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UC Irvine Repeatedly Failed to Protect the Rights of SJP Members

August 24, 2018 by sjpwest

From Palestine Legal:

Palestine Legal has written to the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to describe the chilling impact of years of unaddressed discrimination against students who advocate for Palestinian freedom and to urge administrators to take action to protect the rights of their students.

Right-wing Israel-aligned groups have long sought to put an end to a vibrant tradition of student activism for Palestine at UCI. They have demanded criminal prosecution of student activists, filed baseless complaints to the federal government, targeted students in defamatory poster campaigns on campus. Last year, Israeli soldiers surveilled and harassed Palestinian students and their allies.

Capitulating to the demands of Israel-aligned groups, UCI administrators investigated and punished Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCI for exercising their First Amendment right to engage in peaceful protest in both 2016 and 2017.

Unable to rely on campus administrators, SJP members have taken their own steps to protect themselves from in-person and online harassment. These efforts range from cutting down on publicizing campus events to covering their faces when speaking publicly about Palestine. But these efforts also limit the size of their audience and their ability to communicate their message.

In a letter sent today, Palestine Legal explained, “These chilling effects are deeply concerning at a time when the stakes are so high for communities of color and for social justice and human rights issues. Universities should be empowering their students to engage on difficult issues. Instead, these students feel inhibited and silenced by the university’s pattern of punishing them for expressing their views, rather than protecting their speech rights from attacks by outside groups aiming to undermine them.”

Palestine Legal called on UCI to issue a public statement that SJP’s advocacy on campus is protected speech; to condemn outside harassment groups that have targeted UCI students for their pro-Palestine activism; and to cease punishing students for protected expression.

Please click here for the PDF of the letter.

Posted in: News Tagged: campus climate, free speech, irvine, title VI

SJP-West Interviewed about Title VI victories at the Department of Education

September 9, 2013 by sjpwest

UC Irvine’s Hannan Seirafi speaks to Nora Barrows Friedman of the Electronic Intifada about recent dismissals of Title VI claims against UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley. Read more about the issue here and see SJP-West’s statement on the issue here. The full podcast is available at The Electronic Intifada.

 

Posted in: Activism, News Tagged: irvine, title VI, uc berkeley, uc santa cruz

SJP-West Statement on Dismissal of Title VI Claims at 3 UC Schools

September 3, 2013 by sjpwest

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters on the West Coast celebrate the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE’s) dismissal of Title VI claims against three University of California schools, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Irvine, alleging that activism supportive of Palestinian human rights creates a hostile educational environment for Jewish students. These accusations were only the latest episode in a long series of attacks against Palestine solidarity activists that aim to intimidate, censor, and smear speech in support of Palestinian freedom and equality.

In an attempt to stifle Palestine solidarity activism, these Title VI complaints repeated the tired claim that supporting Palestinian human rights or voicing criticism of Israel’s policies is inherently anti-Semitic. As such, the Jewish community on campus was incorrectly portrayed as uniformly supportive of Israeli state policies in order to support the argument that pro-Palestine speech creates a hostile environment for the Jewish community. In fact, SJP chapters have a long track record of opposing all bigotry, including anti-Jewish bigotry, on campus.

We view this attempt to use the Civil Rights Act to limit students’ ability to speak out for the rights of oppressed groups as a perversion of the spirit of the law and the cause of equality and justice that undergirds it. We are pleased that the Department of Education dismissed all three cases, finding that the allegations either lacked merit or were examples of speech “that a reasonable student in higher education may experience.” These findings echo the department’s 2007 conclusions from UC Irvine, which stated that “speeches, articles, marches, symbols, and other events at issue were not based on the national origin of the Jewish students, but rather based on opposition to the policies of Israel.” The dismissals finally lift a threat that has been hanging over our universities since 2004, when the first complaint to the DOE was made against UC Irvine.

Such complaints, and the years-long DOE investigations, contributed to a devastating chilling effect on student activists and organizations, and led to unwarranted scrutiny of constitutionally protected speech by administrators worried about federal investigation. We welcome the dismissal, but hope that DOE will take steps to make sure that such investigations are handled more expeditiously in the future.

