Evidence of the concern within UCLA’s Jewish community stemming from recent events on campus could be seen on March 16 by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s visitors that day.

Just before an interview with the Jewish Journal that morning, Block met with Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, Hillel at UCLA’s longtime and outgoing executive director. Then, not long after, the chancellor met with Judea Pearl, a renowned UCLA computer science professor and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, who is also an outspoken critic of the UCLA’s Center For Near Eastern Studies and an occasional op-ed columnist for the Journal.

The university, traditionally perceived as particularly welcoming for Jewish students, has made national headlines in recent months thanks to anti-Israel resolutions in student government and what many consider an overtly anti-Semitic action by several student government representatives.

Those incidents include the November passage of a student government resolution to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as it pertains to Israel; and, in February, a hearing concerning Rachel Beyda, a Jewish pre-law student nominated for a student-judicial role, who was questioned at the hearing as to how she, as a Jew, could serve as an unbiased judge.

Block, who became chancellor in 2007 and is himself Jewish, sat down with the Journal to talk about these and other campus issues on the minds of so many Jews in Los Angeles and now around the country. The following is an edited transcript.

Jewish Journal: These types of interviews tend to happen when schools are in the news for not great reasons, so I’ll just start with the elephant in the room. Many Jews in L.A. who read us have seen over the past year the BDS resolutions, the judicial board hearing last summer, the incident with Rachel Beyda, the appointment of [Jewish student] Avi Oved [to the Board of Regents] and the backlash that surrounded that, and they’re asking, is UCLA as comfortable, as safe and as good a school for active pro-Israel Jews as it has been for decades? What’s your response?

Gene Block: I think it is, and I’m not blind to the fact that some of our students have certainly felt the turmoil associated with the BDS movement. But I had breakfast with Jewish student leaders last Monday, and although they say that some of this has been uncomfortable, many have said, ‘We are happy to write to incoming students or to alumni and explain exactly what we are gaining by being here; the rich environment we are in.’ We are not blind to the fact that we’ve got to find ways for students to feel safe and comfortable on campus, but I think our Jewish students really are thriving here. That’s my sense.

JJ: Do you understand why the perception of UCLA changing for the worse for Jews exists?

Block: Absolutely. I think the BDS movement, whatever the intent, the effect has been corrosive. And the fact that it’s focused on a single country is isolating to many of our students. It’s divisive. And that divisiveness has created tensions that certainly weren’t here maybe a decade ago. That has been a challenge for our students.

JJ: How do you make it not corrosive?

Block: Part of this has been the ongoing discussion about why we talk about boycott, divestment and sanctions for a single country. That discussion has been going on a lot and forcing the BDS movement and supporters to justify it, and what they’ve done in many cases is they’ve broadened now the number of countries involved, and I think that’s the beginning of a discussion to be more realistic about what we’re talking about here, which is that this movement focused on one country is totally inappropriate. I think we are moving forward from that point. Of course we’re not going to divest. The regents have made that very clear. We’re certainly not going to boycott Israeli universities. We’ve all made that very clear. So there isn’t really an actionable agenda. And because there’s not an actionable agenda I really do believe that this movement isn’t going to be sustained on this campus.

JJ: This is hardly a representative sample, but I’ve spoken with Jewish alumni and parents of high school students, and donors, and they’ve said they’re nervous about what’s going on at UCLA, and they’re not sure they want their kids to go there. Someone on Friday, a significant UCLA donor, told me that his son is well-qualified for UCLA but will not consider applying because of anti-Israel activity, and that he, the father, is reconsidering his financial relationship with UCLA. What’s your message for people who feel this way?

Block: We’re working hard to make sure that all of our students thrive and feel comfortable on campus. We’re hiring a new vice chancellor focused on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, so we’re bolstering our programs to work with students. We’re considering new initiatives. We have a diversity requirement, which I think is very important that students have to take a course that lets them appreciate living in a multicultural environment. We’re thinking about bolstering our incoming orientation for students. I would tell parents we’re working hard to make it a safe place. But talk to our students, talk to our Jewish students. If there’s any concern, get their perspective.

JJ: Did you watch the video of the hearing with Rachel Beyda?

