UCI Israel Group President: “The Attendees Were Mostly Women and Some Felt Intimated (SIC) and Trapped Inside The Room.”

Hat Tip: Gary Fouse

Anti-Israel protesters disrupt Israeli movie screening at UC Irvine

By ROXANA KOPETMAN / STAFF WRITER

OC Register

May 19, 2016  Updated May 20, 2016 11:54 a.m.

Amid chants of “Long live the intifada,” anti-Israel student protesters disrupted the viewing of a film about Israeli soldiers at UC Irvine on Wednesday night, leading campus police to escort Jewish students away from the scene.

UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman responded Thursday with a campus-wide message saying the incident “crossed the line of civility.”

“While this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute … threats, harassment, incitement and defamatory speech are not protected. We must shelter everyone’s right to speak freely – without fear or intimidation – and allow events to proceed without disruption and potential danger,” Gillman wrote in the letter.

The administration is “investigating whether disciplinary or legal actions are appropriate,” Gillman wrote.

About a dozen students from UCI’s Students Supporting Israel met Wednesday night inside a classroom of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway to view the Israeli film, “Beneath the Helmet.”

Outside, some 50 protesters gathered and began profanity-laced chants against Israel and UCI police, according to observers and video from the scene.

“They were screaming. They tried to push open the door, but we were holding the door from the inside,” said Katrin Gendova, the Israel group president, who said the attendees were mostly women and some felt intimated and trapped inside the room.

LA Jewish Journal on MSU Suspension: Quotes Statement from OC Task Force

September 7, 2010

UCI upholds sanction on Muslim Student Union

Decision cuts group’s yearlong suspension to four months.

by Lisa Armony, Contributing Writer

The University of California, Irvine (UCI) has upheld its decision to sanction its Muslim Student Union (MSU), though it cut short the group’s yearlong suspension to four months. The group may not officially use university facilities during the fall 2010 quarter, recruit new members or raise funds, all part of the fallout for what school officials deemed the MSU’s violation of university codes of conduct related to the repeated disruption of a speech on campus in February by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Letter to UC President Yudof signed by OC Task Force and 11 Organizations

Dear President Yudof,

Please see the attached Letter outlining our concerns about the safety of Jewish students on UC campuses, which is being respectfully submitted to you by ourselves and the following organizations:

American Freedom Alliance

CAMERA: Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

The David Project

Israel Peace Initiative

Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism

Orthodox Union (OU)

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Simon Wiesenthal Center

Stand With Us

United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

Zionist Organization of America

“Stand with the 11 hecklers” tirade: “Mr. Oren, we accept your offer to return to UCI to expose the “Israeli perspective” for what it is.”

(Comment: Newspeak; Deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public. See also: doublespeak.)

Stand With the Eleven Answers Ambassador Oren’s Open Letter

By Mengfei Chen New University

Dear Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren,

In your open letter published in the New University, you propose a return to UC Irvine in order to “dialogue” with those whose views juxtapose yours. We willingly take you up on that offer. But to clarify, our willingness does not stem from any delusional notion that your words can right the decades of wrong and injustice.

Oren: “I would willingly return to your campus and meet with those individuals whose views may not agree with mine as long as we respect the decorum of dialogue and free speech.”

Ambassador Oren’s Letter

New University

Several weeks ago, I was invited to your university to provide my perspective on the Middle East peace process, the question of Iranian nuclearization and U.S.-Israel relations. Prior to assuming the role of ambassador I taught at several American universities – Harvard, Yale and Georgetown – and greatly enjoyed interacting with the students. For this reason, I chose to visit a number of campuses during my first diplomatic trip to California. I know that today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders and believe keenly in the need to provide these future statesmen with an Israeli perspective of Middle Eastern affairs.

Dean Chemerinsky expert on anti-Semitism?

No anti-Semitism at UCI, says dean

By Ben Harris · JTA February 23, 2010

Excerpt:

“…Chemerinsky is without question far more of a legal scholar than I. But Chemerinsky is misleading about what Drake has done. He has denounced hate speech. He did it for me personally two years ago when I cornered him in a D.C. convention center. But so far as I’m aware, he has NOT done it “when anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli sentiments have been expressed.” He has done it when critics demanded it. And he has not “expressly proclaimed the inappropriateness of such speech.” He has expressed his opposition to hate-speech in general, without “expressly” referring to any speech in particular.

Whether this represents a failing on Drake’s part is, again, an open question. But Chemerinsky makes it sound as if he has spoken out directly and pointedly in opposition to specific instances of anti-Jewish or anti-Israeli sentiments. And this, so far as I’m aware, is untrue.

I have spoken with rabbis in the area and officials of organizations like the Jewish Federation. They are uniformly highly praising of Chancellor Drake and how he has handled the issue.

Drake certainly has his Jewish defenders. But uniformly? Not by a long shot.

Here’s the local ADL director, Kevin O’Grady, in a May 2009 letter to Drake following the appearance of Amir Abdul Malik Ali at Irvine.

We firmly believe that your unwillingness to specifically condemn the anti-Semitic comments that were spewed on your campus last year in conjunction with MSU’s activities sent a signal that they were acceptable and led to the escalation of hate this year.  In such circumstances, it is your responsibility as Chancellor to exercise your own First Amendment rights and use your bully pulpit to denounce Amir Abdul Malik Ali by name, to remove the offensive display from the entrance of your campus and to restore the integrity of U.C. Irvine as a place that promotes a civil, respectful and welcoming academic environment.  There is no legitimate excuse for inaction now – enough is enough!

There’s also the report of the OC Task Force, which was formed by Hillel in 2006 to investigate the situation at Irvine. The report found the incidents of anti-Semitism “real and well documented” and faulted Drake for failing to exercise his moral authority.

Maybe it’s expecting too much of Drake. Maybe, as Chemerinsky claims, a public university can do no more than what has already been done. But Chemerinsky portrays this as an open and shut case, and as a lawyer, he should know it’s anything but.”

UC Irvines “habitualy craven administrators, led by a feckless Chancellor Michael Drake…”

“…But despite continual complaints from the Orange County Task Force on Anti-Semitism and other concerned UCI stakeholders, the tenor and frequency of speakers at the MSU’s lurid hate-fests continue unabated, seemingly with the tacit approval of the university administration…” Richard Cravatts Ph.D

UCI hecklers: ‘Speech for me, not for thee’

By Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D

Director of Boston University’s Program in Publishing

2010-02-11 Orange County Register

Of the many intellectual perversions currently taking root on college campuses, perhaps none is more contradictory to what should be one of higher education’s core values than the suppression of free speech. With alarming regularity, speakers are shouted down, booed, jeered, and barrage with vitriol, all at the hands of groups who give lip service to the notion of academic free speech, and who demand it when their speech is at issue, but have no interest in listening to, or letting others listen to, ideas that contradict their own world view.

UCI Law School Dean: Hecklers “Were supressing free speech”

Dean: UCI protesters violated free speech

February 10th, 2010, 1:01 pm   ·

posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor

OC Register

UCI School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. Photo courtesy of UCI.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law and an internationally-renowned expert on the Constitution, says that the students who yelled at Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren during a campus lecture Monday were suppressing free speech. (Coverage of protest.)

Eleven students — eight from UCI, three from UC Riverside — were arrested by campus police and cited for disrupting a public event. The arrests occurred while Oren was trying to discuss U.S.-Israel relations before an audience of 500 people in the UCI Student Center.

“They shouted him down,” Chemerinsky said. “Imagine if they had brought their own speaker and that person had been shouted down. There would be no free speech. There is no right to a ‘heckler’s veto’ “.