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UCSC Divestment Victory: SUA Appeal Overturns 2014 Divestment Nullification

UCSC Student Government votes to overturn former UCSC President Shaz Umer’s unconstitutional overruling of divestment bill.  Vote means that UCSC is officially the 7th of 9 UCs voting for divestment, joining UC Berkeley, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, and Davis.  

Reprinted via City on a Hill Press

With a 28-5-7 vote, the Student Union Assembly (SUA) approved Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) appeal of former SUA Chair Shaz Umer’s controversial decision to nullify a divestment resolution passed in May 2014. The University Socially Responsible Investment Resolution (USRIR), which calls for the UC to divest from companies “complicit in the severe violation of Palestinian human rights” is in effect as of SUA’s meeting on Nov. 18.

The decision took more than two hours of discussion and presentations from SJP and Slugs for Israel (SFI), including questions from students in the crowd of about 70. The appeal didn’t address opinions about divestment, but solely on due process and whether Umer’s action in 2014 was constitutional. During that meeting, USRIR passed, but under unclear and allegedly illegal suspension of bylaws.

In May 2014, when the resolution was one vote shy of passing the required two-third majority, a member motioned to suspend the bylaw to lower the approval to a simple majority. The motion to lower the threshold passed by exactly a two-thirds majority, allowing the resolution to be voted on again. The resolution, only needing a simple majority in the second vote, passed 22-14-1.

Two days after the resolution supposedly passed, Umer decided to review USRIR and the bylaw’s suspension after objection from pro-Israel student groups. This review carried on for 17 days, and Umer ruled that the incorrect bylaw had been suspended, rendering the resolution’s passage invalid.

SUA follows Robert’s Rules of Order, a notoriously complicated set of governing practices used to make decisions. The legality of motioning to suspend a bylaw and was one point of contest regarding Umer’s decision. SJP maintained that the resolution should be valid, according to the details of the bylaw.

SUA president Julie Foster said she felt both sides had the opportunity to voice their concerns in this week’s meeting, but either might feel like they hadn’t finished expressing their full thoughts.

“That’s the flaw of Robert’s Rules and parliamentary procedure,” Foster said. “They are designed for us to take action and not to have a facilitated discussion. SUA’s responsibility is to take action. People [were able to] voice their concerns at the senate meetings.”

After SJP presented the appeal last week, the decision was tabled to this week’s meeting. In the meantime SUA representatives discussed the appeal in their respective college senate meetings and SJP representatives attended some to answer questions. After the appeal passed, SJP members Camellia Boutros and Melissa Otero said despite people pushing the conversation toward divestment and away from the legality of Umer’s decision, there’s an overwhelming relief after the resolution’s passage.

“It’s really good SUA was so concerned about democratic process, because that’s really important and it’s important to know there is due process at this school,” Boutros said.

Five of the six elected SUA officers voted to pass the appeal.

During heated parts of the discussion, more than 20 students would be on stack to comment but when a motion was made it had to be voted on, and the stack discontinued. “Call to questions” were frequently made to claim repeated back-and-forth argument. SUA’s community agreements allow for “points of privilege” to include allowing people to educate others on using inclusive language or voicing that they were offended by certain arguments. Those take precedent over people on stack, and raise issues regarding personal concerns of members and attendees.

“As for the space, I feel like many students were incredibly silenced throughout the meeting last night, from all sides of the appeal,” said elected Stevenson College representative Daniel Bernstein in an email. “The use of the ‘call to question’ was taken advantage of and utilized as a means to cease conversation on important issues.”

Fellow Stevenson College representative Gema Rodriguez said she believes divestment isn’t even a resolution SUA should consider.

“My understanding of the SUA is that we are a body of students elected to represent our college and eventually the student body as a whole,” Rodriguez said in an email. “I believe that by voting in the matter of divestment we are neglecting and oppressing bodies, because there will never be a situation in which both parties are satisfied when it comes to a yes/no vote.”

In the beginning of its presentation, SFI suggested the idea of a neutral, third-party judiciary committee to review the appeal. Foster said creating the committee would be a long process, since it would require the creation of a new bylaw, but also that even a third-party committee might struggle to remain neutral.

During SFI and SJP’s presentations, both organizations said they would feel unsafe if the vote did not go in their favor. SFI pointed to anti-Semitic incidents on campus and UC-wide, and said at universities where BDS [boycott, divestment and sanction] resolutions have passed, Jewish students have felt more unsafe. SJP discussed incidents at events on campus last year, like its mock Israeli military checkpoints around campus, where they said its members were threatened.