These dismissals represent the sixth major victory for SJP’s speech rights on campus in the 2012-2013 academic year:

  • In 2012, Felber v. Yudof, a federal lawsuit filed on similar legal grounds, was settled out of court with no meaningful ramifications, after a federal judge ruled that the complained-of speech activities were constitutionally protected.
  • Recommendations for broad censorship and monitoring of SJP speech made by the Campus Climate Advisory Council have also been effectively stopped.
  • The UC Student Association (UCSA) voted overwhelmingly to condemn California Assembly Resolution HR-35, which endorsed the Campus Climate reports. The UC Berkeley Graduate Student Association and over 1,000 students and recent graduates joined the UCSA in opposing HR 35.
  • Student senates at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Irvine, as well as the UCSA passed resolutions condemning Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian comments made about SJPs and Muslim Students Associations (MSA) by UCSC Lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.
  • Sadia Saifuddin was confirmed to the position of UC Student Regent without opposition, despite efforts to stop the nomination based on her support for divestment.

While we do not expect that attempts to silence and intimidate SJPs will cease, we are confident that the anti-Palestinian groups that filed these claims can neither successfully silence us nor present the campus community with a viable argument for Israel’s policies of occupation and discrimination. We therefore reaffirm our commitment to speak out for justice in Palestine and will continue to work towards the day that the UC system cuts its financial ties to corporations that profit from the oppression of the Palestinian people.

 

 

 

Posted in: Activism, News Tagged: campus climate, department of education, divestment, free speech, hr 35, irvine, title VI, uc berkeley, uc santa cruz

US Dept. of Education Dismisses Title VI Claims Against UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Irvine

August 27, 2013 by Angelica Becerra

It is a great day to be a Palestine campus solidarity activist. The US Department of Education has dismissed legal claims filed by some pro-Israel students claiming that the Pro-Palestinian activism at UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Irvine provided a hostile and anti-semitic enviroment for Jewish students on campus. What does Title VI mean?

As explained by Electronic Intifada’s Nora Barrows-Friedman:

“The complaint was filed under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects students against discrimination based on race or ethnic background. Israel-aligned groups and individuals have claimed that Jewish students face anti-Semitism, harassment and intimidation because of activism by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Muslim student groups, and have filed claims with the Department of Education alleging violations of Title VI.”

This particular Title VI claim against UC Berkeley has been fought and brought back over a long period of time, as Barrows-Friedman points out:

“The Title VI complaint at UC Berkeley was filed by Zionist students last year after a suit against the University of California’s governing body, the Regents, was thrown out by a judge because of a significant lack of evidence. The original complaint attempted to make connections between Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Student Union and Hamas, and compared the climate on UC Berkeley campus to that of the Holocaust. However, despite the suit being thrown out, the students re-filed the complaint as a Title VI claim with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.”

Is is also important to note that these claims conflated being pro-occupation with being Jewish. The only Jewish students that these claims acknowledge are those who are pro-occupation. The use of civil rights law to stifle Palestinian solidarity activism on California campuses has seen a major defeat today. To read up more on this wonderful victory check out the links below:

 

Dismissals:

Read the DOE’s letter to UC Berkeley

Read the DOE’s letter to UCSC

We will post DOE’s letter to UCI as soon as it is made public.

 

News:

–Nora Barrows-Friedman’s piece on Electronic Intifada

–Los Angeles Times article on the dismissal of Title VI claim at Berkeley

–UC Berkeley News Center article on the dismissal

–UC Santa Cruz News Center article on the dismissal

 

Solidarity statements:

–Center for Constitutional Rights statement celebrating the dismissal

–ACLU statement celebrating the dismissal

–CAIR statement in support

 

Posted in: News Tagged: berkeley, campus climate, civil rights act, department of education, free speech, title VI, uc berkeley

In new letter, Civil Rights groups ask Federal Government to take steps to protect student speech

May 17, 2013 by sjpwest

via Alex Kane, Mondoweiss

Prolonged federal investigations of Palestine solidarity activism on campuses are chilling students’ constitutional rights to organize and speak out, a coalition of civil rights groups has charged in letters to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). The civil rights and advocacy groups are asking the federal government to take a number of steps to remedy what they say is the problem of investigations that are having a chilling effect on students’ speech.

