An accused stalker? What happened to all the talk about needing to feel ‘safe’ on campus?
KQED News reports:
UC Berkeley Students Threaten Hunger Strike to Reinstate Professor Suspended for StalkingA growing group of UC Berkeley students has been staging a months-long protest campaign demanding that the university bring a suspended Spanish and Portuguese professor back to campus. They’ve shared testimonies highlighting how influential Ivonne del Valle has been both as a mentor and as a leading scholar at a school with few Latinx faculty.“Professor del Valle isn’t just any faculty member, she’s the top expert in colonial studies,” said Emily Chamale, a second year UC Berkeley student, at a protest last month. “The question that haunts me is: If someone as respected as her is going through such things at Berkeley, what might the future be for the rest of us?”But records obtained by KQED paint a troubling picture of what led to del Valle’s suspension. Over three investigations, which looked into behavior that began in 2018 and continued through 2022, the university found del Valle had repeatedly harassed, stalked and retaliated against Joshua Clover, an English and Comparative Literature professor at UC Davis, and then violated orders not to contact him.Clover declined to comment on the record.Student supporters contend del Valle was acting out of desperation, believing that she is actually the victim of harassment and online stalking. They are preparing to disrupt the Cal football game against the University of Southern California in an undisclosed manner on Saturday.“We want Ivonne back,” said Christián González Reyes, a Ph.D. student studying comparative literature, who is organizing with the campaign. “We’re not going to be silent anymore.”The supporters say del Valle is beloved at the university, where she is the only first-generation Mexican woman among faculty in the school’s Spanish and Portuguese Department.If del Valle is not reinstated, a group of students plan to stage a hunger strike.
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