UC Irvine Professors Holding Pro-Palestinian Event

 I am cross-posting links that were mostly provided by Rabbi Dov Fischer, a well-known Orange County rabbi who writes op-eds in American Spectator and American Thinker, among many others. He is a supporter of the state of Israel.

Halloween is just around the corner, but at the University of California at Irvine, the goblins will be out one day earlier. On October 30, another obscene, pro-Palestinian event will take place on campus, defying common sense and common decency in the wake of the horrendous, barbaric  Hamas massacres of innocent men, women, and children, including babies beheaded in their own cribs!

Here is the public announcement of the event, labeled, "Ask a UCI professor: Israel-Palestine conflict 101"

Here is what I would ask a UCI professor:

Given the horrific events of October 7 by Hamas, how can you, in good conscience, stand with Hamas against Israel and its right to fight back in defense against this barbarity?

Having been a part-time teacher at UCI from 1998-2016, I am only personally familiar with one of the above 4 characters pictured above. That would be UCI professor Mark LeVine, who is also a part-time rocker and occasional op-ed writer for Al Jazeera, the Qatari-based propaganda news outlet. Several years ago, when he was holding a similar event at UCI, he got very upset at me for calling him an anti-Israel activist in front of his class. You would have thought I didn't use his preferred pronouns, whatever they are. He also once hosted a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in his class, an open event that I attended. That was in October 2008.

You can read what Campus Watch has written about LeVine over the years here, here, and here.

And here is what Frontpage Magazine has to say about LeVine.

As for the others, here is what we know about them:

Liron Mor

Her endorsement of this book, Voices of the Nakba, appears on the inner front page.

"A comprehensive, illuminating and moving work of scholarship, which is also, quite simply, a work of art.’ —Liron Mor, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

 As a member of Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine in 2013, Mor signed a "Palestinian Right of Return" letter.

In August 2023, Mor co-signed a letter entitled, "Elephant in the Room" condemning Israel. (In fairness, I should note that Elephant in the Room also posted a letter on October 14, condemning what Hamas did on October 7 but calling for an immediate cease-fire and permanent peace agreement. In other words, Hamas was wrong, but Israel can't fight back. I could not find Mor's signature on this letter, but with over 1,000 signatures, I could miss it.)

And there is this by Mor.

 Yousef Al-Balushi

Al Bulushi, who studied at the University of North Carolina and Duke, centers his scholarship around African-African diaspora studies. It appears that while at Duke, in 2001, Al-Bulushi wrote a letter to the Duke Chronicle condemning Israel.

 Meryem Kamil

Her UCI faculty profile

Her 2019 doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan.

And there is this tidbit from Duke Press.

I think it is safe to say that each of these 4 professors at UC Irvine stand solidly on the Palestinian side of the conflict, and no pro-Israel voices will be featured at their event. Of course, that is their right, just as it is their right to sign whatever letter or petition they desire, just as it is their right to hold a one-sided event on the topic. We on the other side of the issue also have a right to express our point of view and ask whether this particular event has any scholarly value to UC Irvine students beyond pure indoctrination. It is also our right to point out that it is disturbing that so many academics and universities are hosting events like these at this particular point in time after the atrocities committed by Hamas. Again, it is their legal right, but we also have the right to draw our own conclusions about these institutions and faculty.

This is also a time when government, institutions, and individuals should reconsider their giving money to such universities. As I have pointed out countless times, the pro-Palestinian movement on our campuses, which has now taken on grotesque features, has led to out-and-out anti-Semitism, bullying, and intimidation of Jewish students-both now and in the last several years. If any university can not or will not provide a safe learning environment for its Jewish students, that university does not deserve a dime.