The letters (read them here), sent to the DOE civil rights division in San Francisco and the DOE’s assistant secretary for civil rights, are a response to the spate of Title VI civil rights complaints that have been filed by Jewish students who advocate for Israel. These complaints allege that campuses have allowed an anti-Semitic environment to flourish, but they mostly concern Palestine solidarity activism. The Title VI complaints have sparked federal inquiries on a number of California campuses.

“The numerous complaints and continued threats of complaints…have resulted in universities increasing pressure on students advocating for Palestinian rights, often applying campus rules unequally and obstructing their activities to avoid accusations that the university is enabling an anti-Semitic environment by allowing students to express their views,” the groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the National Lawyers Guild and Jewish Voice for Peace say.

The detailed letters charge that the investigations are based on complaints that conflate political speech critical of Israel with anti-Semitism. The groups also state that the investigations have been prolonged–”well beyond the OCR’s internal benchmark of 180 days”–and have not allowed students most affected by these complaints to voice their concerns.

The civil rights groups’ statements request that the DOE take a number of steps to remedy the problems they bring up. Among the recommendations are that the DOE issue a letter stating that student political speech is protected under the First Amendment and that “advocacy for Palestinian human rights and criticism of Israeli government policies are not anti-Semitic.”

“The abuse of civil rights laws to silence political views tramples on the First Amendment, and is already causing a tangible, detrimental impact on Arab, Muslim, and other students who espouse particular views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said CCR Cooperating Counsel Liz Jackson in a statement.“That contravenes the spirit of Title VI and of our Constitution. And it wrongly conflates Jewish identity with uncritical support for Israel.”

The civil rights groups’ statements are a forceful rebuke to the DOE’s practice of opening up civil rights investigations based on the Israel-related complaints of Jewish students who charge that activities like mock checkpoints and Israel Apartheid Week are anti-Semitic. The letter recommends that the DOE “direct [civil rights] field offices not to investigate complaints where the facts alleged, even if true, constitute pure political speech or expressive activity.”

In 2010, after lobbying led by groups like the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, the DOE shifted policy to allow Title VI complaints to be filed from religious groups with shared ethnic characteristics. Title VI is the section of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race, color and national origin. The DOE’s 2010 decision opened the gates for the current complaints from Jewish pro-Israel students.

Despite the fact that no campus has been found to be in violation of Title VI as a result of any of these complaints, civil rights groups charge that they are still having an impact on activism and speech on campus.

Currently, there are three cases in California that are being investigated in response to a Title VI complaint being filed. For instance, the University of California, Berkeley campus is being investigated as a result of a complaint filed by students who were affiliated with Tikvah Students for Israel. The UC Berkeley investigation started out as a lawsuit in 2011, which was ended after the school and the students reached an agreement in which the university said it would consider changes to policy on campus protests. The judge in the original lawsuit stated that “a very substantial portion of the conduct to which [the complainants] object represents pure political speech and expressive conduct, in a public setting, regarding matters of public concern, which is entitled to special protection under the First Amendment.”

On the same day the agreement with UC Berkeley was reached, the same students filed a Title VI complaint with the San Francisco Division of the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint alleges that mock checkpoints and Israel Apartheid Week create “a disturbing echo of incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under the Nazi regime and those of its allies in Europe against Jewish students and scholars … during the turbulent years leading up to and including the Holocaust.”

The prolonged nature of the civil rights investigations is causing “harm,” the letter from the CCR and others state. “The courts have long recognized that even government scrutiny – let alone full-blown investigations such as those at issue here – has a marked potential to chill speech and other expressive activities.”

And the Berkeley investigation has had an impact on students, the civil rights groups say. Specifically, the letter to the San Francisco Division of the DOE states:

A graduate student active with one of the groups targeted by the lawsuit against UC Berkeley (Students for Justice in Palestine) was told by his adviser that his public status as a Palestinian rights activist would hinder his career.

An Arab Muslim student stated that he declined to get involved with the second group targeted by the Berkeley lawsuit (the Muslim Student Association), for fear that it would jeopardize his chances of getting into graduate school.

Pro-Palestinian students frequently express anxiety about being falsely branded as antiSemites.

