when there is loss of life and loss of liberty. We also recognize the joy and beauty in cultures from around the world. We support human rights for all people and a better and sustainable future for all. Our offices across campus want our students, staff and faculty of all backgrounds to be seen, and to feel seen and supported.

"Not only do we affirm the dignity inherent in all of us, as described by our UC Davis Principles of Community, but we share an appreciation for our shared humanity, intersectional identities, the right to exist, and facilitation of environments to learn and work." —Renetta G. Tull, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Hate-Free UC Davis

In the spirit of peaceful respect for cultures, communities and regions, this website highlights support for communities living locally and those that have homes and histories outside of the United States. We acknowledge the work and commitment from UC Davis Global Affairs, as they seek to “Advance the Global Good in California and Around the World,” UC Davis Student Affairs, UC Davis Strategic Communications, UC Davis Campus Safety, and communities across our campus locations that have contributed to collaborating on these programs, supports, and events. Our efforts are also inspired by the Hate Free Together partnership between UC Davis, Yolo County and the City of Davis. 

Visit the Hate-Free together Website

We recognize that what happens around the globe can have a profound impact on our campus community. When any type of crisis impacts our community, our campus activates to provide direct support to faculty, staff, students or scholars who may have immediate support needs. We also provide additional information and resources for further education and ongoing support to the impacted communities. We have provided links below to some of the resource pages that have been developed and will continue to add pages as they are available. 

• Addressing antisemitism
• Addressing Islamophobia
• Anti-racism
• Sharing Information and Resources on Iran (2022)

The Role of Our Principles of Community

When the UC Davis Principles of Community were adopted in 1990, they reflected a desire by the campus to clearly state our values in response to controversy and incidents occurring on campus and in surrounding communities. 

The principles are much more than a statement of good intent. In the face of discord and hatred, the act of summoning and reciting the Principles of Community is an affirmation that we have values that guide us. They provide hope and direction when others try repeatedly to cause chaos and divide us.

The Principles of Community remind us to confront acts of violence and hatred in our community, “to question, disagree and to think new thoughts” and  to take responsibility for cultivating community and bridging difference. 

“The Principles of Community define who we want to be, and the impact we want to have on our beloved community and world. The principles serve as an aspirational statement confirming our commitment to the highest standards of civility and decency” —Hendry Ton, associate vice chancellor for Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Campus Safety

While the First Amendment, academic freedom, and Principles of Community guide us in our discourse, it is also essential for UC Davis to put in place practical mechanisms to ensure that all voices are heard, that people feel a sense of personal safety on our campus and in our communities, and that learning—central to our mission as an institution—is ultimately supported and protected for all.

UC Davis has become a national leader in campus safety and next generation police reform. The event known as “Pepper Spray” happened on November 18, 2011 and pushed conversations about protest response and campus policing into the national spotlight, and it enabled UC Davis to look at its approach to student expression and student activism differently, and to recognize the power of dissent and protest in university settings. 

Law, policy, and our values as expressed in the Principles of Community are not mutually exclusive; however, we rely on various organizations on our campus, such as the Office of Compliance and Policy, UC Davis Police, and the Police Accountability Board to provide expertise on those elements that fall within their purview. Learn more about how the UC Davis Police address incidents of hate. 

• Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety Task Force
• University of California, Davis, Chancellor Gary S. May announced on June 11 the formation of a Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety Task Force to discuss and assess how the university’s Police Department should evolve to look, operate and engage on both the Davis and Sacramento campuses.
  
  “As law enforcement departments across the country are scrutinized — and justly so — for how they respond to and interact with others, I’m calling on our community to come together and examine what we can do to improve our community policing,” Chancellor May said in his charge letter.
  Renetta Tull, vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Kevin Johnson, dean of the School of Law, will serve as co-chairs.
  
  May said the task force will be made up of students, faculty and staff. He called on the group to hear from diverse viewpoints and “seek out members of our community who represent the most critical views of policing, as well as those who have positive associations. We must hear from people with a variety of opinions to develop common ground on which to build.”
  
  While May recognized the progress the UC Davis Police Department has made over the last six years, he asked that the task force consider a variety of questions about how campus safety could be best achieved in a new era. He suggested the task force consider what values, philosophies and practices could be established to form a stronger foundation to campus safety.
  
  May asked the task force to deliver recommendations to him by Dec. 15.
  
  The charge letter can be found here.
  
  Timeline
  June 17 Vice Chancellor Tull meets with Graduate School of Management Dean R. Unnava to hear the GSM’s action plan, and the follow-up from their compiled living document of resources to confront racism, both individually and systemically.
  
  June 16 Chancellor May meets with Law School Dean Kevin Johnson and Vice Chancellor Tull to discuss the charge for the new Taskforce on Next Generation Reforms to Advance Campus Safety.
  
  June 12 Conversations about actions with leaders in International Education, led by Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Associate Chancellor of Global Affairs, including Renetta Garrison Tull, Vice Chancellor, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. As we reflect on systemic oppression, anti-Black racism, and now normalized, but still unspoken biases, we should also think about actions that we need to take in order to bring about the change that we desire and best support our campus community.
  
  June 10 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Executive Leadership Team (DEI-ELT) meeting, a standing committee of deans and campus leaders will meet to discuss their statements and corresponding action items.
  
