LOS ANGELES — It seemed like routine business for the
student council at the University of
California, Los Angeles: confirming the nomination of Rachel Beyda, a
second-year economics major who wants to be a lawyer someday, to the council’s
Judicial Board.
Until it came time for questions.
“Given that you are a Jewish student and very active
in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students
Association Council, began, looking at Ms. Beyda at the other end of the room,
“how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”
For the next 40 minutes, after Ms. Beyda was
dispatched from the room, the council tangled in a debate about whether her
faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations, including her sorority and
Hillel, a popular student group, meant she would be biased in dealing with
sensitive governance questions that come before the board, which is the campus
equivalent of the Supreme Court.
The discussion, recorded in written minutes and captured on video, seemed to echo the kind of questions,
prejudices and tropes — particularly about divided loyalties — that have
plagued Jews across the globe for centuries, students and Jewish leaders said.
Photo
Rachel Beyda, a sophomore at
U.C.L.A., was appointed to a student council board after it debated her Jewish
background. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times
The council, in a meeting that took place on Feb. 10,
voted first to reject Ms. Beyda’s nomination, with four members against her.
Then, at the prodding of a faculty adviser there who pointed out that belonging
to Jewish organizations was not a conflict of interest, the students revisited
the question and unanimously put her on the board.
But in the weeks since, that uncomfortable debate has
upended this campus of 29,600 students that has long been central to the
identity of Los Angeles. It has set off an anguished discussion of how Jews are
treated, particularly in comparison with other groups that are more typically
viewed as victims of discrimination, such as African-Americans and gays and
lesbians.
The session — a complete recording of which has been
removed from YouTube — has served to spotlight what appears to be a surge of
hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country, often
a byproduct of animosity toward the policies of Israel. This is one of many
campuses where the student council passed, on a second try and after fierce
debate, a resolution supporting the Boycotts,
Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at pressuring Israel.
Reports of anti-Israeli or
anti-Jewish sentiment have been on the rise across the country in recent years,
especially directed at younger Jews, researchers said. Barry A. Kosmin, a Trinity College researcher and
a co-author of a study issued last month that found extensive
examples of anti-Semitism directed at college students, said he had not come
across anything as striking as what happened at U.C.L.A.
“It’s egregious and
startling,” Mr. Kosmin said. “If they had used this with any other group —
sexual, racial, any kind of identity group — they would have realized it was
illegal.”
Ms. Beyda, 20, who is from Cupertino and is president-elect of the
Jewish sorority Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, said she did not want to comment on her
confirmation hearing because of her role on the Judicial Board, whose duties
include hearing challenges to the constitutionality of actions of the council.
“As a member of the Judicial Board, I do not feel it
is appropriate for me to comment on the actions of U.C.L.A.’s elected student
government,” she said by email.
The four students who opposed her wrote a letter
of apology to the campus newspaper, The Daily Bruin. “Our intentions were never
to attack, insult or delegitimize the identity of an individual or people,”
they wrote. “It is our responsibility as elected officials to maintain a
position of fairness, exercise justness, and represent the Bruin community to
the best of our abilities, and we are truly sorry for any words used during
this meeting that suggested otherwise.”
Ms. Roth, in an email Thursday evening, expressed
distress about the episode. “I have already apologized profusely for what
happened during our council meeting and I deeply regret how I phrased my
questions to Rachel,” she said.
The university’s chancellor, Gene D. Block, issued a
statement denouncing the attacks on Ms. Beyda. “To assume that every member of
a group can’t be impartial or is motivated by hatred is intellectually and
morally unacceptable,” he said. “When hurtful stereotypes — of any group — are
wielded to delegitimize others, we are all debased.”
In an interview on Thursday, Chancellor Block said he
viewed this as “a teaching moment. These are students that are learning about
governance. I think they all learned about what’s appropriate and what’s not
appropriate. The campus has come together on this.”
Yet some Jewish leaders here questioned whether Mr.
Block or the students appreciated the meaning of the event. John
L. Rosove, the senior rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood, said the
incident “reflects something deeper, more troubling, insidious, and pervasive
not just at U.C.L.A. but on college campuses nationwide.”
Recent Comments
Judy from Fairfax VA
16 minutes ago
Teaching moment? Yes it is, but not the way the
chancellor disingenuously suggests. The teaching moment here is that a group of
people got...
Perspective
21 minutes ago
As this is happening in California--and not in the
European Union, with its "right to be forgotten" on the Internet--I
think that it is safe...
Morris
28 minutes ago
What a horrible thing for youn students to do to another
student. This is pure unadulterated anti-Semitic hatred. These students should
be...
“I am not one who sees anti-Semites lurking under
every bed,” he wrote in his blog.
“I am not a fear-monger. I do not believe that all criticism of Jews or the
state of Israel is necessarily anti-Semitic.”
“Yet,” he said, “our
inability to use the term anti-Semitism when it concerns Jews, when we don’t
have a problem calling other forms of ethnic and religious bigotry what it is,
raises disturbing questions about prevalent attitudes towards Jews, Judaism,
Zionism, and the state of Israel.”
The president of the student council, Avinoam Baral,
who had nominated Ms. Beyda, appeared stunned at the turn the questioning took
at the session and sought at first to rule Ms. Roth’s question out of order. “I
don’t feel that’s an appropriate question,” he said.
In an interview, Mr. Baral, who is Jewish, said he “related
personally to what Rachel was going through.”
“It’s very problematic to me that students would feel that it
was appropriate to ask that kind of questions, especially given the long
cultural history of Jews,” he said. “We’ve been questioned all of our history:
Are Jews loyal citizens? Don’t they have divided loyalties? All of these
anti-Semitic tropes.” [Fuckme.]
He called Ms. Beyda a “stand-out applicant,” with
strong grades, interest and experience in the law. The students who voted
against her also praised her credentials, but kept returning to questions about
whether she could set aside her religious affiliation when ruling on issues
before the council.
Rachel Frenklak, who
is Ms. Beyda’s roommate and president of the sorority, said she had gone to the
meeting expecting an enjoyable night watching her “best friend” get approved,
and was stunned at what she witnessed.
“I swear the word Israel was
not said once,” she said Thursday. “It was all about Jewish affiliations. It
didn’t leave any doubt that what this is, is anti-Semitism. There has to be
recognition that there is anti-Semitism on the campus, and it manifested itself
first with the anti-Israel stuff.”
The boycott resolution, and the battle it set off
here, was not explicitly mentioned but was described by her and others as
setting the subtext for the episode.
“The overall culture of
targeting Israel led to targeting Jewish students,” said Natalie Charney,
student president of the U.C.L.A. chapter of Hillel. “People say that being
anti-Israel is not the same as being anti-Semitic. The problem is the
anti-Israel culture in which we are singling out only the Jewish state creates
an environment where it’s O.K. to single out Jewish students.”
Correction:
March 5, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of
this article misstated the number of members on the Undergraduate Students
Association Council. It has 14 members, not seven.
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