One of 11 Muslims Students being escorted from the room after disrupting Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine, January 8, 2010. (Photo OC Register)

Today the Jewish Federation of Orange County released documents to the OC Register which reveal that in fact UC Irvine has suspended the Muslim Student Union for one year, effective Sept. 1, 2010. One might expect that I would be thrilled at the news. And for a while today, I savored the news. After all, I have been calling for the University to take action against this group for inciting hated against Jews since May 2006, when I called for UCI to ban the MSU.

The decision, a MUST read, is a very detailed account of what happened and the school laws that were broken during the Oren incident. This includes:

Other forms of dishonesty including … fabricating information, furnishing false information, or reporting a false emergency to the University….Disorderly and lewd conduct. Participation in a disturbance of peace or unlawful assembly, obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures or other University activities…

According to the documents, the MSU refused to answer every time they were asked about their actions. They took the 5th. The University has hundreds of pages of documentation, testimonies, and hours of video footage they reference. There are 31 pages of emails and notes from their meetings where they planned the disruption, and instructed their members to lie to the school if asked if they planned it as a group.

This is a very serious issue, and for a moment I want to focus on this part of their violation of student codes. The MSU was emboldened for years because they were impervious to punishment. We documented numerous other occasions where they broke University rule. This is the first time that Chancellor Drake, himself, was present for their conduct.

If the MSU felt they needed to lie to the University about their actions, what else are they lying about? The leadership of the MSU at UCI, the flagship Muslim group on the West Coast, has now been caught in the act of a conspiracy to violate university, student, and possibly civil codes. The MSU believes that any act is permitted for their goals of delegitimizing Israel.

If they will lie to the University, risking serious academic consequences, how much more so will they be willing to lie to the campus where threat of academic suspension doesn’t exist? A group that will engage in a conspiracy of lies in order to further their goals of delegitimizing Israel, will not hesitate to defame Jews to the student body. They will not hesitate to spread egregious lies and accusations against anyone that disagrees. The same maybe true of other campus groups affiliated with the MSU and MSA.

Now back to why the satisfaction that I feel that the group was finally punished is muted. While the University has in fact banned the MSU for one year, the University failed its students, the community, and all universities…again.

The suspension of this hateful group should have been accompanied by a major press conference where the Chancellor outlined the reasons for the suspension. Drake had a chance to show moral leadership explaining that these activities will not be tolerated on UC Campuses. He could clearly outline the reasons they were suspended, condemn their behavior, and send a clear message that this kind of group has no place on ANY campus.

Instead, the letter written May 27, 2010, was supposed to be kept a secret.

UCI released the documents only through the Freedom of Information Act. They planned on keeping this entire episode a secret. Why does the University continue to protect this group of students? Til today – no University representative has EVER publicly condemned the MSU, or distanced themselves specifically from the MSU.

The suspension says that no current executive officer of the MSU can register another group during the year. However, it does not preclude non-officers of the MSU from creating a new Muslim group at UCI in the fall.

The students are appealing the decision, according to Husam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Predictably, he called the university’s actions “unprecedented, heavy-handed and draconian.” CAIR blames the suspension on “politics” engaging in the same dishonesty as the MSU.

Read more on the OC Register. Download the letter here.

Dean Chemerinskys OP Ed in today’s LA Jewish Journal

The Reality of the University of California, Irvine
February 19, 2010
The claim that the University of California, Irvine is inhospitable to Jews is so far from reality that one must wonder whether those making the accusation have ever been on the campus or spoken to Jewish students and faculty there. In my almost two years of working and living on campus, I have not seen the slightest indication of anti-Semitism. I have taught hundreds of college and law students at UCI, many Jewish, and have not heard one complaint about an anti-Semitic incident on campus

This page was formed in light of the recent event at UC Irvine in which 11 members of the Muslim Student Union @ UCI were arrested for attempts to silence and censor a speaker whose views they disagreed with. Free speech is NOT negotiable!

Here is the link to their Facebook Page.

UCI student Mohamed Abdekany asks law school dean Irwin Chemerinsky why acts of civil disobedience by 11 pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren were not protected under the First Amendment. Chemerinsky asserted that their outbursts were actually an affront to the speaker’s free speech, arguing that their act of civil disobedience amounted to a “heckler’s veto” on the speaker’s right to be heard during a pre-arranged presentation on campus.

According to this Orange County Register website, 8 UC Irvine students and 3 UC Riverside students were cited for disrupting a public event because of their disruption of the Michael Oren talk at UC Irvine.

