Not long ago I posted (here and here) about an unsavory episode of anti-semitism at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Rachel Beyda, a Jewish sophomore student who was a candidate for the student council’s judicial board, was interrogated and initially rejected by fellow students solely because she was a member of Jewish organizations—something that supposedly gave her a “lack of objectivity” as well as “divided loyalties.” After a faculty advisor admonished the council for their foolish “conflict of interest” objection, she was then voted in.
The students who voted against her tendered a notapology, and Gene Block, the UCLA chancellor, offered lukewarm sympathies, praising the tepid apologies of the “no-voting” students and avoiding a mention of the religious discrimination. Block also called the incident a “teaching moment,” a phrase I don’t think he would have used had Beyda been black, gay, or Muslim.
To wind up this tale, Steve Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern here in Chicago, did some further digging, and found that Beyda’s initial rejection was part of a wider pattern of anti-Jewish discrimination at UCLA. This is part of what Lubet posted at The Faculty Lounge (I’ve bolded a bit that shows the hypocrisy of students singling out Beyda for her religion):
The votes against Beyda were not cast in a vacuum. Rather, they were the predictable upshot of a political situation at UCLA that has become increasingly hostile for many Jewish students.
For the past year, there has been a concerted effort at UCLA to rid the student government of anyone who might be insufficiently antagonistic toward Israel, which was seen as necessary to the passage of a BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) resolution. And as it turns out, at least three of the four anti-Beyda voters have been closely connected to that campaign. It is often said that the BDS movement is aimed only at Israel and not at Jews, but this incident shows just how easily anti-Zionism can give rise to what might be called Judeophobia – the assumption that Jews are politically suspect until proven otherwise.
In April 2014, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) brought a Judicial Board complaint against two USAC representatives, seeking to disqualify their votes on a divestment resolution because they had taken sponsored trips to Israel. According to the SJP complaint, such travel to Israel constituted an improper “conflict of interest” that should have prohibited the two representatives from voting on a divestment resolution (which had failed to pass). The Judicial Board, however, voted to reject the SJP petition, referring to it as “dangerously volatile” and holding, without dissent, that trips to Israel did not evidence a conflict of interest and that the two representatives’ votes against divestment had thus been “valid and legitimate.”
Notwithstanding that rebuff by the Judicial Board, SJP demanded that candidates in the next election to the USAC sign a pledge that they would not accept sponsored trips to Israel. At least two of the anti-Beyda voters signed that pledge, which also accused several Jewish organizations of Islamophobia and efforts to “marginalize multiple communities on campus.”
Moreover, three of the four USAC representatives who voted against Beyda had run for office on the “Let’s Act” slate, which was endorsed in full by SJP. Following their election, two of them sponsored an ultimately successful BDS resolution that was supported by an array of ethnic and religious student organizations. Yet it was only when Beyda sought a position on the Judicial Council that “conflicts of interest” due solely to group membership suddenly became a burning issue.
. . .The conflation of Beyda’s Jewishness with “divided loyalty” is especially appalling, given that at least three of the four no-voters had campaigned for office on the basis of their own affiliations with religious or ethnic organizations. (I could not find campaign materials for the fourth.) Two of them produced a joint campaign video in which they touted their leadership in the Muslim Students Association and the Iranian Student Group. Another of the objectors circulated a flyer identifying himself as the president of the Sikh Students Association. All of this would be unexceptional – indeed, quite admirable – if the same three students had not expressed such deep concern about Rachael Beyda’s membership in Hillel and a Jewish sorority. In the world of the SJP endorsees, there is no impediment to campus office-holding by a Muslim, Iranian, or Sikh activist (nor should there ever be, of course), but the nomination of a self-identified Jewish student rang very loud alarm bells. What is the difference?
This Judeophobia has apparently arrived here, too. I wasn’t that surprised to learn, from an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that anti-semitism is around on my own campus—the University of Chicago. There are highly touted pro-Palestinian lectures, anti-Israel slogans scribbled on the sidewalk in chalk, and repeated letters in the student newspaper about “hate speech”, all referring to criticisms of Islam. As Haaretz reports:
What began with a post about Northwestern University passing a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions motion against Israel turned into a discussion about Palestinian death tolls and those who “support slaughter of innocents on the basis that the killers have the same race/religion.” It wasn’t long before jabs were made at individual Jewish students. A social media intifada had erupted.
The assaults spilled into posts on the moderated, anonymous UChicago Secrets Facebook page: “As a person of Palestinian descent, I don’t think it is unreasonable for me to hate Jews;” ”People are hypocrites. This is Fact. One example? The Jews at UChicago. Why? They all have grandparents who survived the Holocaust. This doesn’t stop them from denying the Holocaust in Palestine right now;” and “There is no more backwards and conservative community at UChicago than the genocide apologists in hillel and other jewish organizations.”
It is shocking that students at one of the top universities in America – where liberal values are enshrined and Plato is a rite of passage – could hold such parochial views and express them behind the cowardly mask of anonymous social media. I wonder if the timing of these attacks – just a week after the BDS motion passed at Northwestern and days before “Israeli Apartheid Week”– had anything to do with the assaults.
Here are some of those posts. Now I don’t claim that anti-semitism is rampant here, but the presence of these posts (and they may all be by one person, though I doubt it), suggests a hidden Judeophobia among at least some students.
Finally, Breitbart reports that Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave a sold-out talk in Boston while promoting the film Crossing the Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus (I’ve put it up before, but you can see the whole thing on YouTube here). Hirsi denounced the current wave of anti-semitism on campuses and the BDS movement. From her talk:
It is appalling that only seventy years from the Holocaust, crowds in Europe chant, “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.” It is even more appalling that 10,000 soldiers in Paris are needed to protect Jewish sites. That is the continent that promised never again. The men and women who were in the concentration camps, who are tattooed, some are still here. And it is happening again.
. . . I have a different acronym for BDS. They call themselves Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. I call them Bully, Deceive, and Sabotage. Bully, Deceive, and Sabotage the only society that is free in the Middle East. BDS. On campus, if you care about issues like justice and injustice, we really need to show it. You need to do it. Where is the BDS movement against the Islamic State? Where on campuses is the BDS movement against Saudi Arabia? The Iranian regime, who for decades have promised to wipe Israel off the map, who are developing a bomb. And there’s no BDS movement against them on campus. Why? Last year in Nigeria, 200 girls were kidnapped. They were sold into slavery. There was no BDS movement against Boko Haram.
Sadly, Hirsi Ali, who is surely the best candidate to replace Hitchens as one of the “Four Horsemen” (which would then be called “The Four Horsepersons”) has been repeatedly attacked by the “social justice warrior” faction of atheism because she works for a conservative think tank (the only people who would hire her!) and because she’s made some rather extreme statements about Islam. Perhaps those statements can be understood in light of her horrible oppression, forced marriage, and genital mutilation at the hands of, and in the name of, Islam.
Regardless, Hirsi Ali also been a tireless activist for women’s rights and the perfidies of Islam. She’s written two wonderful books, Infidel and Nomad, recounting her dysfunctional upbringing, her rise to renown (and infamy) through her own diligence, and her subsequent hounding and threats by Muslims. For that she has been so demonized by Muslims that she requires round-the-clock bodyguards. And now she’s demonized by atheists as well: she was named one of the “Five most awful atheists” (along with Sam Harris and others) by Ian Murphy at Alternet. (Hemant Mehta, to his credit, disagrees.)
