(The Center Square) – During a lecture at a mandatory UCLA medical school class on “structural racism,” a guest speaker allegedly led students in “non-secular prayer” to “mama earth,” started chants of “free free Palestine,” and denigrated medicine as “white science.” First Amendment experts noted students are protected from compelled speech, including forced participation in prayer or expressing allegiance to any belief or ideology against their will.
Lecturer Tiny Gray-Garcia, self-described on her website as “a formerly unhoused, incarcerated, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher” and more, was recorded during a March 27 lecture for the mandatory “Structural Racism and Health Equity” class for first-year medical students first reported on by the Free Beacon. UCLA is considered to be one of the best medical schools in the world.
The Free Beacon said that during a Gray-Garcia’s first call to prayer by kneeling, only half of students went to the ground, and that on Gray-Garcia’s second call to prayer by standing up, only one student remained sitting, leading a UCLA administrator to allegedly seek that student’s identity on the spot.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment civil liberties group, said it is working on confirming the details of the situation but laid out its understanding of students’ constitutional rights in the matter.
“Public college students have the clear First Amendment right to be free from compelled speech, including forced participation in prayer or expressing allegiance to or belief in any ideology against their will,” said Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment civil liberties group, to The Center Square. “If students were required to participate in prayer as part of this mandatory program, or if administrators suggested students who didn’t express certain ideologies would be punished, that would very much violate the First Amendment.”
