From Subversity Archives: Chinese Democracy Activist Wang Dan at UCI in 2006

UCI comes together to memorialize those killed in the
Tiananmen Massacre of 4 June 1989.
Photo © Daniel C. Tsang 1989.

To listen to the KUCI Subversity Online podcast with Wang Dan's 2006 UCI lecture, click on :

Wang Dan with fellow students in 1989

In the wake of the June 4 commemorations worldwide, we bring you a 2006 talk at UC Irvine given by Wang Dan, who in 1989 was a key student leader of the Tianamen protests in Beijing.  He was subsequently put on a most-wanted student activist list, arrested and imprisoned, and on his release went to the United States.

He obtained his Ph.D at Harvard, where his dissertation in 2008 compared state violence under Mao and Chiang (Kai Shek on Taiwan) in the 1950s.

He now is an academic in Taiwan. He is banned from China (and Hong Kong as well).  His memoir, in Chinese, 王丹回憶錄 : 從六四到流亡, came out last fall in Taiwan.

Cover of Hong Kong publication

Listening to his 2006 talk here, I am struck by how he relevant his talk still is, given that China still faces many of the same problems he talked about.  Wang Dan explains how corruption in China moved the Peking University and other protesting students to seek democratization and discusses the challenges China still faces.

Wang Dan's talk first aired on KUCI's Subversity show on June 19, 2006.  Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy in the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine, Wang Dan spoke on May 25, 2006 on the topic: "Rethinking the Past and Looking to the Future of China."  The audio includes a Q&A.

Outsourcing Police Oversight

UCIPD officers begin arresting Irvine 17 protesters outside UCI Chancellor's Office in February 2010. Photograph copyright 2010 Daniel C. Tsang

At least two University of California police departments – UCLA and UC Irvine -- have outsourced their police policy manuals to a private company and one of them, UCIPD, astonishingly, considers the private company that handles police policy manual revisions, as its law firm.

UCI assistant police chief Jeff Hutchison, in an hour-long meeting with UCI history prof. Mark Levine and myself November 21, 2011, kept referring to the private firm, Lexipol, as "our counsel". When I asked did he mean the University Counsel, he said no, the campus counsel is out of the loop. He implied that LLC after its name meant law firm - when in fact it means limited liability company

How about the UCI Chancellor then? Is Michael Drake also out of the chain of command? Oh, he's too busy to look at every police policy, after all there are 434 pages of them was the response. Three hours after our meeting, Drake released online the same use of force, tasering and pepper spraying policies that Hutchison had shown us, and that Drake apparently also just got to see. Note the copyright on the UCI police policies is attributed to Lexipol, LLC.

Why are campus police departments at UC Irvine and UCLA relying on an outside firm – and a private business at that -- for legal advice? Is not the well-paid campus counsel sufficient? Incidentally six chief campus counsels got hefty raises at a recent Regents Meeting. UCI’s University Counsel got a 14.3 percent pay raise, while Davis’ Chief Counsel got a 21.9% raise, They can surely afford to give their police chiefs some legal advice and review their local police procedures. But Hutchison, of course, had an answer: Lexipol knows actual law enforcement practices and implied that the UC Counsel's Office does not.

Lexipol may well do, but constitutional law is what matters, and that is definitely not the domain of a cop or a business formed by former cops. In fact, a Lexipol policy recently got criticized in a federal case that was not at the time resolved. The policy was adopted by the Guadalupe, California, police department with provisions that actually apparently suppressed the police officers' own free speech rights.

In addition, the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST), which certifies police practices, in 2009 denied certification to Lexipol's Daily Training Bulletins as self-paced training, in part because Lexipol was a private business with the bulletins only accessible by paid subscribers. Lexipol appealed the decision, but there is no public record if it was reversed so I do not know if it was reversed.

Lexipol is founded by Bruce Praet, a former Laguna Beach cop turned lawyer who now has made a career defending cops accused of violating the civil rights of citizens. I'm all for giving defendants the best defense, but why should the UC chain of command be ignored and a private business be treated as as the University’s legal counsel?

There is in fact a "Universitywide Police Polices and Administrative Procedures" manual, last reviewed in 2010, with an effective date of January 7, 2011. That manual states that the Office of the UC President is responsible for coordinating certain police services functions, including "police services policies and standards."

But that system-wide policy manual was never mentioned when we met with the UCIPD officials. So the policies outlined there on pepper spray apparently have no impact on actual police work at the campus level.

It has taken some pepper-sprayed students and injured faculty for the UC administrators to realize that they risk losing control over the campus police forces. I hope a review of the state of campus policing will lead not only to more oversight but also to more public accountability. A civilian review board or some such mechanism needs to be established on each campus. An August 18, 2011 "Police Department Oversight Report" from the University of Oregon, which reviewed various models of outside oversight, can serve as a useful starting point. But no doubt the University is not interested in outside or student/faculty review of its police.

