Rex Weiner of The Jewish Daily presents a thorough account of the debate raging at the University of California San Diego and Santa Cruz campuses: does anti-Semitism on campus deserve a federal response?
Now in response to a complaint filed by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz, the OCR [Office of Civil Rights] has launched its first formal investigation into anti-Semitism on campus. The probe, announced last March, is focused on incidents reported to have occurred there over the past eight years. While the investigation is not yet complete, the first results are already in: Jews on and off campus are publicly berating each other over criticism of Israel on college campuses and at what point this criticism becomes anti-Semitic — and when it does, should we call in the feds?
No, says one group:
No, according to Kenneth Stern, director of anti-Semitism and extremism for the American Jewish Committee — or at least not in this case. He charges that some people “believe the only way to ‘protect’ Jewish students is by imposing censorship.”
But another says yes:
Yes, said Kenneth Marcus, a director at the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. A former OCR assistant secretary who helped push for the Title VI revision, Marcus took Stern and Nelson to task in widely published online comments and in a note to the Forward.
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