Back in June, the president of the University of California promised on national radio that the UC Board of Regents would vote in its next meeting — in July — on whether to adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism.
It didn’t happen. There was no vote, no discussion, not even an agenda item.
No regent, including Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom or Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, spoke a critical word on the quiet disappearance of that item from the meeting.
But the question is slated to reappear when regents gather again Sept. 16-17 in Irvine, not as a policy opposing anti-Semitism, but as a general discussion of “tolerance” on campus.
UC administrators, of course, know all about tolerating anti-Semitism. No suspects have yet been found in several episodes of Nazi-like swastikas daubed onto university buildings and there have been no penalties for student government members who publicly questioned whether Jewish students can make fair and objective decisions or judgments on campus issues.
That’s consistent with the lack of action against students who set up mock roadblocks on the Berkeley campus where Jewish-looking students — and no others — were accosted by toughs carrying machine-gun mockups.
Originally published in TheUnion.com.