Columbia UCLA Antisemitism Battles

Lexi Lonas has provided us of another attempt by the Liz Foxx led Congress to fight antisemitism. It is almost eight months since Liz Foxx demanded an end to antisemitism on campus and she has done nothing more than this.

The committee is giving Columbia until Aug. 8 to produce the documents they requested, including information regarding student disciplinary actions, meeting records from the board of trustees, and antisemitism incidents since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by militant group Hamas — which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.  We thank Lexi Lonas and The Hill for this information.

Now we can turn to UCLA and what took place there at about a week ago.

California

Judge orders UCLA, Jewish students to draft plan for equal campus access in wake of protests

July 29, 2024 by Jaweed Kaleem in the Los Angeles Times

“Meet and confer to see if you can come up with some agreeable stipulated injunction or some other court order that would give both UCLA the flexibility it needs … but also provide Jewish students on campus some reassurance that their free exercise rights are not going to play second fiddle to anything else,” said U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi.

I am glad that Liz Foxx and others were not around after Germany attacked Poland in 1939. The US did not enter the war until December 1941. My point all along is that Congress has not done the right thing and it has not given any help to the campuses, particularly those under investigation. In 2019 I wrote that denouncing things was not enough, and action was needed.

We do not know if UCLA and the Jewish students can come up with a plan in one week, but that kind of action may lead to a workable plan instead of those Sly Foxx Republicans controlling things in Congress.

Also in the article is this. State funding is being withheld from UC where a report has to be delivered by October 1 and we can see that the situation may get the help needed without the threat of losing state funds.

Jewish students claimed that barriers were put up that prevented them from gaining access to public spaces and UCLA claimed “UCLA lawyers contended student protesters, not the university, prevented access, and that campus security did not discriminate against Jewish students. The university said it blocked off the encampment to keep it from growing and that its plan was to de-escalate tensions to prevent violence before determining that it needed to bring in police.”

You can decide for yourself by digesting that information. Also more help has been provided in the form of security officers and a new police chief and have I not written about that before while Congress did nothing?

Lawyers from the nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which represented the Jewish students were pleased with the decision. Shouldn’t all eyes now be on those people in Congress? Maybe they could resign? And I repeat that Congress gave no help.

At Monday’s hearing, Justice Scarsi hesitated to order UCLA to protect their campus access in the specific ways the students’ lawyers requested. Scarsi wants UCLA to ensure campus access to all groups, including Jews. And that my reader means that Congress has to end its Islamophobia. Everyone has to be protected in our nation and congressional leaders have failed to apply this important rule to its work and hearings.