More than 500 alumni of the University of California called on the system’s president and Board of Regents to address the “rising tide of anti-Jewish bigotry at the UC.”

The alumni wrote in the open letter published Wednesday in the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper of the University of California, Los Angeles, that they are “deeply concerned about the safety of Jewish students at our alma mater.”

The 521 signers said they “heartily commend” the student senates of three U.C. schools — Berkeley, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara — for “responding to the alarming escalation of anti-Semitic activity on UC campuses by unanimously passing resolutions which condemn anti-Semitism.” They also praised the U.C.’s president, Janet Napolitano, for her own statement condemning anti-Semitism.

Antisemitism Notebook

Your weekly guide through the news and the noise of how rising antisemitism and disputes over how to address it are shaping American Jewish life.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The alumni called on Napolitano and the Board of Regents to formally adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism in order to properly identify anti-Semitic expression on campus; to train campus staff to identify and address campus anti-Semitism; and to develop initiatives to educate the campus community about anti-Semitism.

The letter echoed a similar open letter released on Tuesday by a coalition of 23 student and community organizations.

Recent incidents on U.C. campuses include swastikas drawn on a Jewish fraternity house at Davis and the inappropriate questioning of a candidate for student judiciary board about her Jewishness and Jewish affiliations at UCLA.

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.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount