Monday, May 15, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
A year after violent
protests shut down an event sponsored by pro-Israel students at the
University of California at Irvine, another threatening
protest at another pro-Israel event generates questions over whether the
university is willing to do more than issue statements regarding freedom of
speech on campus.
After last year’s protests – which were just the culmination
of a series of discriminatory attacks on Israel-supporting Jews throughout the
UC system – the Regents of that system endorsed a set of Principles
Against Intolerance, the last two of which - points (h) and (i) - declare that “Actions that physically or
otherwise interfere with the ability of an individual or group to assemble,
speak and share or hear the opinions of others…” and “Harassment, threats,
assaults, vandalism, and destruction of property” would not be tolerated.
After last year’s incident, the local Students for Justice
in Palestine (SJP) was given a written warning and required to host an
educational program related to their behavior.
Apparently, this week’s decision to orchestrate the same kind of
disruption they were warned about last year is their reply, and amply
demonstrates what they think about the university and its rules.
Campus administrators, generally sheepish about taking on
organized groups of students, are particularly cautious when confronting the
violent behavior of SJP, given their understanding that once they act they can
expect to hear immediately from the group’s lawyers. Which means the only thing that can motivate
them to enforce their own rules is fear of lawsuits from even better lawyers
representing Jewish students on campus.
As the school year winds to a close, we can expect the
administration to run out the clock with deliberations that will continue after
all the students involved on both sides of this week’s fiasco have gone
home. One hopes that during this period
they will develop the backbone required to enforce their own rules in the face
of groups like SJP that have decided to demonstrate to the entire community who
they think is in charge of the school.
But, failing that, I have a modest recommendation for a new approach
that’s not been tried yet.
Under this new proposed policy, rather than reject
harassment and intimidation on campus, those kinds of activities should instead
be enshrined as the new norm to be embraced and encouraged by administrators
and students alike. Such a policy can be
implemented by simply taking the original Chancellor’s “Principles Against
Intolerance” and swapping “will not be tolerated” whenever it appears with “is
both tolerated and encouraged.”
Now such a policy could discriminate against student
organizations without the numbers or aggression required to put together a
decent mob big enough and violent enough to shut down events put on by students
with whom they disagree. But this
problem could be easily solved by allowing student organizations to use part of
the campus activities budget they are allocated each year to hire professional
harassers to fatten up their own mobs and ensure equitable levels of aggression
targeting any speaker or event on campus.
Such a policy could have positive economic impact, creating
gainful employment opportunities for thugs living at or near University of
California locations who can be regularly hired as members of rent-a-mobs. No doubt enterprising temporary employment
agencies will spring up to facilitate the appropriate allocation of violent
protesters at all controversial campus events (with “controversial” remaining a
term that any student group is free to define and interpret based on its own preferences).
The only alternative I can think of to the current
“all-talk-no-action” policy at places like UC Irvine and the simple alternative
I propose is that the school provide students a list of which groups and issues
are allowed to participate in the kinds of violent, harassing behavior now
becoming standard at pro-Israel events on campus – essentially creating
guidelines that says who is allowed to discriminate against whom.
Such a policy would represent an official imprimatur on
bigotry, but at least it would be more honest than the de facto one currently
in place.
