Prof touts 'unrecorded' lecture series about pushing 'cops off campus'
A group at the University of California, Merced will host lectures about abolishing the police.
The professor leading one lecture boasted that it would be "unrecorded."
Calls to “abolish the police” have risen across the University of California system as students and faculty join the “Cops off Campus” campaign.
A group at the University of California, Merced is hosting a series of talks about abolishing the police, which will not be made available to the public.
The month-long lecture series called “Black Study, Collective Struggle: Cops Off Campus & the Shared Horizon of Abolition” will commemorate “Abolition May.”
According to one event’s description, Dr. SA Smythe — a gender studies professor at the University of California-Los Angeles — will discuss “the growing national campaign to build a university system free of policing as integral to the commitments we must hold as learners, educators, and as people committed to this unprecedented struggle against carceral violence.”
Smythe “will draw on lessons learned from Black studies and ask not only ‘what do we owe to each other,’ but who is ‘we’ in the principled march towards the shared horizon of abolition.”
In a required question on the registration form, event organizers ask attendees to list their pronouns.
[RELATED: How the California government helped fuel campus madness in 2020]
On Twitter, Smythe informed followers that the event would be “unrecorded.” In other words, students at the public university and citizens of California will be unable to review the content financed by their tuition and tax dollars.
Really excited for this (unrecorded) conversation about #CopsOffCampus. On @copsoffearth, @ucftp, @divestucla, black study and collective struggle, or what we owe to each other towards the shared horizon of abolition. Thanks to the folks at @ucm_ftp✨ https://t.co/LiefxRG8GB
— SA Smythe (@essaysmythe) April 7, 2021
In recent months, students and faculty across the University of California system have joined the “Cops off Campus” campaign.
As Campus Reform reported in November, UC-San Diego hosted a virtual protest, while UC-Riverside held a protest in front of the UCPD station.
[RELATED: University of California faculty joins calls to defund campus police]
Meanwhile, UC-Santa Barbara held a rally that attracted over 100 students and professors.
Campus Reform reached out to Smythe and the University of California-Merced for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