Several students declined to have their names appear on declarations to OCR regarding the UC Berkeley complaint, for fear that they would be improperly smeared as anti Semites or otherwise targeted.

Posted in: News, Solidarity, Support Tagged: department of education, free speech, title VI

Audio: NLG’s Liz Jackson on University of California’s direct role in “disparaging” campus Palestine activists

December 13, 2012 by sjpwest

Interview with Liz Jackson of the National Lawyers’ Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights about how civil rights groups are challenging the University of California as a climate of fear silences pro-Palestinian speech.

Link to the audio (mp3)

Original link with transcript

Posted in: News Tagged: campus climate, department of education, free speech, hr 35, title VI

American Civil Liberties Union Writes Letter to Obama Dept. of Education protesting the silencing of Palestine activism

December 13, 2012 by sjpwest

Nora Barrows Friedman’s report at The Electronic Intifada:

Israel lobby groups are attempting to use US civil rights law to stifle speech critical of Israeli policies and clamp down on Palestine solidarity student activism across US campuses, claiming such speech and activism is “anti-Semitic.”

But a strongly-worded letter sent on Monday directly to the Department of Education from a major US civil rights organization states that such usage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act “raises constitutional red flags that are significant and alarming.”

As The Electronic Intifada has reported, several complaints have been made by Israel-aligned organizations to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (DOE-OCR), claiming prejudice against Jewish students because of Palestine solidarity-related activism — what they say is a violation of Title VI, which protects students against discrimination based on race or ethnic background.

This “lawfare” tactic has been pioneered and coordinated by Kenneth Marcus, a pro-Israel activist who previously headed the DOE-OCR, which handles such complaints.

As I reported several months back, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan responded to campaigns by Israel lobby groups (including the Zionist Organization of America and the Anti-Defamation League) by announcing a new set of guidelines in 2010 that specifically applies Title VI to the protection of Jewish students from perceived “anti-Semitism” on campuses.

Since then, Title VI complaints have been filed by Israel-aligned groups and individuals, who claim that Jewish students on campuses face anti-Semitism, harassment and intimidation because of activism by Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim student groups. Most notably, the DOE has started its investigation into a complaint filed by Jewish-Zionist students at the University of California at Berkeley last July.

The original complaint, filed against the University of California itself, attempted to make connections between SJP and the Muslim Student Union and Hamas, and compared the climate on UC Berkeley campus to that of the Holocaust. The lawsuit was thrown out by a judge because of a significant lack of evidence. However, undeterred, the students re-filed the complaint as aTitle VI claim with the DOE.

ACLU’s letter to Department of Education

On Monday, Alan Schlosser, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) sent a letter addressed to Gemini McCasland of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, on the topic of the Title VI complaint filed by the UC Berkeley students. The ACLU has, until now, been relatively silent on the topic. (Though, ten years ago, the ACLU did send a letter to the then-Chancellor of UC Berkeley condemning the University’s punitive and selective reaction to a Students for Justice in Palestine sit-in on campus, classifying it as having a “chilling effect on free speech.”)

In this week’s letter, Schlosser states that the Office of Civil Rights’ investigation into the Title VI complaint “does not take place on a blank slate” and refers back to the fact that the original lawsuit was dismissed, and that student activism speech was upheld as protected speech under the First Amendment.

The letter ends with a very strong analysis of the impact that such lawfare tactics are having on students who wish to engage in Palestine solidarity activism on their campuses. The ACLU’s stance against repression of students’ free speech rights comes at a very important time. As state legislative bodies pass resolutions upholding the dangerous notion that criticism of Israel is an act of anti-Semitism, and as University administrations contribute to a climate of fear and intimidation of Arab and Muslim students on campus, now is the time when counter-pressure by civil rights groups upholding Constitutional rights and free speech matters most.