In a letter from Chancellor George Blumenthal dated May 20, 2014, he wrote that USRIR “may create an environment in which some of our Jewish students feel alienated and less welcome on our campus.” The letter, which was part of SFI’s presentation, marked another controversial point of the meeting since some SUA members who were on the assembly two years ago said they had never seen it. Scott Hernandez-Jason, UCSC’s news and media director, confirmed the letter’s validity after the meeting.

During the meeting SJP member Boian Boianov said the reason the appeal is so controversial is because it makes powerful people, like administrators and regents, feel uncomfortable.

“If you would have voted for this appeal if it was anything else besides divestment, you’re doing the same thing [former SUA Chair Shaz Umer] did,” SJP member Katherine Berjikian said in the meeting. “You’re saying that there are two sets of bylaws and two sets of rules — one for controversial things and one for non controversial things. You’re saying that the SUA bylaws exists vaguely and only for things that don’t matter. This really does matter.”

Stevenson College SUA representatives said they will discuss their next steps during their senate meeting this week. Their main option to overturn this decision would be to propose a new resolution that nullifies USRIR, which would have to pass through SUA.

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

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.

 

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

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.

 

 

 

ADL and Blue Star PR fund Israel Tours this Summer

This summer student leaders  have participated in tours of Israel funded by the Anti-Defamation League and Blue Star PR, as well as several other pro-Israel groups. With divestment resolutions sweeping the California university system, these trips are providing student leaders with a misrepresentation of the Palestinian struggle. Reports from the trips portray their celebration of violence and militarism, tokenization of minority and oppressed communities, and failure to engage seriously with questions of Palestinian rights. In her article for Mondoweiss.net Rebecca Pierce points out some of  the effects of the Blue Star trip:

“After being exposed to such a hostile and cartoonish view of Palestinians, it is hard to imagine these students seeing their Arab, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian peers as anything other than enemies of Israel and supporters of terrorism. One also has to question the efficacy of a program that leaves participants with such a limited view of the conflict, even in terms of achieving BlueStar’s own stated goals.”

These trips and their effects on the college students that participate are also being documented by these agencies, as Pierce explains:

“In over fifty entries on the BlueStar Fellows program blog (penned with the assistance of a writing coach) participants from UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, San Francisco State, San Jose State, and Pitzer College reflect on a trip itinerary that often glorifies Israeli state violence while promoting a dehumanized image of Palestinians. The accounts provide insight into the sensational approach to the conflict pushed by some hardline Israel advocacy groups, and raise questions about the impact of their tactics in the battle for the hearts and minds of US college students.”

It is imperative that we hold these student leaders accountable, especially given that these tours are giving student government representatives a skewed if not incomplete view of the conflict. These reports also raise ethical questions about student senators who benefit from funded trips and then may be asked to vote on questions about university funds tied to Israel’s occupation policies. Click here to read more of Rebecca’s powerful piece at Mondoweiss.net, and for more info on the ADL trip as well, click here.

 

 

California lecturer caught on racist speech video threatens legal complaint after student campaign

By Nora Barrows-Friedman

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz in California — and the co-founder of a Zionist group which attempts to use legal harassment to silence and intimidate the Palestine solidarity movement — is bullying and threatening students involved in Palestine solidarity organizing.

She has also threatened to file a legal complaint against the university, and claims that students have violated campus policy by initiating a campaign urging the university to take action to condemn her.

According to students targeted by Rossman-Benjamin, these latest attacks and threats have been allowed to flourish because University of California’s top officials refuse to publicly condemn racist remarks she made.

As The Electronic Intifada has reported, Rossman-Benjamin made racist, slanderous comments against students involved in Palestine solidarity activism on campus and the Muslim Student Association in a video that surfaced earlier this year. In the video, she alleges that such students “have ties to terrorist organizations” and that “many of them are foreign students who come from countries and cultures where anti-Semitism is how they think about the world.”

Rossman-Benjamin is the co-founder of the Amcha Initiative, which has a history of legal threats against students and faculty who criticize Israeli policy. The Amcha Initiative has filed civil rights law (Title VI) complaints at the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging that Jewish students face discrimination and harassment due to Palestine solidarity organizing and the holding of events critical of Israeli policy on campus. Rossman-Benjamin and Amcha filed a Title VI complaint against UC Santa Cruz several years ago, which is still pending.

Students mobilize against hate speech

Students at UC Santa Cruz with the Committee for Justice in Palestine began circulating a petition calling on the office of the university president to condemn Rossman-Benjamin’s hate speech. To date, more than 1,700 persons have signed the petition, but the University of California’s president, Mark Yudof, has so far refused to comment.

