Sign the Petition to UC President Mark Yudof

Dear Task Force friends,

As a follow-up to last  year’s letter to UC President Mark Yudof, which 12 organizations  — including  your own — signed, my colleague Dr. Leila Beckwith and I have recently posted  another on-line letterto President Yudof, urging him to forcefully and  promptly address the problem of the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students on UC campuses.  We are hoping that thousands of Jewish community members will join us in signing this follow-up letter.

Could you please forward the following to your email subscribers?

Many thanks,

Tammi

Dear Jewish Community of California,

Bigotry against Jewish students has occurred on University of California campuses over many years and on many campuses.  Jewish students have been subjected to: swastikas; acts of physical aggression; speakers, films and exhibits that use anti-Semitic imagery and discourse; speakers that praise and encourage support for terrorist organizations; the organized disruption of events sponsored by Jewish student groups; and most recently the promotion of student senate resolutions for divestment from Israel that seek to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State.

Last May, more than 700 Jewish UC students signed a petition expressing outrage at anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery on their campuses.  They asserted that these incidents are as offensive and hurtful to Jewish students as a “Compton cookout” or a noose are to African American students. In addition, dozens of Jewish students from three different UC campuses, who responded to an on-line questionnaire, described feeling harassed and intimidated by the promotion of hatred against the Jewish State and of Jews.  Almost all of the students felt that the administrators on their campuses did not treat Jewish concerns as sensitively as they did the concerns of other minorities such as African Americans and Latinos.

In June 2010, leaders of 12 Jewish organizations, including the Orthodox Union and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, wrote to UC President Mark Yudof, expressing their concerns about the hostile environment faced by Jewish students on UC campuses, and calling on him to address this serious problem immediately.  President Yudof responded by asking Jewish leaders to have patience and faith in the newly-established Advisory Councils on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion. Over the last year, however, these Advisory Councils have failed to address, or even acknowledge, the problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses.  In fact, the aims and actions of the Advisory Councils since their inception, as revealed by documents released under a  Freedom of Information request, show that Jewish students are not a focus at all.

Office For Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) Opens Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964 Investigation at the University of California Santa Cruz

In a letter dated March 7, 2011,  responding to a complaint filed  by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) has agreed to open a Title VI investigation at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). The letter stated, “We have determined that the issue is appropriate for investigation under the laws enforced by OCR.”   The letter also stated that OCR has identified the following issue for investigation:

The recipient (UCSC)  “failed to take steps in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to respond to notice of a then existing hostile environment for Jewish Students based on their actual or perceived ancestry or ethnic characteristics.”

Ms.  Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of California, Santa Cruz  (UCSC),  lodged  a 29-page extensively documented Title VI Complaint with the OCR  in June,  2009.  The complaint alleges, among other things,  that anti-Israel discourse and behavior in classrooms and that departmentally and university-sponsored events had created an “emotionally and intellectually hostile environment for Jewish students and had adversely affected their educational experience” at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).  The complaint further alleges that:

Divestment and campus anti-Semitism

Excerpt: “…the resolution at Berkeley singled out Israel, while ignoring all human rights violations in counties like Iran, Russia, Sudan, China and Rwanda, all among the most egregious violators of human rights on the planet, some of them sites of mass slaughters. If singling out the Jewish state for special condemnation when its actions don’t even belong in the same category as those others is not anti-Semitism, it’s hard to see what is.”

UC campuses are hotbeds of anti-Semite vitriol

By thomas d. elias

San Jose Mercury News

Posted: 07/13/2010 11:00:00 PM PDT

Updated: 07/13/2010 11:26:29 PM PDT

You’d think tempers on University of California campuses last spring were hotter about the upcoming tuition increases than anything else. You’d be wrong.

“University administrators would do well to read the writing on their campuses’ bathroom walls”

The following commentary is from the Jewlicious blog:

The Toilet as a Sign of the Times in the University of California

Written by themiddle

Over the years, we have brought our readers numerous posts about the anti-Israel movement at UC Irvine, UC Berkeley and recently UC San Diego. These movements are typically led by those schools’ Muslim Student Association or branch. The students at these organizations are organized, well funded and appear to have a network that not only provides them with necessary materials and programs, but also has a circuit of professional anti-Israel speakers.  Here’s one:

ZOA Letter to UC President Yudof: UC Santa Cruz allegedly solicited funds for Hamas

“……Once again, a University of California campus was used to solicit funds that may have ended up in the hands of the terrorist group Hamas.  But this time, it was not a student group that solicited the funds or a speaker sponsored by the student group, which is what occurred at UC Irvine in violation of University of California polices and possibly in violation of federal law.  At UC Santa Cruz, it was the University itself doing the soliciting….” Excerpt from ZOA  letter to UC President Mark Yudof

To read the letter click below

letter to Mark Yudof re MECA & Viva Palestina 11-06-09