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Jewish Groups Dismissed by UC President Decry Double Standard on Acts of Hate

University of California President Mark G. Yudof responded with a mix of dismissal and reproach July 6 to leaders of 12 Jewish organizations who had cosigned a letter asking him to take firm action to protest and prevent future outbreaks of anti-Semitism on UC campuses.\n
[additional-authors]
July 13, 2010

University of California President Mark G. Yudof responded with a mix of dismissal and reproach July 6 to leaders of 12 Jewish organizations who had cosigned a letter asking him to take firm action to protest and prevent future outbreaks of anti-Semitism on UC campuses.

On June 28, leaders from Stand With Us, the Orthodox Union, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others, sent a four-page letter to Yudof, stating that “bigotry against Jewish students has occurred over many years and on many University of California campuses” and asking Yudof to examine the problem on UC campuses with “an explicit focus on anti-Semitism.” The letter acknowledged that the university had established an Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion, but said that the body would “not address the specific issues of Jewish students.”

“Without an explicit focus on anti-Semitism,” the letter said, “the problems of Jewish students will not be recognized and addressed in the same straightforward manner as those of other minority groups.”

Among the incidents mentioned were the protesters who last April repeatedly heckled Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, during a speech he gave at UC Irvine, the staging of Israeli Apartheid Week on the same campus in May, and the appearance of swastikas on buildings at UC Santa Cruz earlier this year.

In his response, dated July 2, Yudof called the letter “a dishearteningly ill-informed rush to judgment against our ongoing responses to troubling incidents that have taken place on some of our campuses.” Nevertheless, he pledged “to do everything in [his] power to protect Jewish and all other students from threats or actions of intolerance” and pointed out that he and the University of California Board of Regents had each set up “campus climate committees” to “measure [the] climate for tolerance at the University of California for the long term.” 

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, wrote the Jewish groups’ letter, along with UCLA Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith and Roberta Seid, a lecturer at UC Irvine. Speaking by phone Wednesday, Rossman-Benjamin said she feels Yudof missed their point.

“He’s misconstrued our letter,” she said. “We have never suggested that the advisory task force couldn’t address our issues.” What they were asking for was for the president to do three things: 1. establish “a working definition [of anti-Semitism],” 2. issue “an acknowledgement that there has been a history of a problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses” and 3. make “a commitment to address that problem.”

Some Jewish organizations approached declined to sign the letter to Yudof, among them the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), both of which were mentioned by name in Yudof’s response. “All incidents of hate speech,” Yudof wrote, “including the depiction of swastikas on campuses, have been promptly investigated.  In such matters, I have sought guidance from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups.”

“We have frequently discussed matters with [Yudof],” said Ken Stern, director of the Division on Anti-Semitism and Extremism at AJC, who has been writing about these issues for over 20 years. AJC declined to sign the letter in part because of the campus climate committees Yudof had already set up. “We thought it was wise not to prejudge what that was going to achieve,” Stern said.

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