Along with the petition to the University of California president, the student group has been collecting signatures on an open letter to UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal and Dean of Students Alma Sifuentes, demanding that they condemn the lecturer’s Islamophobic and slanderous comments.

In March, the University of California at Berkeley’s student senate passed a resolution condemning Rossman-Benjamin’s hate speech and urged the UC administration “to condemn these inflammatory, hateful and racist assumptions by [UC Santa Cruz] lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin against Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian students, and Palestinian rights activists.” The resolution also urges other campuses “to pass similar bills in their respective student governments.”

Rebecca Pierce, a student at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the Committee for Justice in Palestine, helped launch a video campaign in which students give personal testimonials on their reaction to Rossman-Benjamin’s hate speech and the UC administration’s inaction. More than a dozen testimonials can be viewed on the group’s YouTube account.

Rossman-Benjamin is now, in turn, claiming “retaliation,” “defamation” and “terrorization” because of these petitions, and is threatening legal action against the UC Santa Cruz administration for the Committee for Justice in Palestine’s campaign.

Further threats

A recent exchange of emails between Rossman-Benjamin and UC Santa Cruz officials were found by members of the Committee for Justice in Palestine after being posted on two Bay Area Zionist blogs and a now-deleted post on the Amcha website. In the emails Rossman-Benjamin alleges that student conduct policies were violated by the Committee for Justice in Palestine’s public campaign urging the UC administration to condemn her comments, and by students categorizing her remarks as racist and Islamophobic. She then attempts to threaten the students and the administration with further legal complaints.

In the emails, Rossman-Benjamin further claims that the students are “engaging in harassment,” and have “communicated a serious expression with intent to terrorize [me], or have acted in reckless disregard of the risk [of doing so].”

She also threatens to file another Title VI lawsuit with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

One email also notes The Electronic Intifada’s reporting on this issue, calling it “defamatory.”

With the threat of further legal action by Amcha and Rossman-Benjamin hovering overhead, student Rebecca Pierce emphasized that the basis of the campaign is directly quoting Rossman-Benjamin’s hate speech in the video, and sharing how students are perceiving her actions.

This campaign “is perfectly acceptable, ethical, and legal forms of speech protected by the First Amendment,” Pierce told The Electronic Intifada. “I think that any claim that we’re defaming anyone is coming out of left field and is not based in any sort of truth about our campaign or about our organization.”

Prejudice and Islamophobia

However, Pierce — who has been a Hebrew language student of Rossman-Benjamin’s — told The Electronic Intifada that because the University of California’s top administration has not taken any steps to condemn the lecturer’s hate speech, students feel upset and unheard, on top of being bullied.

“I think it’s been hard to watch this whole thing unfold for a lot of reasons,” Pierce said. “Seeing the comments that were made about [the Committee for Justice in Palestine] and [the Muslim Student Association] in the first place, it was shocking and it was hard for me personally as someone who’s in those groups and has had a relationship with the person making those comments.”

Pierce added that it is up to the school to make sure that such prejudicial and Islamophobic views “aren’t allowed to be taken as the views of the university. And right now, no one’s contradicting that idea.”

Even though top University of California administration officials haven’t taken action to condemn Rossman-Benjamin’s hate speech, students with the Committee for Justice in Palestine say they don’t feel that UC Santa Cruz is indicating that the students “are in any kind of [administrative] trouble at all,” at least for now.

Read more at Electronic Intifada

Student senate at UC Berkeley passes resolution condemning lecturer’s Islamophobic hate speech

 

Student senate at UC Berkeley passes resolution condemning lecturer’s Islamophobic hate speech

By Nora Barrows-Friedman

On Wednesday evening, the Associated Students at the University of California (ASUC) at Berkeley voted unanimously to support a resolution “condeming Islamophobic hate speech at the University of California.”

The resolution focused on the recent incident of the outrageously racist and Islamophobic hate speech of Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz,who was videotaped in June 2012 saying that campus activists involved in Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim student organizations have ties to “terrorist organizations.”

Rossman-Benjamin, as The Electronic Intifada has extensively reported, is the co-founder of an outside political group, the Amcha Initiative, which seeks out students and professors who criticize Israel or engage in Palestine solidarity activism, accuse them of “anti-Semitism,” and urge university administrations — or state officials — to take punitive action against them.

