SPME
It’s been a half-century since the Free Speech Movement was born on the steps of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley, inspiring nationwide protests and creating the principle of unfettered expression on campus. On Thursday, UC regents debated a modern-day sequel:…
read moreIRVINE, Calif. — Under pressure from Jewish organizations, members of the University of California’s governing board called for an overhaul of a proposed set of system-wide principles against intolerance, saying it should explicitly address anti-Semitism. About two dozen people gave…
read moreUniversity of California regents roundly rejected a “statement of principles against intolerance” presented at the UC regents’ September meeting for failing to specifically address the problem of antisemitism across California’s public universities. The UC leaders scrapped the statement and resolved to launch a consultative…
read moreAs a UC professor, privy to a front-row seat, I know firsthand that being a Jewish student is not what it was like a mere five or 10 years ago. Anti-Semitism on campus is rising at an alarming and frightening…
read more“For myself and other Jewish and pro-Israel students, the atmosphere is poisonous. We feel attacked, ostracized, and threatened. Our identities are being rejected and our right to express our beliefs endangered. Our academic performance is being harmed unjustly.” — a…
read moreDo we need to have a definition of anti-Semitism? Most people think they already know what it means. And sometimes the answer is obvious. Think, for example, about the vandals who recently scrawled the words “Yids out” on the fence…
read moreSome 34 academic specialists in antisemitism signed a letter calling on University of California President Janet Napolitano and UC regents to adopt the State Department definition of antisemitism and use it on campuses to identify antisemitic behavior and educate about discrimination against Jews. The…
read moreLast week, the world was exposed to some of the fundamental flaws of the “Boycott Israel” faction known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Sadly, in this case, the victims were artists. The first incident occurred when Israeli…
read moreBack in June, the president of the University of California promised on national radio that the UC Board of Regents would vote in its next meeting — in July — on whether to adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of…
read moreIf you had thought that the only qualification needed is to excel at your chosen art form and then see if you can gather audiences, you were wrong. That is not enough anymore — certainly not if you are Jewish.…
read more