UCLA student gov’t candidate challenged for being Jewish
Daily Bruin: “several council members managed to politicize her identity as a Jewish student on campus”
The student government at a university in South Africa recently voted to expel Jews:
The vice chancellor of Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa on Wednesday rejected the student council’s call to expel Jewish students who do not support the Palestinian cause.
University Vice Chancellor Professor Ahmed Bawa released a statement calling the demand “outrageous, preposterous and a deep violation of our National Constitution and every human rights principle.” He added, “No student at DUT will be discriminated against on the basis of religion, race, gender, political affiliation or sexual orientation.”
Bawa also told South Africa’s Daily News that the request was “totally unacceptable.”
The demand to expel all Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian agenda, was made by the university’s Students Representative Council and Progressive Youth Alliance.
This is the logical progression in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. It’s fitting that the vote took place in Durban, the scene of the anti-Semitic 2001 Durban Conference that created the BDS movement.
While expulsion of Jews will not happen here, the BDS movement is moving towards a de facto bar on Jews who are not anti-Israel by alleging that taking subsidized trips to Israel or attending conferences and training through major pro-Israel Jewish organizations constitutes a conflict of interest. That standard would exclude a high percentage of pro-Israel Jewish students from participating in student government (not to mention excluding many leading non-Jewish pro-Israel students).
At UCLA, there were attempts last spring to keep students off the student council based upon trips to Israel conducted through well-known Jewish charities and pro-Israel organizations.
Those exclusionary tactics — though rejected by the UCLA student judicial board — have had success in scaring pro-Israel students away from running for student office, because they will be attacked not only on campus but on anti-Israel websites. This tactic helps explain the turnover in membership that allowed a divestment resolution to pass this fall even though it was voted down last spring.
Now it’s gone even further, with questioning challenging a student judicial board candidate based on her being Jewish. (h/t Commenter Fed Up in the Tip Line)
In an Editorial, The UCLA Daily Bruin newspaper called this unacceptable discrimination, Objections to USAC Judicial Board appointment discriminatory:
Religious affiliations and ethnic identity should not and do not disqualify someone from being an effective judge.
And yet, at Tuesday night’s Undergraduate Students Association Council meeting, that’s exactly what councilmembers were arguing.
During the meeting, several councilmembers … raised concerns about the appointment of Rachel Beyda, a second-year economics student, to the USAC Judicial Board, UCLA student government’s highest judicial body.
After much discussion and the intervention of administrators, Beyda was eventually unanimously appointed to the position – but not before several council members managed to politicize her identity as a Jewish student on campus.
The main objection to her appointment was Beyda’s affiliation with Jewish organizations at UCLA and how they might affect her ability to rule fairly on cases in which the Jewish community has a vested interest in the outcome, such as cases related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That objection is confounding both for its vast shortsightedness and for its flat-out discriminatory nature….
It is obvious that the objections to Beyda’s appointment are not only political, but also discriminatory. To hold an applicant to a standard higher than others simply because of his or her ethnic or religious identity instead of his or her ability to rule fairly in accordance with USAC regulations is illogical and immoral.
The exchange starts at 47:00 of this video (I’ll have an excerpt posted later). (Update: Video added)
This is the new face of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on campus.
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Cancerous.
Now, if the candidate for campus judicial office were a Boy Scout supporter, well, off with her head.
Creeping. And breaking into a gallop in Kuhlifornia.
Would not any pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel or anti-Zionist activity or statements create a similar conflict of interest to disqualify the disqualifiers from exercising their disparate treatment of Jewish students?
Their methods should be used against them, particularly because they practice discrimination by their acts.
Well now, I could never run for the UCLA Student Government Council because, in accordance with the highly honored, and always followed, “one drop” theory, I would be excluded.
It is my honor to say that in spite of my ancestry being Scottish, Clan MacGregor and Clan MacIntyre, English, Welch, Irish, Scot-Irish, Danish, Swedish, French, German, and perhaps also Swiss-German, my Swedish Ancestor’s Mother was also a Jewish refugee from Russia.
So, it gives me great pleasure to say to UCLA’s bigots: “F%&k Off!” Also: Move back to the hole in the ground from which you sprouted.
UCLA students need to be looking for a returning Jihadist from ISIS with head severing credentials to run for the Council to show “inclusiveness and tolerance”. Time for ULCA to require “Star Of David” patches for its Jewish students until a solution can be found to purge the student body of these “people”.
Everyone of the council members who questioned her about being Jewish should be given a chance to resign from the council by the University and if even one refuses then the University should disband the entire council.
I would equally be against any requirement of any Palestinian student to have it required of them to be Pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian.
“While expulsion of Jews will not happen here,”
I wouldn’t bet on it. It is what they want, Juden Frei.
Yes of course. “Everyone” says it can’t happen and then they do nothing. Meanwhile the people who ARE making it happen are making it happen. Soon it will seem extraordinary NOT to embrace Nuremberg Race Laws in academia. And the funny thing is that the people shouting the loudest for them will be ‘assimilated’ liberal Jews screaming about racism, Islamophobia, LGBTQXYZ and how illegal aliens who are illiterate in their OWN language and country are more entitled to free college degrees than anyone else. Oh well, America had a pretty good run for a long time. Now it’s over. So let’s send the band home, lower the flag and burn the ships at mooring.
Glad to see this as an article. Even after everything that’s happened at UCLA with divestment, this event is a new low thanks to the openly anti-Jewish behavior on display.
Also, it’s amazing how quickly some of the USAC representatives assumed that the candidate would have a conflict of interest just because she’s involved with Jewish organizations. (I looked her up, and her positions are social, not political.) I mean, don’t they listen to the tiny handful of pro-BDS Jewish Voice for Peace students at UCLA who yell at every opportunity that the Jewish community isn’t monolithic and that being Jewish doesn’t mean being Zionist?
Ah, yes, all is proceeding as foreseen though some said it couldn’t happen here. You lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas. Our local pot hound anti-Semites have connected with the heirs of Hitler and Himmler, the Muslims. Jewish students on campuses all across America need to stand strong instead of cowering. The UC should expel the purveyors of this kind of poison.
It’s us versus them. On the sidelines, is the GOP.
I think that this is just one manifestation of a larger problem: demonizing the opposition. Try being a traditional marriage proponent. Or is that a homophobe? Surely, one has one’s right to believe what one will. But one does not have the right to a job (at Mozilla), to peacefully pursue commercial interests (a bakery or a Chick-fil-A), or a private life (see Miss Sacco, above. Not traditional marriage, but an excellent illustrative hounding.) By demonizing various opponents, the progressives are quite successfully stifling debate in several arenas. Part of me can’t help wish for the student debt bubble to burst, so that we can see the collapse of the “academy,” such as it is. I don’t think that will be a total solution, but it might be a good start.
The school administration is blatantly ignoring the double standard. A student body wishing to exclude someone because of their ethnicity should be disbanded.
How many American Jews agree that an Israel-supporter should not serve on …. whatever? Probably a whole lot, including at UCLA. If his data points are accurate, Ben Shapiro has the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5IqH7oJ9h4
UCLA will undergo ethnic cleansing of Jews soon. Right in the heart of Hollywood and the media entertainment industry. No one will lift a finger until they go after Jewish academic and non academic staff as well, but alas it will be too late and the courts won’t defend them. I have to admit I’m a little surprised that the first Jew Free University might be UCLA. I had to think it would be UC Davis or UC Irvine, Berkeley, Smith college, Brandeis, Northeastern, De Paul, Loyola, Rutgers or Bard. But hey, the Nazis have to take their victories where they can get them.