Read More at Electronic Intifada

The Bill:

SB 114- AMENDED- PASSED

A Resolution Condemning Islamophobic Hate Speech at the University of California

Authored By: Senator Sadia Saifuddin
Co-sponsored By: Senator Sadia Saifuddin, Senator Klein Lieu, Senator Rosemary Hua, Senator George Kadifa, Senator Daley Vertiz

WHEREAS, the University of California has identified the issue of campus climate as a priority for administration, staff, and students across the UC system; and,

WHEREAS, the UC prides itself on welcoming students from any race, religion, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, yet pockets of racism and hate still exist on this campus which makes the UC an unwelcoming experience for certain communities; and,

WHEREAS, Islamophobia is defined as the irrational fear of Islam, Muslims, or anything related to the Islamic or Arab cultures and traditions; and,

WHEREAS, since September 11, 2001, Islamophobia has become the latest “hazing” technique across the United States and has created a chilling effect for Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians in their communities, work-environments, and campuses; and,

WHEREAS, according to a Gallup Study, 60% of of Muslim Americans say that Muslims face prejudice from Americans; and,

WHEREAS, 48% of Muslim Americans say that they have personally faced racial or religious discrimination, which is on par with Hispanic Americans (48%), and African Americans (45%), while 54% of Arab Americans say they have experienced this type of discrimination; and,

WHEREAS, since 2006, Muslim students have been targeted for surveillance by the FBI in Orange County, who said that they are paying particular attention to Muslim students at UC Irvine and UCLA; and,

WHEREAS, this surveillance is occurring on the East Coast as well, with the New York Police Department surveillance of Muslim students at Yale, Columbia, Syracuse, Rutgers, New York University, and Brooklyn College; and,

WHEREAS, these racist and selective surveillance procedures are justified by figures in mainstream media, such as David Horowitz, who defines the core mission of the MSA to “advance the Islamic Jihad against the Jews and Christians of the Middle East, and ultimately against the United States”, and,

WHEREAS, attempts to mischaracterize and chill Palestinian activism have occurred on Berkeley’s own campus, with a lawsuit filed in July 2011(later dismissed in court) against the UC Regents and President Mark Yudof containing extremely Islamophobic and anti-Arab rhetoric referring to Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslims Students Association as “anti-Semitic” and “pro-terrorist”; and,

WHEREAS, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that “the more publicly active SJP may be understood as the more militant arm of the outwardly benevolent MSA” and that SJP, MSA, and MSU all “fund terrorism” and are tied to terrorist groups; and,

WHEREAS, more recently, UC Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin has been responsible for inciting racist and Islamophobic rhetoric by claimings that students in the MSA and SJP are “…generally motivated by very strong religious and political convictions, they have a fire in their belly, they come to the university, many of them are foreign students who come from countries and cultures where anti-Semitism is how they think about the world … These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or Young Democrats. These are students who come with a serious agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations.”; and,

WHEREAS, claims such as those cited above create an unsafe and divisive environment for Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian students, and others who may be perceived as being of similar descent, and these claims are completely opposite to the values of a premier university system; and,

WHEREAS, the President of the University of California, Mark Yudof, is responsible for advocating for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation; and,

WHEREAS, the University of California is no place for hateful and inflammatory rhetoric and holds its students, faculty, staff, and affiliates to higher standards that promote a positive and inclusive campus climate; therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED, that the ASUC condemn the remarks of lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and those described in the above-mentioned lawsuit as hateful and inflammatory; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the ASUC urge President Mark Yudof to condemn these inflammatory, hateful, and racist assumptions by UCSC lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin against Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian students, and Palestinian rights activists; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that EAVP Shahryar Abbasi write a letter to UCOP condemning the racist and bigoted language by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and President Yudof’s failure to address the matter, as well as passing a similar bill with UCSA; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the ASUC urge other campuses to pass similar bills in their respective student governments.

 

Petition: University of California President Mark Yudof, Condemn UCSC Lecturer’s hateful attacks on Muslim/Arab student groups

Sign this petition urging UC President Mark Yudof to condemn UCSC Hebrew lecturer Tammi Benjamin’s Islamophobic claims that SJP and MSA participants are “anti-semitic” “foreign students” “with ties to terrorist organizations”

A video has surfaced, showing UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman Benjamin making extremely offensive comments about the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine groups at an off-campus event in June 2012. Benjamin describes their members as “foreign students who come from countries and cultures where anti-Semitism is how they think about the world.” She makes openly racist and defamatory claims that MSA and SJP are connected to terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Benjamin also singles these student activists out from all others, saying, “These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or Young Democrats. These are students who come with a serious agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations”.

