UC Berkeley UC Berkeley freshman Elijah Z. Granet has written an interesting account of anti-Semitism that he has faced there and on Facebook. Granet’s op ed in The Daily Californian relates his own personal experience with anti-Semitism before he even set his foot on UC Berkeley’s ground. He elaborates on the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights’ decision to dismiss claims that the university had failed to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism at that campus. Granet argues that OCR would never hold Berkeley legally liable, no matter the degree of hostility faced by Jewish students because the issues faced by Jewish students stem from the general student body and not from a single organization. Recent incidents and reports reinforce the idea that Jewish students are not welcome at UC Berkeley. Despite these hateful events, Granet believes we can still move on. (more…)
Very recently, Facebook Inc. has come under scrutiny for allowing certain hate groups against the Jewish community to stay online, while blocking other hate groups that target other minority communities. Within Facebook’s public, community standards, the company explicitly prohibits the “attack of others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.” These are standards that Facebook has set for its users, so it is natural that they should live up to the same guidelines, and focus on removing hateful, anti-Semitic groups. As part of the effort to urge Facebook to disable the hateful groups, a group called “Remove Hate From FB” has called for an “offline” protest at on October 14th at Facebook’s headquarters. (more…)