As at many university campuses around the country, protests have broken out at the University of California San Francisco over the war between Israel and Hamas, only UCSF is, uniquely, mostly a medical institution with no undergraduate student body.
The war in Gaza has raised a lot of tension within the walls of UCSF's hospital campuses, as it has elsewhere. And New York Times SF Bureau Chief Heather Knight published a piece Monday about how this has been impacting doctors, some of whom believe that impassioned protest of the kind that recently occurred within earshot of patient rooms is not appropriate in a hospital setting.
Of course, expressing that opinion takes on political implications, and now you have accusations coming from both sides of intolerance and "feeling unsafe."
Dr. Jonathan Terdiman, a gastroenterologist, tells the Times that patients who are coming there for medical treatment should not have to deal with the distraction, or potential triggering nature of students chanting about the intifada.
"People are coming here for chemotherapy. They have dire illnesses," Dr. Terdiman tells the Times. "When that chant goes up and is heard in the patient care rooms, which it clearly was, it’s a violation of our professional obligations as health care providers."
Dr. Avromi Kanal, whose grandfather was an Auschwitz survivor and who has multiple relatives in Israel, tells the Times that he has been publicly excoriated, on social media and in a Substack post, by a fellow UCSF doctor, Dr. Rupa Marya. This followed an internal email Kanal sent to an antiracism task force questioning a call for a ceasefire in Gaza — suggesting this might empower Hamas. Marya, whom Kanal does not know personally, took him to task and called his email "an expression of anti-Arab hate," and further suggested that other doctors including her now felt unsafe in his presences.
Kanal filed a complaint with the university, and he says they closed the complaint quickly saying that Marya was engaging in protected speech. Dr. Kanal says that Marya's words are noth the only things that are making him feel "unwelcome and unsafe." "It’s the persistent unwillingness of my leaders to clearly denounce them and ensure my inclusion in this broad community here at UCSF," Kanal tells the Times.
A spokesperson for the university tells they paper that they are working to preserve the "healing environment" at UCSF's facilities while also protecting the free-speech rights of its faculty.
Dr. Jess Ghannam, a UCSF faculty member with 30 years on the job who is of Palestinian descent, tells the Times that he supports the protests, and even the intifada chants, and he has been wearing a watermelon pin while visiting patients — which is a symbol of Palestinian support.
"People who are screaming that they don’t feel safe are sometimes conflating feeling unsafe with feeling uncomfortable," Dr. Ghannam tells the Times.
Elsewhere in the UC system, pro-Palestinian protest encampments have been variously tolerated and dismantled by authorities. And while the encampment was mostly peacefully resolved at UC Berkeley, student protesters still disrupted the commencement ceremony there last month.
One protester who was apparently angry with the university's handling of the protests, 34-year-old Casey Goonan, was arrested last week in connection with multiple arson incidents on the Berkeley campus in the last several weeks.
At Stanford University, a group of students who stormed, occupied, and vandalized the university president's office on June 5 were arrested and now face possible criminal charges. They also were suspended and barred from campus, and seniors involved were not allowed to graduate.
Among those students was a journalist for the campus newspaper, 19-year-old Dilan Gohill, who has now become the subject of outcry over First Amendment protections for journalists.