ACLU_Letter_to_DOE.pdf

 

Posted in: Solidarity Tagged: aclu, brandeis center, department of education, Kenneth Marcus, title VI

Climate of fear silencing Palestinian, Muslim students at University of California, rights groups warn

December 4, 2012 by sjpwest

Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students are frequently too frightened to express their political opinions or join Palestine solidarity and other groups at University of California (UC) campuses because of fear that they will suffer harm, a coalition of civil rights groups has warned.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, and four other civil rights organizations wrote to UC President Mark Yudof on 3 December to “express our collective alarm about developments at University of California (UC) campuses that threaten students’ civil rights and forsake the University’s responsibility to make the campus welcoming for a range of political viewpoints on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The letter came in advance of a meeting today of the “Advisory Council on Campus Climate” which the University created in response to complaints from Zionist groups. The other groups signing on to the letter are the Asian Law Caucus of San Francisco,American Muslims for Palestine, National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles Chapters and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area.

According to a press release from the groups:

the letter points to the rash of baseless legal complaints that have increased scrutiny of student activism on Palestine, to a UC-initiated “campus climate” report that labels Palestinian rights advocacy as anti-Semitic and threatening to Jewish students, and to numerous public statements by UC officials that disparage such activism as “bad speech” and compare it to truly anti-Semtic and racist incidents on campus, such as noose-hangings and graffiti disparaging Jews, Muslims and the LGBTQ community.

Read the rest at The Electronic Intifada

Posted in: Activism Tagged: campus climate, hr 35, title VI

UC SJP and MSA Groups’ Letter to US Commission on Civil Rights

November 8, 2012 by sjpwest

Dozens of UC SJP and MSA Groups submit a letter to the US Commission on Civil Rights regarding the the UC Campus Climate reports, the abuse of Title VI, and their negative impact on Arab and Muslim students. Click here to download the letter.

November 7, 2012

Via E-mail
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
1331 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 1150 Washington, DC 20425 publiccomments@usccr.gov

Dear Commissioners,

We are twenty-three student organizations from California universities submitting this public comment in advance of the November 9, 2012 briefing at the US Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) regarding federal engagement with Arab and Muslim Civil Rights. The undersigned California student groups include chapters of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), representing hundreds of Muslim students of various ethnic backgrounds, and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a political advocacy group with a diverse membership, including many of Arab, Muslim, or Jewish background. The Arab Recruitment and Retention Center, which supports Arab student enrollment at UC Berkeley, has also signed.

We wish to express our alarm about current developments on University of California (UC) campuses that threaten our civil rights, including a series of Department of Education (DOE) investigations. We also wish to voice our strong objection to the participation of the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights on this panel.

Abuse of Title VI to Silence Political Groups and Marginalize Arab and Muslim Students

Our universities now find themselves under constant pressure by off-campus organizations to clamp down on our speech activities. That external pressure has translated into significant hurdles on our campuses, where events by Arab and Muslim students pertaining to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are heavily scrutinized by administrators who attempt to interfere with many aspects of the organizing, planning, and execution of events like movie screenings, lectures, and non-violent activities like theatrical checkpoints and “die-ins.” In many cases, administrators impose high security fees on our events, straining our budgets and making it harder to continue our programming. As a result, many students have been chilled and deterred from participation in our organizations. These hurdles threaten our civil rights and disproportionately impact Arab and Muslim students. We believe they are unconstitutional.
Two recent developments are particularly disturbing. In July, a University of California working group released a report falsely claiming that our activities should be understood as “hate speech” that creates a hostile campus climate for Jewish students.1 In August, the California State Assembly (CSA) passed, with no real discussion or debate, House Resolution 35 praising that report and making the blatantly unconstitutional recommendation that “no public resources” be used to facilitate what it mislabels anti-Semitic activity.2

We agree with the goal of combating all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism, but these two documents define anti-Semitism to include a wide array of legitimate political speech that is not based in hate or bigotry, nor targeted at Jewish people in any way. For example, the UC report cites “mock checkpoints” which it says consist of “students re-enacting scenes in which Israeli soldiers are portrayed as engaging in indiscriminate acts of violence and degradation of Palestinians; and the dissemination of literature and information which accuse Israel of ‘genocide’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, and the imposition of an ‘apartheid state.’” Similarly, the resolution asserted that “anti-Semitic discourse” includes claims that “Israel is a racist, apartheid, or Nazi state, that Israel is guilty of heinous crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing and genocide.” Although UC President Mark Yudof has distanced himself from any suggestion that speech should be banned, Arab, Muslim, and other students continue to feel tremendous pressure on UC campuses and many UC administrators continue to stigmatize speech critical of Israel in response to off-campus lobbying.

