Woke Berkeley students demand reinstatement of colonial studies lecturer who admitted keying a male professor’s car and is accused of stalking him and approaching his mother
Students at Berkeley University are campaigning for the reinstatement of a suspended professor who was forced to take a leave of absence after being found guilty of stalking and harassing a professor at another University of California campus.
Professor Ivonne del Valle, a tenured associate professor of colonial studies in Berkeley’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, accused Professor Joshua Clover of harassing her online.
She became convinced that Clover, a lecturer in English and comparative literature at UC Davis, had somehow hacked into her computer and manipulated her accounts.
She felt he was writing veiled insults about her colleagues on Twitter and started writing him messages, leaving voicemails and showing up outside his home. She stalked his mother and forced him to move out.
Over the course of five years, the situation unraveled and she was suspended in the fall of 2021. KQED report.
Professor Ivonne del Valle was suspended by Berkeley in the fall of 2021. She is fighting to be able to teach again
Del Valle has accused Professor Joshua Clover of hacking into her devices and stalking her. He says she is mentally ill
Students are seen in Berkeley protesting and calling for del Valle’s reinstatement
Now Del Valle is fighting for reinstatement, and students are supporting her.
On Saturday, they interrupted a college football game.
They plan a hunger strike.
“My life has been completely destroyed,” del Valle said.
“I don’t want UC Berkeley to think they can do this to a minority woman to protect a white, senior professor.
It’s not acceptable.’
Clover, in an email to some del Valle supporters, obtained by The chronicle of higher education, wrote that the charges included “multiple instances of stalking, sexual harassment, retaliation, and violations of no-contact guidelines against me, my family, and my students; many, many costs over many years.”
The story began in the spring of 2018, when del Valle attended a panel discussion with Clover, who is known as a poet, columnist and political theorist and directs the university’s Marxist Institute for Research.
Del Valle said she was considering asking Clover to appear at a conference she was organizing on the 1968 student and worker uprisings in Mexico and elsewhere around the world.
Del Valle approached him after the event and said she would like to talk to him about the conference.
They agreed to meet at a bar in Oakland two weeks later, but Clover said he was embarrassed when he realized she thought it was a date.
Clover, director of the Marxist Institute for Research at UC Davis, met del Valle for drinks in May 2018: he said he felt awkward realizing she thought it was a date.
Del Valle insists she never thought her encounter with Clover was a date, and says he targeted her
Clover said he felt “uncomfortable with the interaction” and ended the meeting early.
Clover said she spoke as if it were a date and was “visibly nervous” when he mentioned his partner.
However, Del Valle said she didn’t consider it a date, but rather a social meeting with a colleague – and claims she ended the meeting because Clover said he had a reading group he would join next.
Del Valle followed Clover on Twitter before they met: she claims that after the awkward meeting in Oakland, Clover began writing oblique messages on Twitter criticizing her colleagues.
She sent him a private message: he said her messages were ‘confusing’.
Del Valle wrote to him and said he made her “damn uncomfortable” with the alleged disregard for her colleagues.
The next day, Clover responded, “I will not respond to further communications. Please don’t write to me any further.’
Del Valle became convinced that Clover had somehow planted a bug in her phone.
She told The Chronicle that she wrote a text message discussing plans to see a friend named Isis: Clover posted a tweet about a restaurant of the same name.
She searched online for French lessons and he tweeted: “Continue to daily vous, daily ils elles.”
She discussed Kendrick Lamar’s song Humble on the phone with her son, and for the next two days, Clover’s tweets included the word “humble.”
In October 2018, she went to the police to report cyberstalking: the police treated her, she said, as if she were ‘delusional’.
She said police were “rude, discriminatory and misogynistic.”
She said she told police: ‘If you don’t do anything, I’ll have to do it myself. This situation is untenable.’
Supporters of del Valle leave flyers on campus demanding her reinstatement
She then switched her mobile phone and laptop, and changed her home internet system three times.
Del Valle contacted Clover’s partner to say he was harassing her.
In December 2018, she showed up at his apartment door and sat there for an hour while he asked her to leave.
She slipped notes under the door, one of which read: ‘If you force me to leave, it will be even worse. I’ll keep doing this, you can be sure of that.’
He complained and she was ordered not to come near him.
“I’ve done things that I’m not proud of,” del Valle told The Chronicle.
‘I had asked for help in so many places, but no one paid attention or listened to me. And I’m the one who turned into the pariah.”
The university’s cybersecurity team suggested she take a break from social media.
She said she tried, but couldn’t avoid “the elephant in the room.”
In June 2019, she admitted to creating Twitter accounts to “expose” Clover and urged police to investigate.
Del Valle posed as Clover, calling him a “dirty old man” and containing sexual references.
She left a voicemail, telling Clover, “You still need to call me and apologize or you’ll see what I’ll do.” I’m not afraid of you. … I’m not afraid of anything, because I’m right.’
She keyed Clover’s car, spray-painted messages in silver paint in the hallway of his apartment building and on his front door, calling him a “sex addict” and “sick harasser.”
He eventually moved.
Clover did not call the police on del Valle.
In 2014, he wrote on Twitter that he was “grateful that every living cop will be dead someday” and in a 2016 interview he said that police “need to be killed.”
The university called his comments disgusting, but free speech.
Del Valle proceeded to harass Clover’s mother, Carol J. Clover, a professor emerita at Berkeley.
In late 2020 and early 2021, pieces of rotten pineapple covered in oil were dumped on her doorstep and insults about her son were written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of her house.
Protesters calling for del Valle’s reinstatement block Saturday’s football match
The police arrested fifteen people on Saturday for preventing the start of the match
A student protester is seen being escorted from the field
A person who investigators said was “more likely than not” was seen on surveillance cameras fleeing the scene.
In January 2022, the university placed her on involuntary medical leave.
Four months later, del Valle was suspended without pay or benefits for nine months, largely because of the pineapple, chalking and related incidents.
Clover insists she is mentally ill and needs help.
Del Valle insists she is a victim.
“None of the things I have done or allegedly done are romantic or sexual in nature,” she said.
‘The opposite is true. They have all been defenses against degrading abuse and sexual harassment.”
A campaign has been launched to restore her.
On September 14, approximately 80 students, alumni, faculty and staff held a meeting via Zoom.
“I’m talking here from a place of deep discomfort,” del Valle said, her voice breaking.
“This isn’t easy for me, but I have to.”
Everything she had worked for, she said, “could easily be taken away by a white person with power.”
On Saturday, 15 people were arrested for delaying the start of UC Berkley’s game against USC.
Students are now planning a hunger strike.
“We want Ivonne back,” said Christián González Reyes, a Ph.D. student of comparative literature, who is participating in the campaign. “We will not be silent anymore.”