Block: I did. I heard a piece of it, but not the whole thing.

JJ: What were your thoughts?

Block: Just what I responded. I thought it was intolerable; it was inappropriate questioning. I said that very clearly, and I said that immediately. That was my feeling about it. The students did change their vote. That’s why I called this a “teaching moment.” When the faculty advisor explained to them the inappropriate nature of the questioning, they changed their vote. You know, not all of our students with strong views change votes. I think what we found is they all recognized that they were wrong. They apologized. I think it was a sincere apology and then they cosponsored [a resolution] with Hillel and the class president [Avinoam Baral] a very strong condemnation of anti-Semitism. So I think changing your vote, apologizing, cosponsoring a very strong statement means that something positive has come out of this for the students. I think that all student governments in discussions like this going forward will be alert to the fact that you’ve got to avoid questions that really end up being anti-Semitic. Maybe not anti-Semitic in intent, but anti-Semitic in impact and in outcome. I think this has been a learning experience.

JJ: How do you explain how the question posed to Rachel Beyda could be asked in 2015, in what’s supposed to be the most tolerant and diverse environment in the country—the college campus?

Block: My sense is that we’ve all developed almost autonomic responses to be careful about discrimination of many groups. And I think there has been a problem that Jewish students, by some, are viewed as part of the majority, the larger sort of population in the U.S., and for some reason students feel it is acceptable to ask a question that they would not feel is acceptable to ask about other groups. And we have to educate students about that. They’ve got to be clear that it’s just as inappropriate in any way to ask a student that’s Jewish whether they can’t be objective on issues, because you might not ask that question of students from other backgrounds. That’s intolerable, and that’s what I pointed out. And I can’t tell you why that has happened. Again, we all recognize that the Jewish population in America has become very successful. Many students, I think, they view Jews as just part of the “white majority”. And that is not the way Jewish students view themselves. They’ve come to this with a completely different history. Some of them are two generations from Holocaust survivors. It’s a very difficult feeling than maybe what some individuals looking at them feel they represent.

JJ: Do you think some of it might have to do with the BDS movement continuously singling out Israel, the country for the Jewish people, as being a particularly bad country worthy of condemnation?

Block: Again, the BDS movement does tend to isolate. We hear that from our Jewish students—it tends to be isolating. Whatever the intent, the effect is that it actually isolates students.

JJ: Do you think that it could lead to something like this? Even if the students who questioned Beyda weren’t anti-Semitic, and it was just a sort of herd instinct that they were snapped out of. Do you think that the constant message of “Israel is bad” can lead them to associate that with Jewish students?

Block: I think this is the problem. There’s a lack of sophistication here. They have to recognize that Jewish students—that’s a religion. Jewish students have a variety of political views. There is no way you should be inferring people’s prejudices or their political views from their religion, and I think this was a wakeup call, and in some sense I think they were snapped out of it, because of the fact that they so quickly decided, when this was discussed, to change their vote and to apologize. I think they realized it was a transgression.

JJ: Shortly after that was the incident with the posters around campus [by Jewish activist David Horowitz’s group comparing the Students for Justice in Palestine to the terrorist group Hamas]. What was your immediate reaction to that?

Block: Well, another example of intolerance. Very different in nature, and it turned out it was external to campus, it wasn’t people internal to campus. I met with Muslim students who feel very threatened by those types of posters. And I thought again, an act of intolerance. Different issue. Very different issue. But again, something that our community needs to address, and in this case it was not our community. Actually our community responded uniformly in abhorrence to these posters, but it concerns me. It concerns me that there were swastikas at UC Davis, that’s horrendous. These posters were highly inflammatory. It’s concerning.

JJ: And a few weeks ago you condemned both the posters and the questioning of Rachel Beyda in the same statement.

Block: But I said they weren’t the same.

JJ: Did you view them as equivalently condemnable? Did they both pose the same threat to the campus climate of diversity and openness?

Block: Different issues. Both concerned me. The temporal nature of the two happening together, I decided to treat them together. But different issues.

