This post was updated April 1 at 11:05 p.m.

Students at the Fielding School of Public Health are told to focus on vulnerable communities.

So teaching a class on Palestine – the site of what the World Health Organization calls an emergency situation – seemed only natural for a group of the school’s students.

“One of the things we’re taught is to think about things structurally, that individuals only have so much control of their decisions and that there are other factors – social, cultural, political – that are outside of their direct control,” said Rafik Wahbi, a doctoral student in public health. “It’s (Palestine has) been described as the worst public health conditions that any human group has ever experienced in the modern day.”

The student-led class, which would have met Wednesdays from 2 to 4:50 p.m., was approved by the Department of Community Health Sciences and opened for enrollment, said Randall Kuhn, the class’ instructor of record. However, the school’s Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee then also reviewed the class – something Kuhn said was not normal.

“Our course was passed unanimously by the department’s curriculum review committee, and that should have been the end of the story,” said Samira, an instructor for the class who was granted partial anonymity because of fears of retaliation. “A couple days later, we started hearing whispers in the department that we might need to go to a different review committee.”

The Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee then ordered the class to be canceled.

A School of Public Health spokesperson said in an emailed statement that schoolwide committees found it had breached UCLA Academic Senate regulations. Kuhn said the school told him that the course violated rules on who can teach classes, which state that only instructors of record can give grades, and students teaching courses need to be given salaries.

However, Kuhn – a professor of community health sciences – said graduate students already teach some classes. He added that the department had also previously allowed students to teach courses about 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri – following the murder of Michael Brown – and the immigration policies of President Donald Trump’s first administration.

“These courses were very well-received,” Kuhn said. “They won awards from public health societies. Our school published about it in their school magazine.”

Wahbi said he has previously taught classes and revised syllabi, including for Community Engagement and Social Change 195CE, so he believes the school administration’s argument for canceling the class is disingenuous. He added that he believes teaching is a valuable experience for graduate students to have and is one they are encouraged to pursue at UCLA.

[Related: 195CE courses generate opportunities, cost-related challenges for students]

Wahbi said the teaching group believed having multiple student instructors would allow the material to be explored from multiple perspectives. The class proposed to focus weeks on topics including reproductive, environmental and nutritional health in Palestine and was based on published, peer-reviewed readings, Kuhn said.

“We have our advisor on record, but we are wanting to break down the traditional pedagogy of a classroom – where we have a lecturer who’s teaching things that they are supposed experts on to people who don’t know anything – and rather create a co-learning environment, peer-facilitated,” said Samira, a public health graduate student.

Before the class was canceled, faculty tried to get the students teaching it to broaden its topical focus and asked for it to focus on other conflicts, Wahbi said. The instructors accepted some of the changes but asked for the class to primarily focus on Palestine, Wahbi said, adding that he believes that insistence led to the class’ cancellation.

Kuhn also said the school created additional hurdles for the class, including asking him, as the instructor of record, to attend all meetings of the class – something that had not been required when Community Health Sciences 296 had been offered in the past. Kuhn said he agreed to attend the class’ meetings.

Kuhn, a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, said he believes the class could have been canceled because of pressures from the Trump administration, which has recently threatened colleges that allow “illegal protests” with funding cuts and students who participate in them with expulsion or arrest.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has canceled over 300 visas of people who he believes have acted in a way that undermines U.S. foreign policy. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has detained students on education visas who participated in pro-Palestine protests, including at Columbia University, according to the Associated Press.

[Related: Trump outlines plans to punish students, campuses involved in ‘illegal’ protests]

The people teaching the class will now provide discussion times through the Health Not Punishment Collective, a student-run club, Wahbi said. The Fielding School of Public Health spokesperson said students can enroll in independent study to receive credit for the learning they do relating to Palestine.

However, Wahbi said the offering is not the same as the class that was canceled, as it will diminish the teaching structure, sense of learning community, safety of the classroom environment and the academic rigor of the course. The discussions, diversity of teaching and attendance requirements are no longer possible, he said.

“This was not an option we ever wanted to offer,” Wahbi said. “So this is something that’s only existing because they canceled our course, and they did it in a pretty awful way.”

Wahbi said he and other graduate students involved in the teaching group had written letters to the school’s leadership asking for the class to be reinstated. He added that he believes fear is being used to repress the school’s values, and the university is suppressing pro-Palestine speech.

Kuhn also said he believes teaching classes like this are important in fulfilling the School of Public Health’s academic mission, adding that the class’ cancellation was inconsistent with everything else he has seen from his school.

“This is one of the public health issues of our times,” Kuhn said. “If there’s a vulnerable population whose public health is under threat – which they all are – then our students explore those issues, and there’s never been a situation where there was any pushback on exploring those issues.”