University of California President Mark Yudof has responded to a letter written by a dozen Jewish organizations that outlined their concern over anti-Semitism on UC campuses.
Signed by seven hundred UC students in addition to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the governing bodies of Conservative and Orthodox Judaism and several other Jewish and pro-Israeli groups, the letter criticized the university’s “weak” reaction to anti-Semitic incidents on UC campuses.
The letter said that the new UC committee formed to study racial and religious bias, the Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion, did not adequately address Jewish concerns. The letter called for “an explicit focus on anti-Semitism” and for administrators to publicly condemn anti-Semitic incidents.
Responding to the letter, Yudof, who is Jewish, said that he is concerned about anti-Semitism on UC campuses and that he would “do everything in my power to protect Jewish and all other students from threats or actions of intolerance.” He did, however, criticize the letter as “a dishearteningly ill-informed rush to judgment against our ongoing responses to troubling incidents that have taken place on some of our campuses.” He said that he was disappointed that the letter assumed the committee would fail, and urged them to support its efforts.
Meeting for the first time last week, the panel was created following several racist and anti-Semitic incidents in the campus last school year.
