No Wonder I Was Freaked Out on Campus Yesterday; I'm Not Alone

I copied a letter I got on email from the Jewish faculty at UCI. They were as appalled as I was. I am pasting it intact here:


An Open Letter to the Community from Faculty for Israel at UCI
May 10, 2010

We, faculty at the University of California--Irvine, are deeply disturbed about activities on campus that foment hatred against Jews and Israelis. The troubling events over the past few years include the painting of swastikas in university buildings, the Star of David depicted as akin to a swastika, a statement (by a speaker repeatedly invited by the Muslim Student Union) that the Zionist Jew is a party of satan, a statement by another MSU speaker that the Holocaust was God's will, the tearing down of posters placed by the student group Anteaters for Israel, and the hacking of their web site. Some community members, students, and faculty indeed feel intimidated, and at times even unsafe.

Some of these actions are protected by the First Amendment and in no way do we want to limit freedom of speech. We welcome open dialogue among all members of the UCI community. We respect and value our Muslim colleagues, including those members of the MSU who support and encourage open dialogue and civility on campus. At the same time, we take issue with hate-promoting actions that we find unacceptable. They run counter to the peaceful co-existence and civility that are essential to a university environment. Actions that demonize and derogate others, such as the previous events that have occurred on our campus noted above, have contributed to UCI's developing a growing reputation as a center of hate and intolerance. Our campus deserves better.

Signed:

Marlon Boarnet, Professor, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design Matthew Brenner, Professor, Department of Medicine
Dan Cooper, Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering
Rina Dechter, Professor, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
George Farkas, Professor, Department of Education
Paul Feldstein, Robert Gumbiner Professor, The Paul Merage School of Business
Gary Fouse, Adjunct teacher, University Extension
Stephen Franklin, Lecturer, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Jean Fried, Project Scientist, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design Julia M. Gelfand, Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian
Sheldon Greenfield, Donald Bren Professor, School of Medicine
Amihai Glazer, Professor, Department of Economics
Dan Hirschberg, Professor, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Christopher Kahn, Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine Zeev Kain, Professor, Anesthesiology & Pediatrics & Psychiatry
Tatiana Kain, Chair and Medical Director, Department of Emergency Medicine
Sherrie Kaplan, Executive Co-Director, Center for Health Policy Research Mark I. Langdorf, Professor, Clinical Emergency Medicine
Marc Lerner, Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Seymour Menton, Research Professor, Department of Spanish & Portugese
Frank Meyskens, Professor of Medicine, Biological Chemistry and Public Health Dana Mukamel, Professor, Department of Medicine David Neumark, Professor, Department of Economics
Alex Nicolau, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Raymond W. Novaco, Professor, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Richard Pattis, Lecturer, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
Shlomit Radom-Aizik, Postdoc, Department of Pediatrics
Carl H. Schultz, Professor, Emergency Medicine
Roberta Seid, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences
Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Etel Solingen, Chancellor's Professor, Political Science
Dara Sorkin, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Medicine
Eugene Spiritus, Chief Medical Officer, UCI Medical Center
Hal Stern, Professor, Department of Statistics
Dan Stokols, Chancellor's Professor, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design and Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
Gene Tsudik, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Alex Veidenbaum, Professor, Department of Computer Science
Mark Warschauer, Professor of Education and Informatics
Hadar Ziv, Lecturer/Research Scientist, Department of Informatics