“Hateful and offensive” display at UC Irvine Student Center?

Note: The following anonymous opinion was posted on the myUCIrvine web page.  In recent years, Jewish students who have spoken out about their experiences at UCI, have complained about being ridiculed and ostracised.  For this reason a number of students have left the campus or graduated early.  To view the photographs click the link below.

Scandal at UCI: Faculty fuels conflict as students look for peace 

“Pictures of blood stained flags and a memorial to hate speech has recently been put up in the Student Center… by a professor.”

Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:12pm By AnonymousOpinion  myUCIrvine

 http://www.myucirvine.com/news/opinion/scandle-at-uci-faculty-fuels-conflict-as-students-look-for-peace-20120427

If there is anything UC Irvine utterly despises, it must be freedom, equality, and democracy. I say this in full confidence because the only country that the administration at UCI allows to be slandered, libeled, and publicly desecrated is anything pertaining to Israel or the Jewish people.

UC Irvine prides itself on being a campus where all views and opinions can be heard, shared, as well as respected. I am sorry to say that this just isn’t the case. Take the Cross Culture Center (CCC), what should be the hub of diversity on campus, as an example. The CCC  “is dedicated to creating and maintaining a socially just campus, fostering the cultural identities within our community, and providing opportunities for intellectual exchange, leadership development, and community engagement” but clearly, they do not accomplish that. A demonstration of everything wrong with the CCC is the mural in the center proudly depicting the infamous El- Hajj Malik El- Shabazz. For those of you who are not familiar with Shabazz, he was a preacher of anti-Semitism, black supremacy and encouraged violence amongst his supporters.  Before his days as a member of the Nation of Islam, Shabazz told the US Draft Board that he, as well as his black supremacist supporters, wanted to “steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers.” This is a wonderful example of what the Cross Culture Center stands for because the university not only allows, but rewards this type of behavior.

The most hateful, disgusting, and narrow minded display of intolerance on campus every year is the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine’s week aimed at showing their baseless and unjustified hatred of the Jewish people. Every year for one week, UCI students are bothered with a public display of abhorrence towards one national ethnicity, the Jews. This is not surprising since the MSU has connections to the terrorist group Hamas, the group responsible for launching over 8000 rockets into Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. This disgusting act has not only never been condemned, it occurs every year, much to the students in SJP’s pleasure. To make things even worse, in the Student Center, a place where students go to study throughout the day, there is a wall of pictures honoring these detestable acts and the bigoted speakers SJP brings to campus.

I understand that freedom of speech allows the Muslim Student Union to expose their hateful intolerant nature, the same way the law allows them the right to burn an America flag. This is outside of the universities control. However, the university can publicly condemn them and make efforts for them to stop, which they have not.

Instead, UC Irvine has a wall glorifying the Muslim Student Union’s hateful actions over the last few years. Only at UC Irvine will there be pictures of blood stained Israeli flags, falsely accusing Israel of committing genocide, and libeling the Jewish religion, brought to you by your local Professor Frank Cancian. This begs the big question, why did the specific professor and administration, specifically Dr. Thomas Parham, allows these pictures to be up for an entire quarter even when they were notified by several different organizations that these pictures were hateful and offensive? Could the answer be that the university is promoting diversity by slandering pluralistic democracy and the Jewish nation, or could it be that the Parham himself favors some races over others? Why don’t you ask him next time you see him?

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not attribute to, myUCIrvine or the myUCIrvine Staff.