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Friday, May 27, 2016

Campus Reform Continues Investigation of UC Incident

Here is the latest from Campus Reform. Yours truly is mentioned prominently since CR has used information from my blog.

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7632

Before I comment, there is some housecleaning to do. There is a quote taken from one of my blog postings that contains a misprint, which leads to a small factual error. I highlighted two words (and/at) that led to the error.

"Fouse, who has carefully tracked Hillel’s activity at UCI, has his own theory about the event, arguing that the university is covering up instances of anti-Semitism in order to maintain its appeal to Jewish students.
“Hillel and UCI and the OC Jewish Federation, along with their money arm, the Rose Project, have a long history of being in bed with the university and downplaying any act of anti-Semitism at UCI, which has been documented on this site for years,” he wrote. “In my opinion, they have a conflict of interest in that if Jewish students decide not to attend UCI because of its perceived reputation for anti-Semitism then they have no reason for being involved on campus.”
Here is what I actually wrote in a blog posting which CR used:

http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2016/05/hillel-and-jewish-federation-of-oc.html
"Here is what I think has occurred. Hillel at UCI and the OC Jewish Federation, along with their money arm, the Rose Project, have a long history of being in bed with the university and downplaying any act of anti-Semitism at UCI, which has been documented on this site for years. In my opinion, they have a conflict of interest in that if Jewish students decide not to attend UCI because of its perceived reputation for anti-Semitism (thanks to the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine) then they (Federation/Hillel) have no reason for being involved on campus."

So to clarify, while I stand by my belief that UCI has refused to acknowledge and confront anti-Semitism over the years, it is specifically the Jewish Federation and Hillel of Orange County (not UCI) that I believe want to downplay incidents of anti-Semitism because they fear that Jewish students will be reluctant to attend UCI. That I stand by. I have asked CR to make the appropriate correction.

Now let's get back to business. Taking another quote from the CR post:

“The people who know us best—virtually all members of our tremendous Jewish student body, the leaders of our local Hillel and Chabad chapters, and our community partners such as the Jewish Federation and Family Services of Orange County and the Rose Project would disagree with this characterization,” he continues, even saying his school is “consistently praised for [its] efforts at creating an outstanding environment for [its] Jewish students,” even though watchdog organizations have listed a number of anti-Semitic events on campus for years."
(-Chancellor Howard Gillman)

I have no opinion about Chabad, but this seems to lend weight to criticisms of the relationship between UCI, Hillel and the Jewish Federation. Maybe UCI should take a step back and consider the long-standing allegations of Hillel and The Federation clamping down on Jewish students who speak out. If those allegations are true, the university is tarnishing itself by its continued close relationship with these entities. (Hillel and the Rose Project are essentially subsidiaries of the Jewish Federation.)

* Update (May 28) : Regarding the above two paragraphs: The reader should not infer that CR is charging collusion between the university, Hillel and the Jewish Federation because of my above comments following the CR quote by Gillman. They are not. My comments in the above paragraph are based on my own observations over the years independent of this latest issue.

In addition, the CR post indicates that there may be an effort by Hillel and the Jewish Federation to keep the investigation of last week's incident in-house-that is those Jewish students involved are possibly being told not to cooperate with Campus Reform. I am not prepared to make that accusation yet as to last week's incident. 

"Fouse also told Campus Reform that he thinks Orange County Hillel encourages its students to stand down from intimidation. A few students who Campus Reform initially contacted have either ignored or declined requests for comment after initial publication."

Of course, I stand by the first statement in that above paragraph. While I don't know if such is the case now, I would not be surprised.



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