UC JEWISH STUDENTS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES HAVE RIGHTS TOO.
IT'S TIME TO STAND UP FOR THEM.
We especially need signatures from UC students, alumni, and faculty, but everyone’s voice matters.
This fall, UC President Yudof and the UC Advisory Council on Campus Climate will consider their research team’s report on how anti-Israel extremism and bias adversely affect many Jewish students and faculty on UC campuses. Unfortunately, anti-Israel activists have mobilized to deny the report’s validity, and to pressure the Advisory Council to dismiss or table it.
It is essential that we counter this effort to deny the reality of the painful experiences that many pro-Israel students and faculty have described over the last ten years. It is essential that we let President Yudof and the Advisory Council know that the report’s recommendations will help create a campus climate that is free of intimidation of Jewish students and faculty, and help ensure that our campuses promote responsible discussion of contentious issues by marginalizing extremist speech and behavior that cross the line into bigotry.
The response to this report is critical beyond the UC system. It will serve as a role model for the campuses across the country and in Canada that have also been troubled by anti-Israel extremism and bias.
Please be sure that your voice is heard.
Thank you in advance for your activism.
Learn more, educate your friends, and please help us get 10,000 people to sign this petition by mid-October. The petition will be sent to the UC President’s Advisory Council which will be making the decision about adopting of the campus climate report and its recommendations.
I hereby lend my voice to request that the July 9 report titled "University of California Jewish Student Campus Climate Fact Finding Team Report and Recommendation" be endorsed by the UC President's Advisory Council on Campus Climate. The report contains a fair depiction of the challenges experienced by many Jewish students, faculty, and community members on UC campuses. I urge the advisory council to study the recommendations that conclude the report and to work toward their implementation.
Thank you.
On July 9, 2012, a report entitled "University of California Jewish Student Campus Climate Fact Finding Team Report and Recommendations" was presented by Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, and Richard Barton, national education chair of the Anti-Defamation League, to the University of California (UC) President's Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion. The report was commissioned in June 2011 by the advisory council in order to identify both the challenges faced by, and positive experiences of, Jewish students attending UC campuses and to recommend steps needed to make UC campuses more inclusive and welcoming for Jewish students and the community at large.
The report followed a fact-finding process from October 2011 to May 2012, which involved a team visiting six UC campuses--Santa Cruz, Davis, Irvine, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The researchers interviewed students, faculty, and community members to paint an overview of the diversity within these campuses, especially within its significant Jewish student population. It outlined the many nuances and at times diverse political views within the Jewish community on these campuses. The report concluded with a list of recommendations, inviting the UC system to develop model institutional protocols that will ensure that bigotry, intimidation, and undue bias are marginalized, that Jewish students, faculty, and community members' rights to free speech are protected, and that the university sets clear guidelines for responsible, reasonable debate.
It is extremely unfortunate, but not surprising, that a petition has surfaced recently within the UC system denouncing the validity and veracity of the Huffman/Barton report and calling upon the UC President's Advisory Council to dismiss the report. Students, alumni, faculty, and parents are invited to sign a petition denouncing the claims and the recommendations articulated in the report. It is absolutely essential that this dismissive, opposing petition be countered effectively and immediately.
The opposing petition reflects the very problems that the report describes: bias and an effort to silence or deny the experiences of many Jewish students, faculty, and community members. Only the report on Jewish students is being criticized for its methodology, even though it used the same methodology as the report on Muslim and Arab students, which was not criticized. The report documented what many Jewish students, faculty, and community members described as their experiences, but opponents are trying to deny the validity of these reported experiences. The opposing petition denies that criticism of Israel can cross the line into anti-Semitism by rejecting the EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism, even though the U.S. State Department and the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education both adopted the EUMC working definition.
We thus urge you to complete the counter-petition below, requesting that UC President Mark Yudof's Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion endorse the Huffman/Barton report concerning the UC campus climate experienced by many Jewish students, faculty, and community members.
It is crucial that the facts and recommendations in the Huffman/Barton report be recognized in order to help create a campus life that is free of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students, faculty, and community members as well as to ensure that our campuses promote responsible discussion of contentious issues and identify and marginalize extremist speech and behavior that cross the line into racism and bigotry.
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