As a UCLA alumna(BS, MA) I am horrified. The so-called apology only exacerbates the situation. Apologizing for the way something was “phrased” indicates intransigence and is unacceptable. These students need to resign their posts.
http://dailybruin.com/2015/02/27/submission-usac-members-apology-insufficient/
Fabianne Roth, one of the four involved in this deplorable incident isn’t an avowed Muslim, but a Swiss international student.
Also, while recent events make it seem antisemitism is mostly associated with Muslims, antisemitism as we currently have known it in the last few centuries actually has historical roots going back several centuries in Medieval Europe and some historians would argue can be traced back to the Roman era.
Antisemitism in the Middle East as we know it is really an import from long established European antisemitism in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks to a mix of then prevailing establishment European attitudes spread through colonialism, increasing disputes over land/resources in Israel/Palestine area between Arabs and European Jewish immigrants fleeing antisemitism/pogroms in Europe, and active diplomacy efforts on the part of the Nazis and some Arab/Muslim nationalist/religious leaders such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the early-mid 1940’s.
The New York Times has picked up the story.
^ The Los Angeles media has not touched this story. Reason #920 “why I get the NY Times and not the LA Times.”
It was difficult to hear, but the blonde student with a British accent says something about her activism in an organization that advocates on issues that the court would have to rule on. Is that the divestment issue mentioned above by TatinG?
I would think that the obvious solution for that sort of problem would be a policy of recusing oneself from such issues. Certainly, members of the SCOTUS have done so. (Although Scalia apparently doesn’t think it should apply to HIM. B-) )
This: http://www.sjpbruins.com/bds.html
Explains the Boycott, Divestment movement on UC campuses.
That would not prevent lawyers and their jury consultants from using other strategies to tip the jurors in their favor, including racially, without making it look provably obvious. Change of venue, striking jurors for ostensibly other reasons, etc…
Certainly the general public and the media seems to think the racial composition of juries in high profile racialized cases is important, since it is typically reported.
I wouldn’t consider being Jewish a “race” (a rather nebulous concept in the first place), but it’s certainly as much of an ethnic group (in terms of shared culture and, to a greater extent than most people realize, genetics, including a close genetic relationship between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews) as any other.
But romanigypsyeyes is absolutely correct that both modern and historic anti-Semitism and Judeophobia are not simply based on religion, but are racist in nature. The Nazis obviously considered the Jews to be a race – a foreign virus infecting the German Volk – and their racial laws (as they expressly denominated them) were constructed accordingly. And the popular and clerical hostility towards Jews in medieval Europe was also extremely racist in nature, particularly in its recurring theme of Jews being thought of and portrayed as non-human or subhuman – something that carried over to the Nazis. As in the common depiction of Jews as pigs, including in carvings in churches and cathedrals (the Judensau; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judensau); the belief that Jews have horns (which survived at least until the late 20th century, according to more than one Jewish friend of mine who were seriously asked about their horns in the rural USA in places where few if any Jews lived); the belief in a distinctively foul Jewish odor (the “foetor Judaicus”); the belief that Jews had cloven hooves (which was seriously raised at one time as an objection to Jews being allowed to serve in the military; how can someone with hooves be expected to march like everyone else?); and the belief that Jewish men menstruated – one of the bases for the myth of Jews drinking the blood of Christian children: they supposedly needed to replace the blood they lost through menstruation. I would say that all of that qualifies as racism! And it doesn’t take a genius to see the very obvious racial stereotypes about Jews forming the basis of Rumpelstiltskin and other European fairy tales.
How many jury consultants have you worked with, ucbalumnus? As a practicing trial lawyer, I work with them on a regular basis. But I don’t intend to argue with you.
Racism is always about politics. Yes, those in political power manipulate the gullible into race hatred, but make no mistake the purpose is always to achieve political and economic gain. This case is no different. Those in power wanted the young lady off the board- Why? The likely reason was that she was a formidable opponent and a threat to power and position as compared to a religious threat.
“Those in power wanted the young lady off the board- Why? The likely reason was that she was a formidable opponent and a threat to power and position as compared to a religious threat”
How could you possibly know that?
@DonnaL…I have obviously led a sheltered life. I’m still shuddering.
How do I know? I seen the same battle a hundred times over. It’s always over the same thing -power and money.
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You’re a Catholic and you belong to a Catholic youth organization and go to Church, so we wonder if you can be fair.
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Oh I would not be surprised to see that asked. As wrong as it is to ask questions like this to a Jewish person, it is wrong to ask them to someone else…but I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see such questions asked to a Catholic person.
I don’t think Moslems, and activist Europeans, would be expecting to recuse themselves on an issue like boycotting Israel.
