Photo Credit: UCI.edu

(JNi.media) The University of California’s new principles defining intolerance are under attack by advocates of free speech, as well as by Jewish organizations who claim it doesn’t accomplish what they had been asking for, namely protection against on-campus anti-Semitism.

The UC Board of Regents will debate the draft of its new “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance” at its meeting Thursday at UC Irvine. The new document calls for the 10 UC campuses to be “free from acts and expressions of intolerance,” and prohibits “depicting or articulating a view of ethnic or racial groups as less ambitious, less hardworking or talented, or more threatening than other groups.”

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The initiative states that “Intolerance has no place at the University of California. We define intolerance as unwelcome conduct motivated by discrimination against, or hatred toward, other individuals or groups. It may take the form of acts of violence or intimidation, threats, harassment, hate speech, derogatory language reflecting stereotypes or prejudice, or inflammatory or derogatory use of culturally recognized symbols of hate, prejudice, or discrimination.”

The addendum to the initiative lists “examples of behaviors that do not reflect the University’s values of inclusion and tolerance, as described in the Regents of the University of California’s Statement of Principles Against Intolerance”:

“Vandalism and graffiti reflecting culturally recognized symbols of hate or prejudice. These include depictions of swastikas, nooses, and other symbols intended to intimidate, threaten, mock and/or harass individuals or groups.

“Questioning a student’s fitness for a leadership role or whether the student should be a member of the campus community on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, sex, or sexual orientation.

“Depicting or articulating a view of ethnic or racial groups as less ambitious, less hardworking or talented, or more threatening than other groups,” and “Depicting or articulating a view of people with disabilities (both visible and invisible) as incapable.”

The first two items were borne directly from complaints by UC Jewish students about their experiences of harassment, notably a UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) meeting on February 10, 2015, where council members questioned UCLA Judicial Board candidate Rachel Beyda’s qualifications for the position—specifically her ability to represent students’ interests impartially—in light of her Jewish identity and affiliation with the Jewish community.

“The proposed ‘principles’ don’t even mention anti-Semitism,” stated Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, director of the AMCHA Initiative against campus anti-Semitism. “Those who care about protecting Jewish students and improving the entire campus climate are outraged. We’re going to tell the regents that the statement is really meaningless — it’s so watered down and overly broad that it will do nothing to address the really serious problem of anti-Semitism that students have been facing.”

Kenneth Stern, who served from 1989 to 2014 as director on antisemitism, hate studies and extremism for the American Jewish Committee, fears the UC initiative “would do more harm than good.”

“If a diplomat says that Israel — a member of the United Nations — should not exist as the nation state of the Jewish people, it is appropriate for the Department of State to label that anti-Semitism,” Stern wrote in the Jewish Journal. “But on a college campus, do we really want a student (imagine yourself as a Palestinian student) to fear that anti-Zionism on their part … will violate an administratively imposed definition of what is OK to be said?”

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