UCLA ‘Activist-in-Residence’ Called Modern Medicine ‘White Science,’ Said Private Property Is a ‘Crapitalist Lie’

The University of California Los Angeles taxpayer-funded “Activists-in-Residence” program employs a radical leftist who believes that modern medicine is “white science” and that private property and scarcity are “crapitalist lies” — and the university refuses disclose what exactly she is teaching students or how much she is being paid.

Lisa Gray-Garcia, who describes herself as a “formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist [and] lecturer,” subscribes to a number of radical left-wing ideas, including that Southern California is “stolen land” and that Israel is a “kolonizer” guilty of “genocide.” She has also said that the University of California San Francisco is a “Zionist funded akkkademik institution” and apparently once turned up to the UCLA campus wearing a “terrorist-themed costume,” according to a Jewish faculty group on campus.

And for more than five months, UCLA has refused to turn over documents related to her teaching curriculum or her pay, in violation of state public records law, according to a new lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute. 

The conservative think-tank has been trying since October to obtain, through public records requests, Gray-Garcia’s contract, details about her compensation, her course syllabi and materials, university emails discussing topics such as Israel and Gaza, and all materials provided to activists-in-residence during the program’s 2024 orientation. 

Yet the university has failed to turn over a single record.

“Taxpayers have a right to know what is being taught and how much a university is paying for it,”  Stacy Skankey, Litigation Director of the Goldwater Institute’s American Freedom Network, said in a statement. “UCLA should have responded quickly to our basic records request about Lisa Gray-Garcia’s work with the school. Unfortunately, they simply refuse to follow the law. Now it’s time for the court to step in and force UCLA to shine a light on what the public is paying for.”

UCLA did not respond to a request for comment from National Review.

Gray-Garcia is just one of more than 25 activists who are participating in UCLA’s taxpayer-funded “Activists-in-Residence” program which aims to “turn the university inside out” by providing artists and community organizers with opportunities to engage with the campus community and to develop their “commitment toward racial, economic, and social justice.”

Bradley Benbrook, Goldwater’s attorney, said the California Public Records Act and the California Constitution prohibit taxpayer-funded institutions like UCLA from withholding public records like the ones Goldwater has requested “even if those records include embarrassing or controversial information that the institutions would prefer to keep hidden.”

“UCLA proudly advertises on its website that it pays ‘Activists-in-Residence’ like Ms. Gray-Garcia to engage in the type of ‘poverty scholarship’ and ‘revolutionary journalism’ she pursues, yet it has refused to produce the basic documents Goldwater has requested about her work for UCLA and the financial support UCLA provides,” he added. “We brought this case to ask the court to order UCLA to follow the law and turn over the records.”

Gray-Garcia first made waves in April 2024 when she was invited to give a talk to first-year medical students at UCLA. Students were required to attend the activist’s two-hour lecture, “Housing (In)justice in LA: Addressing Unhousing and Practicing Solidarity.” She used her time to dismiss modern medicine as “white science” and ordered students to pray to “mama Earth,” according to media reports and a complaint filed by the university’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group.

She further claimed that private property and scarcity are “crapitalist lies” that killed “black, brown and houseless people.”

She also blasted efforts to clean up homeless encampments. 

“Not only are our bodies considered unclean in public, not only are our lives criminalized for being outside without a roof, but politricksters use us for their campaigns,” she said in a video posted to TikTok.

California spent $30 million “on the removal of our houseless bodies,” she said, and questioned how many homes could have been built with that money “even in these inflated, ridiculous prices of commodified Mama Earth.”

Gray-Garcia, who led a “Free, free Palestine” chant during her med school lecture, had also previously claimed on social media that Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel was justified. 

“As we hold our relatives in Occupied Palestine, and all of Mama Earth in prayer and love, we need to make connections,” she posted on X the day after the attack.

“For us houseless, indigenous, swept/evicted people — we [are] not separate from this struggle — we suffer from the same settler colonial terror.”

The next month, she wrote: “When you resist after decades of relentless policing, killing and terrorizing, that’s not ‘terrorism,’ that’s justice.”