“As individuals committed to social activism and advocating on behalf of underrepresented communities, we understand the importance and urgency of wearing our identities as a badge of honor. Integral to this is respecting and celebrating identities other than our own, and for this reason it is vital to hold ourselves accountable when we fail to respect this necessity.”
This apology completely misses the mark for me. Isn’t the whole point that Ms. Beyda was NOT “wearing her identity as a badge of honor” - she was just a student interested in applying for this position, who just so happened to be Jewish and involved with Jewish campus orgs?
Good lord. These idiots just can’t see Ms. Beyda as anything but a “representative of the Jewish people.”
I find the whole thing appalling.
I’m glad the NYT picked up the story.
The apology is not very apologetic at all, imo.
I think they should be asked to resign from student council.
Sad to say Pizzagirl, a good many Americans tend to view individual minority citizens are representative of the group at large. The whole trend of the ‘political denunciation’ in recent years is emblematic of that phenomena. A member of a specific demographic group says something nasty or offensive, and the press and politicians come running to place a microphone in someone else’s face, but of the same ethnic demographic, demanding that the ‘fellow traveler’ rebuke and reject the comments and commentator. People believe in 'group responsibility,'despite what they profess about individualism and liberty.
“Sad to say Pizzagirl, a good many Americans tend to view individual minority citizens are representative of the group at large. The whole trend of the ‘political denunciation’ in recent years is emblematic of that phenomena. A member of a specific demographic group says something nasty or offensive, and the press and politicians come running to place a microphone in someone else’s face, but of the same ethnic demographic, demanding that the ‘fellow traveler’ rebuke and reject the comments and commentator.”
Very well said. I think that is exactly the case, so many times.
“People believe in ‘group responsibility,’ despite what they profess about individualism and liberty”
However, you don’t want to fall into the same trap of generalizing. Perhaps you meant many people believe in group responsibility, not just “people”.
I think it is a bit naive to say this isn’t political in nature. Like anything else, you have to look at the context before assuming it is simply about the girls religion (and that doesn’t mean what happened isn’t reprehensible, it is). On college campuses these days there is a movement to have colleges divest themselves of companies and such associated with Israel, similar to the movement when I was in college to divest from South Africa (and please, please, I am not debating whether Israel is the same as south Africa or not, I am not saying this is reasonable or not, this is background). The assumption those asking these questions had more than likely was based on the train of ‘logic’ that the girl in question was actively tied up in her faith (belonged to a Jewish sorority, Member of Hilel), and therefore must ‘of course’ be an ardent supporter of Israel, so if for example a resolution came before this board talking about divesting from Israel and whether it is legal under the UCLA constitution or whatnot, that she would automatically say no, that Israel is sancrosanct, etc…does that mean the students in question may not be anti semitic in general?
No, but given the uproar over Israel and its policies, there is a lot of rancor being generated over Israel, and that has fueled fires there. The assumption that someone who is Jewish cannot be unbiased, that they would assume that protecting Israel comes before anything else, is anti semtism, but what is driving this is not necessarily traditional anti semitism. The articles I read danced on the edges of the Israel issue, that more than a few people see what Israel is doing as being no better than Apartheid (and again, I am not debating Israel here or accepting or condemning this practice), and that is probably feeding the attitudes of the kids in question (the Swiss girl shouldn’t be surprising, young people in Europe tend to be more sympathetic towards the Palestinians and antagonistic towards Israel based on what I have seen).
I wonder if the Muslim girls who asked this see the irony, that they assumed because she was seen as being active in her faith that she would be biased, how would they feel if someone saw them (assuming they do) wearing the headscarf, and asking them if they could be unbiased because they were muslim or worse, how did they feel about 9/11?
What bothers me is that the kids are really stupid. If this is a judicial panel, and if they have concerns about issues, they can ask someone if they can remain unbiased, if they can overcome their personal beliefs in rendering a fair judgement? It is asked in jury trials, and it is also the basis for evaluating judges in the real world.
I asked a young friend of mine at work, who isn’t that far out of school and is a UCLA alumnus, and he said with UCLA there also is a lot of tribalism, it isn’t the bastion of diversity that the school would want you to believe, that while the population is diverse, there are tensions, that for example there are relatively large groups of Jewish students, a lot apparently Iranian students, a lot of Asian-American students (he said there weren’t that many Asians from overseas there), and there tends to be more than a bit of segregation between the groups, and tensions, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw this. He said there had been tensions there with the school’s policy on LGBT people and some students, specifically orthodox Jewish students, muslim groups and the Campus Crusade for Christ types, protesting the school accommodating ‘people they find distasteful’, and the like, so this shouldn’t be such a big surprise, the right paints colleges as these bastions of liberalism, but the reality is they have the same tensions the outside world does, and given that the same schools that get painted as bastions of liberalism also tend to try and have diverse student bodies, shouldn’t be surprising tensions are there, too.