Police have identified the students as:

UC Irvine

• Joseph Tamim Haider
• Osama Ahmed Sabry Shabaik
• Mohemed Mohy Eldeen Abdelgany
• Ali Mohammad Sayeed
• Asaad Traina
• Mohammad Qureashi
• Aslam Akhtar
• Hakim Nasreddine Kebir
• UC Riverside
• Taher Herzallam
• Shaheen Waleed Nassar
• Khalid Bahgat Akari

Apparently, the UCI MSU has denied a connection between the disruptions of Oren, which were clearly well organized, and their organization. That may be true, but I thought I might check up on some of the arrested parties above.

Joseph Haider? In this article, he is promoting a UCI-MSU event.

Osama Shabaik (second name on the list)? Here he is interviewed and is described as a member of the UCI-MSU. On the UCI-MSU contacts page he is listed as their VICE PRESIDENT.

Mohemed Abdelgany? Why he’s right on the UCI-MSU website where he is listed as their PRESIDENT or “amir.”

Ali Sayeed? The link is no longer cached, but a Google search still shows that he was team manager for the MSU 1 flag football team at UCI.

Can’t find anything on Asaad Traina or Mohammad Qureashi but on a now-erased page on the MSU website, Aslam Akhtar writes:

“MSU (Muslim Student Union): The MSU has directed and channeled me into the person I am today. It has kept me motivated to pursue my goals, and at the same time has defined my goals into the personification in which they are in today.”

Indeed it has!

Hakim Kebir is an MSU host for a barbecue as listed on this cached Facebook page.

The UC Riverside students have less information online. Shaheen Nassar appears to have belonged to a Muslim Students Association in Pomona before coming to UC Riverside but there’s no information about Akari or Herzallam.

In short, a number of active MSU members, including the President and Vice President of the organization were involved in this orchestrated disruption of a speaker at the UC Irvine campus. Sure, maybe they were acting on their own, but since they happen to be running the organization, the only apt description for the MSU distancing itself from these activities is…HILARIOUS. Thanks for the laughs, guys.

Here is UCI Chancellor, Michael Drake, in a public statement after his poor performance during the talk and especially in the last few years where his campus has enabled anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities to a degree seen on few campuses in North America.

Campus Disruption
Feb. 9, 2010
Dear Colleagues:

Last night, Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the U.S., shared his perspectives on American-Israeli relations in a free public lecture in the UC Irvine Student Center. During his talk, several members of the audience stood and shouted – one at a time, repeatedly – in an effort to disrupt his message.

This behavior is intolerable. Freedom of speech is among the most fundamental, and among the most cherished of the bedrock values our nation is built upon. A great university depends on the free exchange of ideas. This is non-negotiable. Those who attempt to suppress the rights of others violate core principles that are the foundation of any learning community. We cannot and do not allow such behavior.

Eleven individuals were arrested as a result of their actions last night and are being processed accordingly. Additionally, the Office of Student Conduct has initiated the Student Judiciary Review process to address issues under their jurisdiction.

I am very pleased that the ambassador stayed on and was able to complete his speech. This university is, and always will be, committed to the expression of all ideas and viewpoints.”

Chancellor Michael Drake

Here, Chancellor Drake, is what you have permitted to take place on your campus year after year:

Today – they would not let Michael Oren speak. From Haaretz.

California police reportedly made 12 arrests on Monday after a speech by Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Michael Oren descended into chaos.

Hecklers interrupted Oren’s lecture at Irving University in Los Angeles over 10 times, shouting “killers” and “how many Palestinians did you kill?”

Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes, local press reported.

Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.

It was not clear whether those arrested were students, or members of the university’s Muslim Student Union, which had publicly condemned Oren’s visit earlier in the day….

Oren eventually completed his speech, some time later than scheduled, but did not take questions from the audience as planned.

University Chancellor Michael Drake was booed by some and applauded by others when told the audience that he was embarrassed by the outburst.

A Warm and Fuzzy Taliban?

Update: In a speech to UC Davis students, Ridley wasn’t reluctant to display her hatred to our brave soldiers.

“Thank God I was captured by the most evil, brutal regime in the world and not the U.S. military,” she said.

I guess the Taliban isn’t so bad after all, well….. that’s what Islamic activist and journalist Yvonne Ridley implies as she recounts her experiences as captive. As I wrote in my submission to New University, Ridley painted a rosy picture of the regime:

Or that any of the 9-11 hijackers were ever trained under their asylum. Ridley’s Taliban is in fact a glorious and merciful one: one of handsome and valiant soldiers, glowing ivory-clad clerics, and cure-all doctors as she expressed in her speech last Tuesday. Wow! I guess we Westerners are pretty naïve.