  June 9 UC Chief Diversity Officers met and are planning a meeting with the police chiefs from all ten campuses. DEI shared resources related to the national campaign brought forward by women in science called #ShutdownSTEM, and connections to #ShutDownAcademia and #Strike4BlackLives, scheduled for Wednesday, June 10, 2020. A subset of national STEM organizations participating include: the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Science Magazine; March for Science; and Physical Review Letters
• UC Academic Senate Academic Council, Recommendations for UC Policing

• June 29, 2020

  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, ACADEMIC SENATE
  BERKELEY • DAVIS • IRVINE • LOS ANGELES • MERCED • RIVERSIDE • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SANTA BARBARA • SANTA CRUZ

  JANET NAPOLITANO, PRESIDENT
  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

  Re: Recommendations for UC Policing

  Dear Janet,

  At its June 24, 2020 meeting, the Academic Council endorsed the attached set of recommendations for restructuring the University’s security and safety infrastructure. The recommendations build on the work of the Academic Senate’s Public Safety Task Force and the Presidential Task Force on Universitywide Policing. The statement offers a visionary and transformative approach to address the enduring concerns from campus communities about distressing interactions between campus police and students and faculty of color, the militarization of campus police, and the excessive and potentially lethal uses of force during campus protests. It offers a guide for rethinking the role of police on UC campuses.

  You will see that the recommendations are substantial. They represent our solidarity with the current protests against racialized police violence, and we believe that the University must respond to this watershed historical moment by reassessing the role and presence of police on campuses. We were proud to see the May 31 statement from you and Chair Pérez:

  … silence is complicity: ….. [we have] a sense of urgency and unwavering commitment to end these unnecessary race-based killings and violence… [The UC will] take immediate action to re-examine our own practice…

  We look forward to opening a dialogue with you and your successor on the future of policing at UC campuses and the implementation of the recommendations over the suggested three-year timeline. We offer the recommendations to revitalize essential and longstanding conversations within and between all University constituencies. UC could be a leader within Higher Education by creating structures that balance safety and justice, and which undermine legacies of structural racism and police violence.

  Thank you for your commitment to an anti-racist University of California.

  Sincerely,

  Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Chair Academic Council

  You can download a PDF version of the original letter to UC President
  
  UC Academic Senate Academic Council, Recommendations for UC Policing
  As interdisciplinary scholars, historians, and social scientists have documented, the very foundation of modern American policing is structured in anti-Black repression and criminalization. This legacy remains embedded in mainstream police culture, wherein police power and authority to enforce laws and restore “order” is regularly mobilized to maintain racial hierarchies. Scholars of modern policing have identified a number of tactics and strategies used to do so, including through violent exclusion and intimidation of “undesirable” people in wealthy or gentrifying areas, fatal and maiming force disproportionately used against Black people and other people of color, as well as through concentrated and aggressive interventionist tactics within communities of color. Moreover, the standard policing model in the U.S. is one reliant upon militarization and the state sanctioned use of potentially deadly force. Officers are armed with lethal and “less-than-lethal” weapons and are authorized to use them in a wide array of circumstances, all of which rest on the officers’ perceptions of threat, docility, and disobedience.
  
  The consequence of concentrated police power coupled with racialized patterns of enforcement, has resulted in exceptionally high rates of police violence against persons of color in the U.S. And while this violence is the most dramatic and dangerous consequence of racialized policing, it also has more mundane but still damaging effects on people of color who must endure disrespectful treatment (e.g. being stopped or questioned for being perceived as “out of place” in particular neighborhoods or areas) and the psychological burden of constantly having to fear bodily harm from agents of the state who are nominally charged with their protection. Decades of efforts at police reform, including various forms of “community policing,” police advisory and review boards, de-escalation and implicit bias training, body-worn cameras, and federal intervention via consent decrees, have failed to address the underlying legacies of racialized violence that lie at the heart of American policing.
  
  Our campus police agencies are not exempt from these legacies and imperatives. Not only are campus police equipped with weapons and authorized to use force in a manner similar to noncampus agencies, they have also have demonstrated troubling patterns of racially selective enforcement. Students of color, particularly Black students, across our campuses report numerous problematic encounters with campus police, as do many visitors and staff. We are all also profoundly impacted by the ongoing police violence around the country, and feel it is imperative to radically reassess the role and existence of police in the UC in response to this moment. Clearly any plan to rethink the security and safety infrastructure in the UC system should be informed by the thoughtful, practical work of abolitionist scholars, organizers, and practitioners to ensure we adequately address institutionalized anti-Blackness and racism.1  There is a large and growing body of pedagogical, practical, and scholarly work on abolitionist models for community safety and security that demystifies the university’s contemporary reliance on a militarized police force as the unquestioned basis for protecting campus communities from harm. We acknowledge the well-intentioned work done by the Senate Systemwide Public Safety Task Force as well as the Presidential Task Force on Universitywide Policing. Ultimately, however, both of these recent reports fell into the category of narrow-bore and technocratic reforms that have failed to address the underlying roots of racialized policing. To that end, we have gathered and reviewed statements by students and faculty across the UC system about anti-Black police violence, and draw from them to make the following recommendations to guide the future of policing at UC:
  
  1. Substantially defund general campus police and redistribute those resources to the study and development of alternative modes of campus safety that minimize and/or abolish the reliance on policing and other criminalizing responses.
  
  2. Invest in resources that promote mental and physical wellbeing of the campus community, specifically support services for Black students as well as for other marginalized student groups who have been historically targeted by police violence.
  
  3. Ban firearms as standard equipment for police on the general campus.
  
  4. Dissolve any existing partnership or cooperation agreements with non-UC law enforcement agencies and terminate any agreements to allow non-UC law enforcement agencies access to campus facilities or property.
  
  5. Assemble groups at both the campus and systemwide level to discuss these recommendations and how to begin implementing them within a three-year period. In doing so, these groups should prioritize the participation of those who have traditionally experienced violence and mistreatment at the hands of police. Similar steps should also be considered at the health campuses to address the policing issues identified above, recognizing the higher security needs in these environments.

• 1This petition from Harvard alumni may provide further context for such an abolitionist discussion.