Yitzy Frankel
Real Clear Education, Sept. 6, 2024
“UCLA leadership—those entrusted to ensure the safety of students—told campus police to stand down, ceding control over public university property to antisemitic militants. The entire experience would have made Orwell blush.”
When I chose to attend UCLA, I never thought I’d be segregated from my peers for being a Jew.
Nor did I suspect that my school’s administration would encourage and support antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and assault. This year, both nightmares became a reality for me and hundreds of Jews at UCLA. But following a federal court’s scathing condemnation of UCLA’s actions, the university may finally be starting to see the light.
On October 7, 2023, the world was shaken by Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on Israel, the only Jewish state in the world. Over 1,200 innocent lives were lost in a horrific rampage that targeted the most vulnerable. This tragic event struck fear and disbelief in Jewish communities worldwide, echoing past horrors.
After the attack, I had hoped my university would ensure that Jewish students were safe. In fact, one reason I chose UCLA for law school was its reputation as a welcoming and diverse campus. UCLA boasts of its “open and inclusive environment” and emphasizes that it does “not tolerate acts of discrimination, [or] harassment.” But rather than practice what it preaches, university leadership allowed the campus to devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. …SOURCE