A group of students interrupted a college football match between UC Berkeley and the University of Southern California to protest the suspension of a UC Berkeley educator who was accused of sexually harassing and stalking another professor.
The UC Berkeley students stormed the California Memorial Stadium field wearing shirts reading “Justice 4 Ivonne” an associate professor of “Colonial Studies,” as well as a Spanish and Portuguese professor who was suspended after three separate investigations concluded that she had a problematic history of harassment. The students have threatened a “hunger strike” if the suspended professor, Ivonne del Valle, is not reinstated.
“[R]ecords 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.”
KQED
Del Valle reportedly admitted to her certain threatening actions, which led to her suspension in an interview with KQED, including “keying Clover’s car, vandalizing the area outside his apartment door, contacting his friends, posting an image of his partner online, and leaving messages outside the home of his mother.” In addition to the messages left outside Clover’s mother’s home, which read, “I raised a psychopath,” del Valle also admitted to leaving a message outside of her colleague’s home reading “Here lives a pervert.”
“I did write outside his door, ‘Here lives a pervert,” del Valle told KQED, “I did that. And again, I’m not proud.”
In the eyes of her former students, however, del Valle was the true victim. The UC Berkeley students claimed that del Valle was “acting out of desperation,” and are demanding “justice.”
The Post Millennial also reported that a UC Berkeley spokesperson said the professor has not been terminated as of yet because she is a tenured faculty member.
