UC Irvine Hosts Racist Hate Week – AGAIN
Photo from OC Task Force
UC Intifadah 2010 Edition-More Hate Than Ever Before
UC Irvine Faculty speak out against hate on their campus in an open letter released today.
In addition – the worst series of anti-Semitic posters has been put up on campus by the MSU. You can see them all here.
Faculty Statement:
We, faculty at the University of California–Irvine, are deeply disturbed about activities on campus that foment hatred against Jews and Israelis. The troubling events over the past few years include the painting of swastikas in university buildings, the Star of David depicted as akin to a swastika, a statement (by a speaker repeatedly invited by the Muslim Student Union) that the Zionist Jew is a party of satan, a statement by another MSU speaker that the Holocaust was God’s will, the tearing down of posters placed by the student group Anteaters for Israel, and the hacking of their web site. Some community members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even unsafe.
Some of these actions are protected by the First Amendment and in no way do we want to limit freedom of speech. We welcome open dialogue among all members of the UCI community. We respect and value our Muslim colleagues, including those members of the MSU who support and encourage open dialogue and civility on campus. At the same time, we take issue with hate-promoting actions that we find unacceptable. They run counter to the peaceful co-existence and civility that are essential to a university environment. Actions that demonize and derogate others, such as the previous events that have occurred on our campus noted above, have contributed to UCI’s developing a growing reputation as a center of hate and intolerance. Our campus deserves better.
Signed:Marlon Boarnet, Professor, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design
Matthew Brenner, Professor, Department of Medicine
Dan Cooper, Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering
Rina Dechter, Professor, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
George Farkas, Professor, Department of Education
Paul Feldstein, Robert Gumbiner Professor, The Paul Merage School of Business
Gary Fouse, Adjunct teacher, University Extension
Stephen Franklin, Lecturer, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Jean Fried, Project Scientist, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design
Julia M. Gelfand, Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian
Sheldon Greenfield, Donald Bren Professor, School of Medicine
Amihai Glazer, Professor, Department of Economics
Dan Hirschberg, Professor, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Christopher Kahn, Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine
Zeev Kain, Professor, Anesthesiology & Pediatrics & Psychiatry
Tatiana Kain, Chair and Medical Director, Department of Emergency Medicine
Sherrie Kaplan, Executive Co-Director, Center for Health Policy Research
Mark I. Langdorf, Professor, Clinical Emergency Medicine
Marc Lerner, Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Seymour Menton, Research Professor, Department of Spanish & Portugese
Frank Meyskens, Professor of Medicine, Biological Chemistry and Public Health
Dana Mukamel, Professor, Department of Medicine
David Neumark, Professor, Department of Economics
Alex Nicolau, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Raymond W. Novaco, Professor, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Richard Pattis, Lecturer, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Shlomit Radom-Aizik, Postdoc, Department of Pediatrics
Carl H. Schultz, Professor, Emergency Medicine
Roberta Seid, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences
Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Etel Solingen, Chancellor’s Professor, Political Science
Dara Sorkin, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Medicine
Eugene Spiritus, Chief Medical Officer, UCI Medical Center
Hal Stern, Professor, Department of Statistics
Dan Stokols, Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Planning, Policy,
and Design and Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Jerome Tobis, Professor emeritus (recalled)
Gene Tsudik, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Alex Veidenbaum, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Mark Warschauer, Professor of Education and Informatics
Hadar Ziv, Lecturer/Research Scientist, Department of Informatics
Posted on May 11, 2010, in Judaism. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Rabbi Yonah's Blogshul 
Yonah,
Thank you for turning out with your group this week at UCI. The MSU and their lousy speakers had a bad week.
Gary Fouse
adjunct teacher
uci-ext
fousesquawk
i don’t think criticizing the Israeli state should be considered “hateful”. The criticism of any state isn’t hateful; it’s a responsibility. Maybe the rhetoric the MSU uses isn’t that pleasant, but you can’t use that as a way of discrediting their message all together. Personally, I support no state, and I don’t support the existence of any state, but I believe the wish to “get rid of Israel” (the “one state solution” nirvana fallacy) isn’t going to happen under the current conditions. However, I view the actions of the MSU as very BRAVE.
Realize Rabbi, that when you associate the State and the State’s ruling elite with the people, the culture, the people’s history, and the communities, you engage in an extremely totalitarian way of thinking. Even in your Holy Book, King Ahab asked Elijah, “Why do you hate Israel?” (the people, not the state) assuming that by standing up to the epitome of a tyrant Elijah was in turn against his community. It’s the exact same tactic used by the zionist-nationalists today when they accuse critics of Israeli policy – Israel’s war crimes, ethnic cleansing, refusal to let the Palestinian refugees return to their homes – of being “anti-semitic” as a way of discrediting them. Think about that.