A different version of this blog entry has been submitted as a response to a call for comments from the Robinson-Edley Report on the UC police crackdown on student protesters. Deadline for comments is June 8, 2012. -- Daniel C. Tsang.

Students & Workers to Confront Chancellor at Public Forum

UCI protest rally organizer Dennis Lopez, 4 January 2010. Photo credit: Daniel C. Tsang © 2010.

A public forum with students and workers confronting UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake on the privatization of the UCs is slated for Wednesday 12 January 2010 at 5-6 p.m. at HIB (Humanities Instructional Bldg) 100 on the UC Irvine campus.

High on the student agenda, beyond calling for a reduction in fees and end to privatizing a UC education, is expected to be calls for Drake to control the UCI police, to ban the use of Tasers on campus and to drop charges against Sociology graduate student John Bruning. Some students even want UCI to be made a cop-free zone.

If UCI police meant to silence Bruning, a student protest leader, by arresting him late last year on dubious grounds, it has done the opposite. Bruning in an article in today's New University calls for a ban on Tasers on campus, citing a recent court decision criticizing its use.

Though he is not happy under the spotlight as a student leader whose arrest and his being dragged off by UCI police was captured on video and posted on YouTube, Bruning is likely to use his trial -- if it comes to that -- as a platform to further critique UCI's administration and police tactics. Does UCI really want to provide him such a platform? After all, UC Berkeley dropped all charges against those originally arrested outside the Berkeley Chancellor's home, after windows were broken. At UCI, Bruning is not even charged with breaking windows, just slamming his arm against a glass-paned door to the administration building. I suspect the Orange County District Attorney's office will find there are no grounds to proceed to trial.

Meanwhile unnamed individuals have been posting on campus WANTED posters of Drake and Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, charging them with neglecting student needs among other undocumented allegations. The reward: Their salaries, the amounts of which are emblazoned at the bottom of the posters, which stayed up only hours before being removed by also unnamed individuals.

These and other WANTED posters remain online, on the so-called Communist Party Planning Committee site, targeting, in addition to Drake and Gomez, Sharon Salinger (Dean of Undergraduate Education), Assoc. Dean Caesar Sereses, Police chief Paul Henisey, officer Charles Chon, new Dean of Students Assistant Vice Chancellor Rameen Talesh, and Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Gottfredson. The CP Planning Committee is likely a parody of the name and the WANTED posters a provocative escalation of tactics.

The fact that these wanted posters with salary numbers haven't been widely posted on campus perhaps suggests a hesitancy among the protesters, who are by no means a unified whole. We link them here to inform the public.

As for the targets, just to mention two more: Salinger is the UCI administrator who wiped out a key student services resource, SAAS, the Student Academic Advancement Services, and subsequently asserted on KUCI's Subversity show that the services, which were partially refunded by the U.S. Department of Education, would continue under another name, although the former SAAS director and staff were let go.

Talesh in a letter in today's New University, while declaring UCI's commitment to protect free speech rights, argues there is a "time and place" for student protests, but not when they disrupt classes.

The text of the student/worker endorsed statement, distributed via email originally yesterday, follows:

Dear Campus Community:

In the past 3 months, we've seen changes and decisions made at the UC system that many of us wouldn't have dreamed of. Undergraduate fees have risen 32%, faculty, staff, and campus workers have been laid off and furloughed, classes have been cut, and the library hours have been reduced. To add insult to injury, essential services on campus have also been terminated, such as Student Academic Advancement Services (which ran Summer Bridge), Counseling Center staff has been cut, and financial aid has been decreasing. We all have questions about our futures in the UC system: How will the cuts affect us? How will we continue to afford UCI? What job prospects will we have after we graduate?

In response to the growing discontent and anger over the budget cuts on campuses across the state, a broad coalition of students has organized a Public Forum at UCI to discuss the important changes affecting our university. Chancellor Drake has been invited to attend and participate, which he has agreed to do, along with other key administrators at UCI. We urge all of the UCI community -- students, workers, faculty, staff -- to attend and raise questions about the decisions being made on our behalf for the future of the University of California and public education more generally.

Sponsored by:
Black Student Union
American Indian Student Association
Asian Pacific Student Association
MEChA
Alyansa ng mga Kababayan
Radical Student Union
Worker Student Alliance
Muslim Student Union
Women and Criminal Justice Network
Incite Magazine
Defend UCI
University Council-AFT, Local 2226
AFSCME, Local 3299
UPTE
Alud, The Graduate Student Journal of the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese