On June 5, three students filed a lawsuit against UCLA for allowing anti-Jew zones amid the recent protests, and failure to protect students who did not agree with the encampment protestors’ pro-Hamas views. Ironically, they cite the university’s DEI policy and highlight the hypocrisy of UCLA in how they handled this event:
“On information and belief, a case manager within UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion called a UCLA student on or about May 20, 2024, and asked the student if he was ‘aware that the protesters had an agreement with the University to screen students based on their viewpoints,’” the lawsuit alleged.
The three students are identified as Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum and Eden Shemuelian. They allege that the university not only permitted these openly discriminatory acts, but it enabled them by providing campus police to protect the protestors and redirect people from entering their area, even going so far as to say they needed permission from the protestors to enter. The protestors gave out wristbands to those who passed their check, which included asking a person to swear they were anti-Zionist, the suit claimed.
Campus police also supplied metal barricades to protect the encampment and denied parents’ requests to intervene for the safety of their children. Professors offered classes from within the encampment or close to it, and also offered alternative schedules for protestors to take the class. However, one of the plaintiffs, Shemuelian, was forced to pass the encampment to take her finals and she requested to take them in an alternative location for fear of her safety. She was denied. She appealed and was denied again.
On April 28th, it was reported that a female student suffered a concussion resulting from a disagreement with the protestors, and another female student was pepper sprayed:
“If masked agitators had excluded any other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor Newsom rightly would have sent in the National Guard immediately,”Becket President and CEO Mark Rienzi said in a statement. “But UCLA instead caved to the antisemitic activists and allowed its Jewish students to be segregated from the heart of their own campus. That is a profound and illegal failure of leadership … This is America in 2024 — not Germany in 1939. It is disgusting that an elite American university would let itself devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. UCLA’s administration should have to answer for allowing the Jew Exclusion Zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.”
It’s time for the hypocrisy to be answered for. Freedom of speech does not justify hate speech, and violence against those who believe differently. This would not be allowed for any other group, so why is it now? This reflects poorly on our weak leadership, which cannot seem to figure out how to handle lawless protestors again and again. If we do not clearly define the line and enforce it, we are setting a precedent that will only get worse.
In its mission statement, the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion branch of UCLA says that it strives to uphold dignity for all:
UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) leads and advances strategies for enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion; protecting civil rights; and upholding dignity for all in our community.
DEI policies have proven to be anything but inclusive. They protect a small group of people while marginalizing the majority unjustly. UCLA should have to answer for its preposterous handling of this drawn-out, violent, anti-Jew campaign.
