Is UCI the Most Anti-Semitic University
in America?

According to the The Orange County Register, “UCI has earned a national reputation, spread largely by bloggers and pro-Zionist organizations, of being, in one organization words, the most notoriously anti-Semitic campus in America.” Some examples;

1. 2001-2007 annual “Zionist Awareness Week” brought anti-Semitic speakers, articles, symbols and marches to the campus.
2. Spring 2003 Destruction of a Holocaust Memorial.
3. January 2004 Rock thrown at Jewish student wearing T-shirt with words “Everyone Loves a Jewish Boy”.
4. Feb 2004 “Slaughter the Jews, ” and “Dirty Jews” yelled at Sephardic Jewish students.
5. May 2006 Israeli flag in dorm defaced with swastika.
6. Numerous swastikas drawn around campus along with incidents of harassment, intimidation, and threatening emails.

Although the Office of Civil Rights has cleared UCI of any violations of law, the patterns of anti-Semitism at UCI are troubling. The differentiation between anti-Semitism and Zionism that Bush’s civil rights division insists upon is as thin as a razor’s edge.

UCI Chancellor Michael V. Drake’s low key approach to dealing with this volatile issue is troubling. His role in the Erwin Chemerinsky fiasco shows him to be not much more than a pawn acting at the wishes of the real power brokers at UCI.

UCI is theoretically part of the University of California system. However, since its founding, it has been the brainchild and dependent of the Irvine Company. That would be Donald Bren’s Irvine Company. Bren, one of the richest men in the world has an estimated worth of $15 billion and runs UCI. This is an unhealthy situation for a school that hopes to be taken seriously, but instead, has to shake off the image of the “most anti-Semitic university in America.

Aaron Dahl

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