“Justice 4 Ivonne” Protestors Defend Alleged Sexual Harasser, Threaten to Shut Down USC-Cal Game
Last Updated 9:30 PM
If I could sum up the general standard of protests at Berkeley in three phrases, it would boil down to: “jumping to conclusions rather than doing one’s due diligence,” “playing the racism/sexism/really-any-ism card as a catch-all excuse for their cause,” and perhaps most importantly: “using intersectionality coalitions to recruit student-protestors that really have no idea what they’re doing.”
The “Justice 4 Ivonne” protest fits all three.
Ivonne del Valle is a former “tenured associate professor of colonial studies” at UC Berkeley who was suspended after three different Title IX investigations (2019, 2021, 2022) found that she “had either harassed” a professor at UC Davis “or violated orders not to contact him.” Her justification for the harassment was that the professor in question, Joshua Clover, had hacked her phone and laptop. All three investigations found this to be categorically untrue.
Del Valle’s harassment included keying the UC Davis Professor’s car, entering his locked apartment building, sending a “cascade of angry, expletive-laden emails and voice mails” to him, and spraying “messages in silver paint inside the hall of his apartment building and on his front door calling him a ‘sex addict’ and ‘sick harasser.’” Del Valle acknowledges that she was responsible for these actions. The harassment grew so extreme that Clover had to move out of the building due to fear for his safety.
Is this a professor we want on campus? I wouldn’t. Others, however, disagree. The “Justice 4 Ivonne” movement contends - with no evidence - that “Professor del Valle was the one being harassed,” even though del Valle herself acknowledges the sickening messages she left on Clover’s door and apartment building. Instead, they point to the investigation of Del Valle as a “modern-day witch hunt” against “women of color.” Because Del Valle is a Latina woman, the campus somehow has an active agenda against Latin Americans and seeks to dispel them from campus. That’s right. They blame sexism, racism, favoritism, and all the other -isms rather than confronting the truth— there was no hacking.
This, however, isn’t enough for the protestors. On Saturday afternoon they’ll attempt to shut down the USC-Cal game. And if that doesn’t work (it won’t), they’ll go on a hunger strike. I’d go on a long analysis of the situation here, but I’ll leave this week’s piece at this:
If your only defense to being accused of sexual harassment is “I’m oppressed,” it’s safe to say there are a lot of bigger issues playing in the background that you need to deal with first.
* Please read Katherine Mangan’s article for the full context of the case. Citations from the Chronicle, Justice4Ivonne, UC-Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. You can find a link here