JJ: Jewish students here say this a great campus for Jews, but I’ve heard there are areas of campus where they don’t feel particularly safe to be actively pro-Israel, like BDS hearings for example. Not in terms of physical safety, but safe in terms of comfort. There seem to be areas where it takes courage to be actively pro-Israel. Why should that have to take courage in a place of tolerance?

Block: Any time you have strong feelings about issues, and this is a case where there are very strong feelings, the environment I think can be challenging. Is that bad necessarily? Isn’t there an educational point to this where it teaches our students you have to be firm, you have to be committed, and you have to change opinions? To get into the fray can be hard and emotionally challenging. You should certainly feel safe wherever you are, in every way. I speak with a lot of student groups of all different ethnicities, and many feel it’s very challenging to bring up concerns sometimes, their concerns, to the larger group, and I think this is not unusual among many student groups. It can be hard, especially when there are strong emotions. We have to ensure that we provide opportunities for students to interact in ways that really do feel emotionally safe; to try to find venues for that and try to find opportunities for the students to interact in ways that they feel very comfortable to express their opinions. I think we can work hard to provide more opportunities for dialogue between students in which all students feel safe.

JJ: Let me read back an excerpt from your statement a few weeks ago: “UCLA will not be defined by intolerance. We will strive to create a community that will honor the dignity of all its members even if we struggle with one another’s ideas. We will strive to create a community in which all of us can fully take part in campus life and express our views and identities, safe from intimidation, threat or harm. Let us all work together to do the good work of creating that community.”

There have been a lot of these statements from the pro-Israel side, from the pro-Palestine side, from this office. But what can concretely be done to improve the climate?

Block: We’ve been talking to various organizations that can work with our students to bring them together in a safe place to discuss significant differences. We’ve actually begun that process. Eboo Patel [a member of President Obama’s inaugural advisory council on faith-based neighborhood partnerships] was here recently speaking to our students, of which the students were very positive. We can find facilitators and environments where we can bring our students together for these respectful disagreements. We’re working on that.

JJ: Your spokesman mentioned possibly launching a “training module” for incoming students. What’s a training module?

Block: This is discussion. We haven’t decided whether this is the most effective way but we think our students coming in should have a better appreciation of what discriminatory behavior is and how to avoid inappropriate questioning in things like student government appointments. We thought that we could do more with students coming whether it’s part of orientation in some way or whether it’s an online training module.

JJ: Practically, do you think the diversity system and curriculum can moderate what feels like a volatile situation?

Block: It can help. It can educate students who fall into the traps of discriminatory thinking. It helps a large number of students who can better understand how to live in a diverse environment. When you’re talking about ideologues that have strong views that are going to be on every campus, you’re always going to have those. But if that’s outnumbered by reasonable people who better understand living on a contemporary college campus, I think they’re going to get outweighed by reasonable voices. Good speech can replace bad speech with numbers.

JJ: The active pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel communities have your ear. You want them to be active, but you also want the campus to be respectful, tolerant and safe. What’s your message?

Block: One’s free to have political opinions and express those on campus. That’s part of having a campus with diverse views. It’s also important to try to keep the campus civil in its discourse—you used that word, respectful. I’d use the word respectful in discourse, and recognize there are other viewpoints, valid viewpoints. And if both sides can recognize valid viewpoints and agree to disagree on issues without it becoming highly emotional, I think that we can have disagreements on campus that really are respectful, and are learning experiences, and may not change views but students feel they’ve been heard, and they’re doing it in a safe environment.

JJ: At USC and UCSD, Jewish students have worked together in the past and present on things kosher and halal dining options, and joint living spaces. Are there any collaborative elements that you think could work at UCLA that you’re interested in doing?

Block: When I had breakfast with Jewish students and Muslim students, the Muslim students said they’re willing to work with Jewish students on issues of common concern. The Jewish student leadership said that as well. So I think the relationship between the two groups on campus is OK, and I think it could improve and I think they are all willing to work together.

JJ: Last question. A softball one. What do you feel good about that our readers would want to know?

Block: The campus is thriving. What I feel good about is talking to Jewish students, their offer to write to people and tell them about this campus, that we’ve got to get the word out that this really is a great place for Jewish students, notwithstanding that there’s been tensions.