UCLA Tag

Lets Act! (LA), the far-left student political party at UCLA, was dramatically swept from power, in election results released Friday, May 1, 2015. LA, a coalition of mostly identity-based groups (e.g. Afrikan Student Union, MEChA, Queer Alliance, etc.) was defeated 8 seats to 3 (with 3 independents) by their rival, Bruins United (BU), a coalition of most everyone else (led by the Jewish community, fraternities, and sororities). https://youtu.be/qqDqmPoeJpg?t=4m3s LA and its constituent groups constituted the bulk of left-wing identity politics efforts at UCLA. LA was responsible for slew of anti-Israel actions:  Two BDS resolutions at UCLA; objecting to the Judicial Board appointment to Rachel Beyda because she is Jewish; and attempts to disqualify candidates who took trips to Israel.

One thing I've learned over the years is to screen shot, save on Wayback Macnine, or download any key evidence found on the internet.  Too many times I've gone back to a link and it's gone, and Google Cache can't be counted on to have preserved the evidence. So when I learned in early February that a UCLA student applying for a student judicial board slot was questioned by the Student Council as to whether she could be fair because she was Jewish and involved in Jewish groups, I wrote it up, UCLA student gov’t candidate challenged for being Jewish (February 12, 2015). I also downloaded the over 4 hour live feed, and excerpted the approximately 40 minute segment, which I uploaded to YouTube. As mentioned yesterday, discriminatory questioning of the Jewish student by the UCLA Student Council has gone national, Mainstream media wakes up to BDS-Anti-Semitism connection. It's a good thing I saved the evidence, because the Student Council took down the original live stream video, as HuffPo explains, UCLA's Student Council Tries To Hide Video Of Its Members Questioning A Jewish Student (emphasis added):

The university's [Undergraduate Students Association Council] typically posts recordings of its meetings on YouTube. But the student government took down the footage of a Feb. 10 meeting where several students questioned whether Rachel Beyda, a Jewish candidate for the school's judicial board, could be "unbiased" given her religion. Various news reports on the controversy this week prompted the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to call on the university to put the video back online Friday. But the university told The Huffington Post that the decision to pull the video was made by the USAC's internal vice president's office.... The group StandWithUs, a pro-Israel education and advocacy organization, is circulating a clipped video of the controversial meeting. Legal Insurrection, a conservative blog, has uploaded the full video of the meeting as it pertains to Beyda's nomination.

The networks are using our video as their source:

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).