These comments reflect the worst stereotypes and slurs leveled at Arab and Muslim communities in the post-9/11 era. They have absolutely no place in a university environment and it is completely unacceptable for a University of California lecturer to be making them, especially about students. What is even worse is that these comments are part of a pattern, one that the University of California Office of the President has been complicit in promoting.

Tammi Benjamin leads an extreme pro-Israel group called the Amcha Initiative, which has launched a series of censorship attempts targeting UC and California State University academics and student groups, based on claims that academic critique of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. In 2011 they filed a complaint against UCLA professor David Shorter for linking to a page related to the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement on a class website, prompting an improper investigation that was eventually dismissed. In February 2012 the Amcha Initiativetried and failed to shut down Israeli historian Illan Pappe’s speaking tour at CSU campuses, falsely claiming that he was “anti-Semitic” and supportive of terror. Tammi Benjamin was also behind a federal complaint alleging that campus political and academic speech critical of Israel creates a hostile environment for Jewish students at UC Santa Cruz, resulting in an ongoing Department of Education investigation into the school. The ACLU recently condemned the federal investigation into UC Santa Cruz as “disturbing” and having “a chilling effect” on student organizing in a letter criticizing a similar investigation at UC Berkeley.

In March 2012, Tammi Benjamin and the Amcha Initiative sent a letter to UC President Mark Yudof with racist rhetoric tying student groups to terror, and misrepresenting an incident at UC Davis. The next day President Yudof responded with a system-wide email that adopted the Amcha Initiative’s false narrative, without any condemnation of their inflammatory language or baseless claims.

It is no wonder that Tammi Benjamin felt comfortable publicly claiming students were tied to terrorism last June, when the University has rewarded her organization for doing so in the past. These actions are damaging to Muslim and Arab students and their allies, and promote an environment where students are open targets for hate groups. The University of California and the Office of the President must take a clear stand against hate speech directed at marginalized communities, and distance itself from extremists like Tammi Benjamin and the Amcha Initiative that work to smear and silence student human rights campaigners.

We ask that University of California President Mark Yudof:

-Release a statement from the UC President’s Office condemning Tammi Benjamin’s hateful comments in the video and previous Amcha Initiative statements.

-End any UC cooperation and communication with extremist groups like the Amcha Initiative that target advocates for human rights.

-Formally retract any statements issued at the request of the Amcha Initiative, and take proactive steps to address the negative impact the UC’s past cooperation with the group has had on free speech and campus climate for Muslim and Arab students and groups like SJP and MSA.

Rebecca Pierce on how UC climate report authors ignored testimony from Jewish students critical of Israel in J Weekly

Rebecca Pierce: U.C. report on Jewish campus climate: Results marginalize, misrepresent students critical of Israel

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has long been a controversial topic in the United States, especially on college campuses. Personal identity can influence how people view the conflict, causing some to assume that this discussion is, or should be, conducted strictly along ethno-religious lines. This assumption, however, has the potential to chill speech and push dissenters out of their communities. As a Jewish and African American student critical of Israeli policy and involved in Palestinian solidarity organizing at U.C. Santa Cruz, I experience this firsthand.

Since coming to UCSC, my ability to participate in Jewish student programming while active in the campus Committee for Justice in Palestine has met constant challenges. Last year, I was repeatedly subjected to abusive online comments by a staff member at a center for Jewish life because of my decision to be in CJP and participate in Jewish student programming. This is not the only time I’ve been targeted, and I’m not the only Jewish student to experience something like this. Unfortunately, recent steps by the University of California to “improve campus climate” appear poised to make this situation even worse.

On July 9, U.C. President Mark Yudof’s Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion presented the “University of California Jewish Student Campus Climate Fact-Finding Team Report & Recommendations.” Authored by Rick Barton of the Anti-Defamation League and Alice Huffman of the California NAACP, it is ostensibly based on testimony from meetings with Jewish students at six U.C. campuses. I was part of a Jewish student panel that discussed the report when it was released, and had no choice but to dispute much of its findings.

I was present at the UCSC meeting in fall 2011 and discussed the difficulties of maintaining involvement in both CJP and my campus Jewish community. But upon receiving the report, I discovered my experiences, and those of other Jewish students critical of Israel, were almost entirely absent.

In fact, while the authors note there are some Jewish students involved in what they label “the anti-Zionism movement,” the document portrays Palestinian campus organizing as problematic, or even anti-Semitic by nature, often through unchecked generalizations.

Full Article:

http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/66225/u.c.-report-on-jewish-campus-climate-results-marginalize-misrepresent-stude/