University of California President Mark Yudof sent an open letter to the UC community today in response to a string of recent antisemitic acts on campuses. He condemned vandals at UC Riverside who defaced an Israeli flag displayed by a Jewish student organization and blasted hecklers at UC Davis who taunted a group of Israeli speakers during a campus event.
Yudof writes: “University campuses are proper venues for collisions of ideas and viewpoints. Conflicting viewpoints not only are inevitable but also healthy in this context.
“What is not acceptable are acts meant to disrupt the speech of others. What is not acceptable are hate-driven physical and, yes, verbal attacks on any group or individual that are meant to silence or intimidate those who would express differing opinions.”
He acknowledged that the UC system, made up of 235,000 students, will never be free of hateful incidents and violent speech. But he called for tolerance and a “spirit of respect and civility.”
Read the full letter here.
