University of California Campuses Roiled Over Claims Of Anti-Israel Bias

[Purveyor]

The politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict keep seeping into campus life at the University of California.

In 2010, a group of Muslim student protesters disrupted a UC Irvine speech by the Israeli ambassador and later faced school discipline and criminal prosecution that their defenders considered overly harsh.

Last year, the UCLA student government debated whether representatives who took free trips to Israel sponsored by Jewish groups should face sanctions.

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Now UCLA is coping with the aftermath of an incident in which several student government leaders questioned a student’s eligibility for a campus judicial panel because she is Jewish. Those leaders later apologized and the Jewish student was unanimously approved for the position. However, some pain lingers from the situation along with questions of when legitimate protests can seem like bias, students and faculty say.

Rabbi Aaron Lerner, the incoming executive director of the UCLA campus Hillel organization, said he did not ascribe anti-Semitic motives to the student government officials who initially questioned whether a Jewish student could impartially review all judicial cases. The matter was more an extension of the anti-Israel stance of some campus groups, he said.

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http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-allegations-of-anti-israel-sentiments-rock-uc-campuses--20150307-story.html