Religious Freedom on Campus

"Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating."

So wrote Judge Mark C. Scarsi in issuing a preliminary injunction this week to three Jewish students who sued UCLA after they were denied access to portions of the campus last spring.

"UCLA does not dispute this," Scarsi continued. "Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion."

UCLA is just plain wrong. It was responsible for protecting, and ensuring campus access, to all of the students. Instead, UCLA erected bike rack barriers around the encampment and allegedly hired security guards who allowed protesters to cross into the encampment, but not Zionists. "Are you a Zionist?" news accounts at the time reported that the protestors called out to those seeking passage. Protestors approached the students seeking to cross, leaving them no choice but to turn back.

What is as astounding as what happened at UCLA is that a debate has ensued, and continued in the court action, as to whether it was antisemitic. According to newspaper reports, Pro-Palestinian students and faculty activists at UCLA, including a Faculty for Justice in Palestine group that filed a friend of the court brief in the injunction lawsuit, claimed that the protestors were anti-Zionist, but not against Jews, and that many protestors were Jewish.

Jews can be antisemites, too. The Jewish plaintiffs in this action, as the judge recognized, "assert that supporting the Jewish state of Israel is their sincerely held religious belief." The fact that there were some Jews on the side of the protestors does not make their actions any less antisemitic, or abhorrent.

Did the students really need to bring a lawsuit to persuade UCLA to protect all of its Jewish students? Judging from UCLA's reaction, apparently they did. The university, through Mary Osako, vice chancellor of strategic communications, complained that "(t)he district court's ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We're closely reviewing the judge's ruling and considering all our options moving forward."

"Hamstring (their) ability to respond"? What does that mean? They can't put up bike racks to keep out Jews? They can't just protect the protesting bigots while allowing them to target Jews who support the existence of the state of Israel?

UCLA was not the only university that lost sight of its own responsibilities and blinked at verbal and physical harassment. But it was one of the ugliest occupations. The result was that UCLA lost control of its campus, when violent protestors moved onto campus to break up the encampment itself. Hatred breeds more violence. What did they expect?

University attorneys also argued that significant changes took place since the encampment last April that mitigated the students' concerns. The changes included shutting down newer encampments on the same days they went up, creating a new office of campus safety, putting in place a new police chief and strictly enforcing UCLA rules, including rules that prohibit overnight camping. The court was not convinced that these made an injunction unnecessary. Understandably so, given the history.

A new school year is beginning. There will be new challenges. The lesson of UCLA is clear. A university's responsibility is to protect all of its students. Period. No student should ever be denied access to any part of campus because they believe in a Jewish state.

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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.