Hat tip The College Fix, Legal Insurrection and College Insurrection
"Fiat Lux"
The College Fix has reported on Wednesday's disruption of a pro-Israel event at UC Irvine.
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27535/
From Legal Insurrection:
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/05/anti-israel-students-ambush-attack-jewish-movie-screening-at-uc-irvine/
Here is today's Orange Country Register article on the incident.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/israeli-716561-israel-uci.html
Below is the comment I entered in the online reader thread to the Orange County Register article. I also submitted it to the editor for (hopefully) inclusion in the print edition.
"As a part-time teacher at UCI since 1998 (and a Gentile) I am not surprised. I have been seeing this stuff go on for years. Along with others, I have complained about anti-Semitism at UCI and other UC campuses to little avail. The administration simply will not confront the problem or even admit it exists.
SJP is a national student group with chapters on many campuses that engages in brown shirt tactics like this. It was co-founded by a radical Berkeley professor named Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian born troublemaker who got his higher education in the US before becoming a professor. A decade ago he called for an intifada in the US!
For the past two years, the Muslim Student Union and SJP have loudly disrupted the annual campus I(srael) Fest literally marching in and out of their staging area at the Cross Cultural Center in doing so. I have complained about that to no avail.
So now we have the spectacle of Jewish students being held in their own meeting room by a bunch of thugs who block the exits. Campus police have to escort them out of the room and to their cars? How about escorting the thugs to jail? Meanwhile, the chancellor asks-asks the campus to please respect the rights of others!
Just last week, I wrote a letter to the head of the Office of Academic Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (whatever that is) asking why he could write a letter to the campus offering "safe spaces" to gay students who felt threatened by the coming appearance of conservative gay pundit Milo Yiannopoulos, but did not feel compelled to write a simlar letter to Jewish students in the wake of the latest annual anti-Israel hate week. The latter featured a crackpot rabbi who aligns himself with those who want to wipe Israel off the face of the map-including Iran-and who used several anti-Jewish tropes in his lecture, calling his Jewish opponents, "shrewd", controlling politicians and the media and described Zionism as a "Bernie Madoff scam". What I got in return was a fill-in-the blank form letter that did not even mention Jews, but assured me of UCI's commitment to equity for all.
It is time for UCI to start taking strong punitive action against these troublemakers. This is far beyond the boundaries of free speech. It is also time for SJP's charter to be revoked. If our university administrators don't start acting like responsible adult leaders, it is just a matter of time before a tragedy occurs on campus."
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In addition, there are reports that at least one lawyer was among the protesters demanding entry into the room where the pro-Israel film was being shown. I'd sure like to know who those legal beagles were. Probably from Jim Lafferty's National Lawyers Guild up in LA. Or who knows? It might even have been someone from Erwin Chemerinsky's own UCI law school. He doesn't think there is an anti-Semitism problem at UCI.
"Fiat Lux" indeed!
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