Daniel Pipes, UCI, Free Speech and the MSU

Tonight at UCI should be interesting. Daniel Pipes is speaking at the Pacific Ballroom D from 7 to 9 p.m. Pipes is a senior Giuliani foreign policy adviser. The last time he spoke on campus, members of the Muslim Student Union disrupted his speech.

Free speech ought to mean that anyone can speak (write) their mind about issues. It does not give free license to shout down others. That isn’t free speech – it’s doing violence on the free speech of others.

If Daniel Pipes wants to, for example, discuss the Republic of the Sudan’s use of Islamic Sharia law to charge a British teacher with inciting religious hatred after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, an offense that could subject her to 40 lashes then that’s his right.

If UCI’s Muslim Student Union wants to have a meeting discussing the Republic of the Sudan’s use of Islamic Sharia law and why they agree or disagree with its applications, then anyone should be free to listen without disrupting the talk.

I expect to attend tonight’s meeting. I will be watching to see if Mr. Pipes is allowed to speak without disruption and, if he is disrupted, what, if anything, will be done to defend his First Amendment rights in a citadel of academic freedom.

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com

How do you get hired and fired from a prestigious position in the same week?

That is what happened to my friend Erwin Chemerinsky.  He signed a contract to become the first dean of the new law school at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) last week. Then, days later, he was fired because the UCI chancellor decided his liberal opinions made Erwin, one of the most respected, quoted, cited and beloved constitutional law scholars in the country, “too politically controversial” for the job.

Hogwash.

This column isn’t about Erwin. In the world of law professors, everyone who knows Erwin — liberal and conservative — respects him. The outpouring of support for him and the disgust at what was done to him have been overwhelming. It’s about the cowardly fool who is leading his university down the tubes, the one who should be fired by the Board of Regents when it meets next week.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

So wrote Professor Lord Acton, who was the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, even though he had not been allowed to attend Cambridge as a student because he was Roman Catholic. In the same year, 1877, in a famous lecture on “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” Acton defined liberty as “the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.”

By Lord Acton’s standard, Dr. Michael Drake, Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, is the most corrupt man in California. His job is, or should be, to protect the “liberty” of both students and faculty, the academic freedom that is the cornerstone of great universities.

But Dr. Drake has a twisted view of academic freedom, one that allows Muslim students to engage in open anti-Semitism, to hold rallies on campus attacking Zionist control of the media, equating Jewish support for Israel with Hitler’s Nazis, even (according to campus Republicans) displacing previously scheduled Young Republicans meetings with rallies denouncing Israel’s right to exist. But there’s no room for a liberal, Jewish law professor who is routinely the object of bidding wars between top-rated law schools vying for his services.

Last February, Hillel of Orange County formed a task force to investigate what it viewed as a troubling number of anti-Semitic speeches and incidents on the UCI campus, including complaints by Jewish students that they were being followed and harassed by their Muslim classmates. That was before UCI’s Intifada week this past spring, which included speakers supporting the terrorist group Hamas and a speech entitled “Zio-Nazis.” That was before the infamous Ward Churchill, defender of the 9/11 attacks, was invited to speak on campus.

This past June, at a meeting attended by hundreds of concerned members of the Jewish community in Irvine, Dr. Drake told one parent, whose children don’t want to attend UC Irvine because of the virulent expressions of hatred, not to worry because these incidents “are not every other day. It’s a couple times a year.” Asked why he didn’t exercise his own right to free speech to “speak directly to statements made on campus” (as former Harvard President Lawrence Summers did when he opposed calls for divestment from Israel by terming such actions “anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent”), Dr. Drake ducked. “We have 1,000 guest speakers on campus every year. Could I evaluate them and say this one is anti-Semitic? I could not. What I could say is that as a person and a campus, we abhor hate speech, period.”

On the other hand, we have no room for a liberal law professor — whose views were well known before he was hired, who is squarely in the mainstream of modern constitutional thought — because we’re afraid to take the heat that may be coming from some of Drake’s biggest donors. While Drake told Erwin it was the Regents he was worried about, that was an out-and-out lie. He later admitted he didn’t consult a one of them, and instead pointed to an op-ed Erwin wrote back in mid-August about death penalty procedure — even though he signed a contract with Chemerinsky three weeks after the op-ed was published.

