The University of California’s leaders made plans to revisit the issue of campus intolerance on Thursday after their first crack at a statement against it was panned for ignoring a problem that had inspired their efforts, the harassment of Jewish students.
Monica C. Lozano, chairwoman of the university system’s Board of Regents, chose not to even discuss the wording of a proposed “statement of principles against intolerance”brought before the board by system administrators, instead announcing plans to have a panel of system and campus officials, faculty members, and students come up with a new document articulating the system’s position on the issue.
Her announcement came after the proposed draft statement drew fire from several regents, and a long list of representatives of Jewish student and advocacy groups, for saying nothing about recent campus incidents involving swastikas and other forms of anti-Semitic harassment.
“To ignore the people who are bringing this issue forward to begin with is, I think, doing a tremendous disservice to that community,” said one board member, Norman J. Pattiz. Among the several regents who agreed with that assessment was Bonnie Reiss, who complained that the statement does not say “we hear you” to Jewish students who have been victimized.
The statement also had been widely denounced by national experts on free speech and academic freedom, who argued that, in an attempt to broadly promote tolerance for all campus constituencies, it ended up containing language that threatened the free exchange of ideas.
Most of Thursday’s discussion of the measure, both during the board’s deliberations and in its hearing of public comments, focused instead on whether the measure went too far or not far enough in providing explicit protections for Jewish students.
Several Jewish students and representatives of Jewish advocacy groups continued to urge the board to adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism, which includes statements that demonize Israel, compare Israel’s policies to the policies of Nazi Germany, or hold Israel to standards not applied to other democratic nations.
On the other side of the issue, the statement’s lack of any such anti-Semitism definition was praised by representatives of United Auto Workers Local 2865, which represents more than 13,000 teaching assistants, tutors, and other student-workers at the University of California and which last year called for the system to divest from Israel to protest that nation’s treatment of Palestinian people. They argued that the State Department’s definition conflates anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israel and threatens campus debate.
Among the regents who found fault with the draft statement before them, John A. Pérez agreed that “the State Department definition is not one that lends itself to an academic environment,” but he argued that the proposed language before them “essentially says nothing.”
