UCLA faculty urge strong administrative response against antisemitism

(November 15, 2023 / JNS)

A letter from “UCLA Faculty Against Terror” has urged campus leaders at the University of California, Los Angeles to push back more aggressively against campus displays of pro-Hamas advocacy.

The signees totaled 335 with representation across disciplines from the hard sciences to the humanities.

Professors were “deeply concerned about the recent terror attack by the Hamas terror organization, the celebrations of the attack in rallies on the UCLA campus and the UCLA response. We are concerned about the impact of these on the sense of community at UCLA, as well as on the safety of our community of students, staff and faculty on campus.”

The letter named actions UCLA leadership should take: denouncing celebrations of Hamas attacks; calling Hamas a terrorist group; holding accountable those who participate in incitement; and enforcing the school’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion program to counter antisemitism.

“I hope it serves as a role model to other campuses and, more importantly, that it tells students that the faculty are behind them, despite the mumbling of university officials,” Professor Judea Pearl told JNS. Pearl is the father of Daniel Pearl, an American Jewish journalist murdered in Pakistan in 2002.

“University administrators must understand that, by reneging on their responsibility of setting clear, unambiguous norms of campus discourse they are emboldening the hostile elements among students, mostly pro-Hamas student organizations,” Pearl told JNS, saying university leaders were “making the campus unsafe, if not dangerous, for Jewish students and faculty.”

He added that “while they can easily replace Jewish donors with Qatari money, it would be much harder to replace Jewish students and Jewish faculty with Qatari talents of comparable caliber.”

Said the letter: “UCLA leadership must make the strongest possible statements condemning the barbaric Hamas attacks. There is no room for moral equivalence. There is no room for ‘both-sideism.’ There is no room for ambiguity.”