The framing and language of these two documents track provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which we understand to prohibit discrimination by federally funded universities, defined as including toleration of “hostile environments” based on race, ethnicity, national origin, and in some cases, religion. Unsurprisingly, politically motivated individuals recently filed a federal lawsuit laden with Islamophobic and baseless allegations that the MSA at Berkeley has a “pro-terrorist” agenda, that it is an “incubator to recruit and radicalize students to support Hamas,” and that membership in the MSA at Berkeley is a prerequisite to membership in the “Muslim Brotherhood.” These are particularly damaging allegations for our students in the post-9/11 environment and they create a climate of intimidation and fear.

That lawsuit was first dismissed, then settled with no real concession by the university. Immediately afterwards, the plaintiffs’ attorneys filed a nearly identical complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The OCR has announced that it will open an investigation. The investigation is based on the allegation that the very same activities described by the UC report and the California State Assembly resolution — mock checkpoints, criticism of Israel — create a “hostile environment” for Jewish students at UC Berkeley. Although the complaint cites a handful of other isolated incidents for which our groups are not responsible (like anonymous graffiti and one allegation of assault involving two individuals), the underlying logic associating criticism of Israel with hate speech is unacceptable.

We believe that OCR must vigorously pursue its mission by investigating civil rights complaints. However, we are worried that the use of Title VI complaints as a political weapon constitutes a dangerous precedent that will create great harm for Arab and Muslim students on campus, while doing nothing to protect the civil rights of Jewish students, many of whom support our organizations or are members in them. The characterization of our activities as anti-Semitic and the recommendation that they be banned or curbed in any way not only misrepresent our groups’ ardently anti-racist and human rights-based principles, but distract against actual anti-Semitism that expresses hatred against Jews based on their religious or ethnic identity. It also overlooks the racism and Islamophobia to which our own communities have been subjected.

We are confident that if OCR pursues its investigations faithfully and comprehensively, aware of the political context, it will recognize the frivolity of these complaints. It should be clear that attempts to cast criticism of Israel as motivated by anti-Semitism simply ignore the facts. Israel is a modern nation-state and, like any other state, a legitimate subject of criticism when it violates international norms. Our groups’ criticism of Israel is not based on the identity of the majority of its citizens, but on the fact that it cannot be denied with any seriousness that Israel’s occupying army makes daily life miserable for millions of civilians, including the relatives and friends of members of our organizations. Israel’s extensively documented record of international law and human rights violations since 1948 is a legitimate cause for criticism, particularly since many of our students and their families were expelled from their homeland and continue to deal with discriminatory policies when they attempt to travel or return to the Occupied West Bank or present-day Israel.

We are motivated by our knowledge of such facts and our own personal experiences to cast as much attention as possible onto a pressing issue of international importance — one that is especially important for Americans, whose taxes subsidize Israel’s occupation to the order of several billion dollars a year. When groups with a political agenda dub us anti-Semitic, they erase all of our real motivations in an attempt to make the case that we are motivated by irrational hatred, rather than our values and factual understanding of a political conflict. We consider it anti-Semitic to hold Jewish people around the world culpable for the acts of Israel, in the same way that it is Islamophobic to hold Muslim people around the world culpable for the acts of political entities that claim to speak in their name. However, the organizations attempting to silence us fail to make this important distinction, often for both Jews and Muslims, leading down a dangerous path.

Moreover, describing government policies as “genocidal,” “ethnic cleansing,” or “apartheid” — regardless of accuracy — is a matter of political debate protected under our Constitution. To the same extent that others have a right to claim that Israel is a democracy, we stand by our right to claim otherwise. We stand by our right to say on our campuses that when another country assigns rights to its citizens differently based on their ethnicity or religion, that is not democratic; that when another country forces its teenagers at the age of 18 to don military uniforms and take up arms to occupy another people, that is not democratic; that when another country creates settlements on occupied land accessible only by people of a particular religion, that is not democratic. We understand that other students and politicians support such Israeli policies  they have the right to express it, just as we have the right to express our opposition. But universities certainly have no right to censor our views or punish us for them. To do so is unconstitutional and discriminatory, contradicting a core American value. We know of no instance in which student groups vocally supporting Israeli policies have been similarly scrutinized or burdened.

