First from yesterday's
The Hill:
The Education Department has added six schools, including Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Rutgers University, to its ongoing probe over alleged discrimination, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.
According to the Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights’s list of higher education and K-12 institutions under investigation Monday, the other schools added include the University of Washington, the University of California, San Diego, and Whitman College.
The probe, announced last month, is to address the “alarming rise in reports of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and other forms of discrimination” in schools in the wake of militant group Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise assault into southern Israel.
The investigations are revolved around “alleged ancestry violations” of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires schools that receive federal financial assistance address discrimination. If schools do not address issues around discrimination, they risk losing federal funding or referral to the Department of Justice.
...UCLA did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Comment: As is well known by now given recent events, as a public university, UC and its campuses are covered by 1st amendment guarantees of free speech, even if objectionable. Courts impose a high bar of these protections which generally covers "hate speech," so long as it doesn't rise to immediate incitement of violence. (Note that the 1st amendment does not cover Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, the three universities that were the feature of the recent Congressional hearing affair in which their presidents seemed to cite the 1st amendment.)
However, the constitution - because it protects free speech - does not inhibit commentary by university officials - chancellors, Regents, others - when incidents arise. Regardless of the legalities, uneven responses create a Bad Look and are suggestive of preferences and discrimination, intended or not.
On this blog, we have referred back to the contrast between the chancellor's response in 2011 to the "Asians in the Library" affair. To summarize, a UCLA students made derogatory remarks on YouTube about Asians at UCLA, thinking - apparently with parental support - it would attract attention and make her some kind of celebrity. It did attract attention, but not of the kind she wanted. She took it down when an uproar arose, but others put it back up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70qcgIiWKk0s. Chancellor Block, in response, posted his own YouTube video expressing outrage at the remarks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6feGp0GQVJ8.
Fast-forward to 2015. A student posts antisemitic remarks on Facebook, far more objectionable than "Asians in the Library." A Jewish student wrote a protest to the Daily Bruin describing the Facebook post:
...[The Facebook post] makes dehumanizing and stereotypical allegations about Jews and the power of the “Jewish collective,” saying, “You’re f—ing trolls, armchair politicians who do nothing but pick your nose, scratch your a– … you come into our communities and destroy our small businesses.” She then goes on to say, “You own the entertainment industry, and apparently you have so much power that you want to get me fired and sent back to the ditch I came from, don’t you? Flex your little muscles, do your worst … Where I come from, people like you, with your privilege and your wealth, are not welcomed because we know that with you comes the end of our world, sacrificed at the whims of your fancy.”
The student then attacks the Jewish state and the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination saying, “Go back to Israel, then f—ing Zionist pigs. You don’t belong here either, this land belongs to the indigenous people who were already here. Since you’re so superior, go murder some Palestinian children so you can have their parents arrested and move into their home. Greedy lifeless pieces of s— people. Capitalist colonizers who steal and kill from other races to promote your dead ideologies.”
To add pain to injury, she has the audacity to speak ill of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust. She says,“… Spare me your (H)olocaust stories. My people have been systematically enslaved and destroyed by this country, who removes them every time they become a nuisance to white people. No one is hauling your Jewish a– to a concentration camp today …”
She adds, “… go back to Poland or whatever freezer-state you’re from, and realize that faith does not constitute race,” completely denying the fact that Jews were almost always treated as second-class citizens in Europe, if they were treated as citizens at all.
Lastly, the student then savagely denies any and all diversity of the Jewish community saying, “If you’re a Jew, you’re white. Not black, not middle eastern, not Asian – white.”
And let’s not forget her final farewell, “Kiss my a– you Zionist bastards – I hope you all burn in hell on earth for the crimes committed by your people in the name of their Gods.”...*
No video response from the chancellor resulted.
The Facebook incident was not the only affair in 2015. Another antisemitic incident involving student government occurred in the same year.** Again, no video response response from the chancellor resulted. Eventually, a lower official made a comment in the form of a letter to the editor of the Bruin.
Now, it can be argued - as some have - that college and university presidents should not be expected to make statements about world affairs such as the Israel-Gaza War. But note that the three situations described above - Asians in the Library, Facebook posting, student government - were campus affairs, not world affairs. It would be difficult to make an argument that top college and university officials should not comment on campus affairs. So, then the question is whether the officials' responses are equivalent regardless of the group targeted.
Yours truly has no idea whether the Dept. of Education investigators are aware of the asymmetry described above. But it's all in the public record.
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