UCLA Student Quizzed About Jewishness in Judicial Board Interview
A member of UCLA’s student government was asked in a hearing whether her Jewish identity presents a conflict of interest.
During a Feb. 10 hearing, four student government members at the University of California Los Angeles questioned Rachel Beyda’s ability to make unbiased decisions on cases in which the Jewish community had a vested interest while being an active in Jewish organizations on campus.
“What followed was a disgusting 40 minutes of what can only be described as unequivocal anti-Semitism during which some of our council members resorted to some of the oldest accusations against Jews, including divided loyalties and dishonesty,” wrote Beyda’s roommate Rachel Frenklak in the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper.
Fabienne Roth, Manjot Singh, Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed and Sofia Moreno Haq all raised concerns about confirming Beyda’s appointment to UCLA’s student government judicial board. Roth pointed to an example case from last May and argued that two students who had gone on sponsored trips to Israel should not have been allowed to vote on a resolution that involved targeting Israel with Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions measures.
Beyda’s appointment was initially stalled with a 4-4 vote. However, a second vote was taken after a faculty member interjected to explain that Beyda’s Jewish affiliations did not constitute a conflict of interest.
Roth, Singh, Sadeghi-Moyahed and Haq all apologized publicly in the Daily Bruin.
UCLA Chancellor Gene D. Block, who is Jewish, issued a memo to the campus in the aftermath of the incident.
“The views of others may make us uncomfortable,” the memo read. “That may be unavoidable. But to assume that every member of a group can’t be impartial or is motivated by hatred is intellectually and morally unacceptable.”
“Religious affiliations and ethnic identity should not and do not disqualify someone from being an effective judge,” the Daily Bruin editorial board wrote on Feb. 12.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO