Open Letter to UCI Chancellor From Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona

Below is an open letter to UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake from Don Morris, Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona. This letter is posted in JBlog.


Dear Chancellor Drake,

As a Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly Pomona, I spent my career teaching young minds about freedom of speech and I created educational environments in my classroom that modeled this behavior. Why? It is our sacred responsibility to foster and promote such behavior. Regretfully, U.C. Irvine has become notorious for the uncivilized behavior of its Islamic students who are virulent, even fanatic, anti-Israel-Anti-Semitics and anti-America. I have attended functions on your campus and have also been verbally attacked and abused by your students. Your Islamic student community has identified and positioned your university as a leading torch of bigotry, lack of free speech and inimical American culture.

As you are well aware the list of the following eight Muslim students who, Sunday night, were arrested for attempting to shut down free speech at U.C. Irvine, when Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren speech was endlessly interrupted. The power of the internet has on Youtube the reprehensible actions duly noted. UC-I, among its national colleagues, has become equated with educational castrated bastions of intolerant speech. As a former adjunct faculty member on your campus this evolving designation is beneath the dignity the University should command from its faculty and students and it is shameful.

The following students were at the auditorium to participate in the Muslim Student Association’s organized and intentional strategy to prevent Israel’s Ambassador, Michael Oren, from speaking. Mr. Oren is not the only one on whom U.C. Irvine Muslim Student Association’s used this despicable strategy.
Those students were arrested:
Joseph Tamim Haider
Osama Ahmed Sabry Shabaik
Mohamed Mohy Eldeen Abdelgany
Ali Mohammed Sayeed
Asaad Traina
Mohammad Qureashi
Aslam Akhtar
Hakim Nasreddine Kebir

As for three students from U.C. Riverside, please send a clear message to their University: We are restoring civility at UCI and Taher Herzallam, Shaheen Waleed Nassar and Khalid Bahgat Akari are not welcome on our campus.

I not only urge you to take the appropriate action right away; I also request that you apply full prosecution for those arrested student, to include expulsion from UCI, and deportation of those who are here student visas. They are not welcome here to try distorting our culture and way of life. This is long overdue and until such time as you take such a stand, the misrepresentation and abuse of “Free speech” will not only continue to be a mockery, the behavior will escalate. It is time for you and UC-I to act courageously.

I want civility restored at UCI and nothing less will suffice!

Respectfully,
GS Don Morris, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Cal Poly-Pomona