Linda Katehi, UC Davis Chancellor responsible for the crackdown of university Students last week, is behind another erosion of free speech rights earlier this year.
In 1973, University students in Greece ignited protests that eventually toppled five years of Military rule in Greece, and ushered in a new democratically elected government. Ms. Katehi was a student in Greece at the time, and claims to have participated in the demonstrations (though she is ambiguous as to what her precise actions were during the protests).
The contribution of University protests in restoring democracy to Greece resulted in the passing of what's known as "Sanctuary Laws". Greece's Sanctuary Laws prohibit law enforcement or the military from entering Greek University campuses, so that no interference with any exercise of free speech or protest can occur. All College/University campuses in Greece are considered inviolate Free Speech zones, enshrined by law.
Flash forward 25+ years later. Ms Katehi is now part of a committee calling for the repeal of the Sanctuary Laws.
The following was shamelessly lifted from Crooked Timber, which has a link to the entire report:
Today, thanks in part to UC Davis chancellor “Chemical” Linda Katehi, Greek university campuses are no longer protected from state security forces. She helped undo her native country’s “university asylum” laws just in time for the latest austerity measures to kick in. Incredibly, Katehi attacked university campus freedom despite the fact that she was once a student at the very center of Greece’s anti-junta, pro-democracy rebellion–although what she was doing there, if anything at all, no one really knows.
Here’s the sordid back-story: Linda Katehi was born in Athens in 1954 and got her undergraduate degree at the famous Athens Polytechnic. She just happened to be the right age to be a student at the Polytechnic university on the very day, November 17, 1973, when the junta sent in tanks and soldiers to crush her fellow pro-democracy students. It was only after democracy was restored in 1974–and Greek university campuses were turned into police-free “asylum zones”–that Linda Katehi eventually moved to the USA, earning her PhD at UCLA.
Earlier this year, Linda Katehi served on an “International Committee On Higher Education In Greece,” along with a handful of American, European and Asian academics. The ostensible goal was to “reform” Greece’s university system. The real problem, from the real powers behind the scenes (banksters and the EU), was how to get Greece under control as the austerity-screws tightened. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that squeezing more money from Greece’s beleaguered citizens would mean clamping down on Greece’s democracy and doing something about those pesky Greek university students. And that meant taking away the universities’ “amnesty” protection, in place for nearly four decades, so that no one, nowhere, would be safe from police truncheons, gas, or bullets.
Thanks to the EU, bankers, and UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi, university freedom for Greece’s students has taken a huge, dark step backwards.
Here you can read a translation of the report co-authored by UC Davis’ Linda Katehi–the report which brought about the end of Greece’s “university asylum” law.
After her public climb-down of statements which initially blamed Students, and now is blaming the Police, sums up her credibility as a leader.