No, this was Drake’s call, and it will doom his law school, if it doesn’t doom him first.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

On May 17, Ali informed Muslim students at UC Irvine that a martyr�s death is the most honorable death.  Because supporting terrorists is a favorite activity of the MSU and Ali�s main gig on college campuses is justifying terrorism, it was no surprise that the radical Imam delivered a keynote address to wrap up the MSU�s anti-Israel week which featured twice-daily speeches and rallies called �Israel: Apartheid Resurrected.�

An audience made up of primarily Muslim students wearing green armbands (similar to what suicide bombers typically wear) and T-shirts reading �UC Intifada� and �Freedom Fighter� attended Imam Ali�s lecture which was titled �UC Intifada: How you can help Palestine.�

Members of the MSU did not have to wait long for their honored guest to throw them the red meat they were waiting for: �Victory or martyrdom,� Ali asserted are the only two viable options available to the Palestinians in their battle against Israel. Of course, Ali didn�t use the word Israel since he only refers to the democratic country as the �Zionist Apartheid State.� Indeed, he exhorted his followers to �speak truth to power� by articulating their positions with their own definitions, not those of their enemies.

Ali is a proud supporter of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, perceiving these groups in holy terms. In October 2006 Ali said, “We are celebrating the victory of Hamas over the occupier Zionists and this is only the beginning. What you saw, ladies and gentleman, what you saw this summer is only the beginning…. We got this, we can whoop them.” 

In Ali�s dictionary, Hezbollah would not be a terrorist group since its literal translation is �party of God.� In previous lectures he has characterized Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah�s leader, as a fighter of justice. Hamas, moreover, is a just organization that is fighting the oppressors, according to Ali.

Ali blamed the Western media for calling suicide bombers terrorists rather than people with a high moral character and said that Palestinian bodies are effective weapons against Israeli oppression. When asked if he perceives suicide bombing as a last resort, Ali explained that Palestinians can only transport their bombs on their bodies and that they are fighting for justice.

A question about Israel�s right to defend itself from enemies seeking its destruction was quickly dismissed by Ali, who believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a �pretty good guy.�

In addition to disputing the fact that Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust, Ali claimed that the Mossad was to blame for 9/11 and that �Zionist Jews� are guilty of portraying Muslims in a bad light.

It appears that despite the condoning of terrorism and the hateful attitude of the MSU against �Zionist Jews� and Israel, the campus will continue to bend over backwards for them.

Administrators at UCI have not taken a significant step forward to condemn the hate-speech on campus. The current chancellor at UCI did indeed call hate speech �repugnant� in May 2006 immediately following the MSU�s anti-Israel week. However, because he did not specify which group was responsible for the hate-speech, this condemnation was simply obligatory. In fact, the administration�s refusal to call the MSU events hateful suggests that incitement against Jews and pro-Israel students is acceptable at UC Irvine and will incur no consequences.  This year�s MSU events culminated in intimidation and harassment of many students. In some incidents, students were able to capture the harassment on tape.

MSU students can count on the UCI administration to help them bully their enemies on campus. On May 17, the administration told the College Republicans at UCI to move from a spot they had reserved way in advance in order to make room for two anti-Israel panels the Muslim Student Union wanted to put up (in order to partially block the Hillel/Anteaters For Israel booth). Administrators refused to acknowledge the College Republicans’ reservation even though they had an official note showing that the spot had been reserved by their group for the quarter.

Earlier in the week an MSU leader took the microphone at one of the events to alert the community about an incident in which a MSU student, Yasser Ahmed, was almost hit by a silver car with tinted windows. The incident apparently involved an FBI agent and the MSU student. Witnesses and other individuals who were in the area confirmed that Ahmed threw a cinderblock at the car at some point after shouting at the driver to roll down the window and show himself. The MSU had surveillance cameras on their mock-apartheid wall and it would be interesting to learn if the confrontation was caught on tape.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the agent came onto campus “in the course of an investigation.”  Although the FBI denies that it monitors students at UC Irvine, there is sufficient justification for doing so. The increased anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment on the campus and the fact that members of the MSU were caught on video earlier this year calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and supporting terrorist groups that slaughter Israelis warrant suspicion. Such rhetoric and the cries of �Allahu Akbar!� it engenders raise the disturbing question: Could Muslim students in America�s safest city become future terrorists?

Aaron Hanscom is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Reut Cohen blogs about the happenings at UC Irvine at www.reutrcohen.blogspot.com.