Faced with legal questions surrounding a staunchly pro-Palestinian statement endorsed by a cross-section of academic departments in May, UC Davis is dismissing demands to remove or condemn it. Last week 58 pro-Israel faculty members at the university made public what had been an internal back-and-forth with administrators since late May. The group, known as Davis Faculty for Israel, released a July 19 letter sent to a university lawyer outlining concerns over what DFI’s chair called “extremist anti-Israel propaganda” published on a university website. The controversy began on May 27, when the six-paragraph statement appeared on the Asian American Studies department page in the wake of intense violence in Gaza and Israel.