UCLA Demands Right To Block Jews

Jewish students were physically blocked from sections of UCLA’s campus by anti-Israel protestors, many covering their faces with kaffiyehs in the Spring 2024 semester. Three students consequently sued to have the university ensure that they have equal rights to use and enjoy the campus facilities.

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed with the plaintiffs that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. His ruling ordered UCLA to stop “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”

UCLA strongly disagreed.

Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said “the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”

Thomas Harvey, the lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine, came up with the absurd notion that the ruling “paves the way for total removal of pro-Palestinian activity on campus. If the sincerely held religious belief being protected here is the belief in the Jewish state of Israel, any class, campus event or speaker that criticizes that nation’s legal or political decisions might be prohibited.”

*Jewish student at UCLA denied entry to campus while police looked on*

UCLA and the lawyer’s arguments aren’t just ridiculous but make one wonder if they are deeply antisemitic. The ruling doesn’t say anything about criticizing “political decisions” of any country; it is about free and fair access for all students to use every corner of the university campus.

In a strange bit of coincidence, on October 6, 2023, one day before the barbaric Palestinian massacre of Israelis, UCLA announced the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism, funded by a $600,000 gift by the Pritzker family. The hub is a joint effort between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Center for Jewish Studies. In announcing the new effort, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it.”

Chancellor Block was pushed to resign in May 2024 by anti-Israel protestors who also called for canceling the school’s Israel Studies Department and for boycotting all Israeli universities.

UCLA is tacking to the jihadi fringe to remove any tolerance of contrary points of view and freedom of access in an undemocratic purge of Zionists and Jews. It is displaying a frightful lack of basic civility and critical thinking.

UCLA is so infected with anti-Zionism, that it is fighting to ban pro-Zionist students from campus and an education. It says a great deal about California and the terrible state of education today.