Regents Will Get Out of Painted Corner

As predicted on this blog, the Regents - who painted themselves into a corner by "balancing" an anti-Israel student regent with a successor pro-Israel student regent - will endorse their latest nominee next week at their mid-July meeting:

The University of California’s Board of Regents announced yesterday that it will move forward with its confirmation of Jewish, pro-Israel student Avi Oved as student regent-designate, even as the student association that previously supported him voted 10-0 to delay his confirmation pending an investigation into conflict of interest allegations.

In a letter addressed to Kareem Aref, the president of the UC Student Association (UCSA), Board of Regents chairman Bruce Varner and regent George Kieffer wrote that Oved’s confirmation vote will “move forward at the July Regents meeting” next week in San Francisco, notwithstanding accusations of improper ties between the UCLA junior and local philanthropist Adam Milstein. Those ties were revealed when, at a June 28 UCSA meeting, Amal Ali—past president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC Riverside—shared emails between Oved and Milstein that the former says were hacked from his account...

Varner and Kieffer, though, wrote in their letter to UCSA, “Even if all the allegations raised against Mr. Oved are true, they clearly would not constitute a violation of the UCLA election code,” which places no restrictions or reporting requirements on student candidates’ campaign funding sources...

Full story at http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/uc_regents_plan_to_confirm_pro_israel_ucla_student_avi_oved

See also http://dailybruin.com/2014/07/11/board-of-regents-to-move-forward-with-vote-on-student-regent-designate/