The Department of Education should be protecting our rights, but its investigations of UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Irvine may harm them if they are undertaken in a politicized manner under pressure from lobby groups. We are confident that the USCCR will adopt a strong position in favor of freedom of speech about legitimate political issues and that it will support us as we face a campaign that marginalizes communities that have faced intolerance, violence, and bigotry since 9/11, including on campuses. Jewish, Muslim, and Arab students all have an interest in non-discriminatory educational settings; indeed, there is no contradiction between a welcoming educational environment for students of all backgrounds, and vigorous political debate. But it would be an ironic result if groups that are facing constant threats to their civil rights and liberties through extensive surveillance and harassment were further victimized by the Office for Civil Rights, rather than protected by it.

Louis Brandeis Center Does Not Represent Us

We also write to voice our strong objection to the participation of Mr. Kenneth Marcus on behalf of the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights, whose primary mission is to address what it calls “the resurgent problem of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism on university campuses.” We do not question Mr. Marcus’ commitment to anti-discrimination law nor his right to express his views, but we believe his political agenda to silence others by misrepresenting and stigmatizing their views is inimical to our civil rights and liberties, as illustrated by the negative impact his campaign to end “anti-Israelism” on campus has had on our communities. Although he may speak against anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination in other settings, his campaign represents one of the biggest threats to Arab and Muslim students’ civil rights on campuses today. And, unfortunately, the Department of Education has thus far enabled that campaign. His organization has celebrated all of the aforementioned threats on our campuses: the UC report, the California State Assembly resolution, and the baseless, Islamophobic Title VI complaints. We are shocked and dismayed that he has been slated to speak on the Arab and Muslim American civil rights organization panel despite his use of tactics clearly aimed at suppressing the speech of Arab and Muslim students in particular.

Conclusion

We thank you for considering our letter and for including it in the public comment in connection with this briefing. We hope the problems we have raised can be addressed at the November 9th briefing, and at future hearings. We also hope that student organizations themselves will have a direct say on this issue in the future, as we are most familiar with the impact that the broadside against our civil rights has on us. You may reach all of the undersigned student organizations through Haidar Ali Anwar, President of Muslim Students Association West, at haidaranwar@gmail.com or Rahim Kurwa, representative of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, at rahim.kurwa@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Muslim Student Association-West Coast UC Berkeley – MSA
UC Davis – MSA
UC Irvine – Muslim Student Union
UC Los Angeles – MSA
UC Riverside – MSA
UC San Diego – MSA
University of Southern California – MSU San Jose State University – MSA
San Francisco State University – MSA Cal State University Chico – MSA Cal Poly Pomona – MSA
Diablo Valley Community College – MSA Arab Recruitment and Retention Center at Cal UC Berkeley – SJP
UC Davis – SJP
UC Irvine – SJP
UC Los Angeles – SJP
UC Riverside – SJP
UC San Diego – SJP
UC Santa Barbara – SJP
UC Santa Cruz – Committee for Justice in Palestine
University of Southern California – SJP

Additional Endorsements
The following organizations endorsed this letter after it was delivered:
1. CSU Fullerton MSA
2. CSU San Bernardino MSA
3. San Diego State MSA

 

Clarification: The letter states that the Title VI complaint against UC Berkeley contains Islamophobic quotations, but it then inadventently quotes not the complaint, but rather the nearly-identical federal lawsuit filed against UC Berkeley. The language quoted in the letter accusing MSA of a “pro-terrorist” agenda can be found in this court filing. The Title VI complaint filed with the Department of Education was filed by the same attorneys on behalf of the same plaintiffs, and makes similar Islamophobic allegations, accusing the MSA and SJP of “support for” terrorism.

Updates: We have received support from the Claremont Colleges Muslim Student Association, and the MSA at the University of San Francisco. The total number of California student groups signing this letter is now 28.

Posted in: Activism Tagged: brandeis center, Kenneth Marcus, title VI, usccr

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