Report:

The UCI Muslim Student Union endorses hate speech against Jews, and UCI administrators and local Jewish groups need to do a better job condemning it, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent community task force that investigated anti-Semitism at UCI.

“The acts of anti-Semitism are real and well-documented,” according to the group’s report. “Jewish students have been harassed. Hate speech has been unrelenting. There is no indication that the university is at all concerned about the disconnect between campus values and the values of the greater society.”

The group conducted more than 80 hours of interviews with dozens of Jewish and non-Jewish students, faculty, community members, and elected officials. Chancellor Michael Drake declined requests to participate in the investigation, school officials said.

Among the criticisms the group volleys at the university is that the faculty is afflicted with a “politically correct” orthodoxy that prevents it from condemning provocative speeches and actions at Muslim Student Union-sponsored events out of fear for appearing biased.

Efforts to reach the Muslim Student Union’s spokeswoman and president were unsuccessful Tuesday.

“We don’t want to proscribe speech, we don’t want [UCI] to enforce any kind of censorship, but we want to have a public discussion of what leaders should be saying and should be doing in the face of this outrage,” said task force member Jesse Rosenblum. “We’re asking the university to take a moral stance with American values.”

In February 2007, the Hillel Foundation of Orange County created a task force of Jewish community leaders to investigate anti-Semitism at the university following a number of clashes between Jewish and Muslim students in recent years sparked by controversial speakers and protests on both sides. The Hillel board of directors dropped the investigation over the summer, but the group decided to push on independently.

In a statement released to the media, Drake pointed to a U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights report released in December that says the university does not discriminate against Jews.

“The 1st Amendment mandates that speech is protected. We are obligated to, and will continue, to follow the law,” Drake said in the statement. “There are those who continue to claim that by protecting speech, we endorse it. This is simply not true We have clearly stated our active opposition to harassment and racism, including anti-Semitism, and to other forms of categorization.”

Condemnations to broad concepts like harassment and racism is what the task force said is the problem.

“The condemning of hate speech in general” implies it’s coming from multiple sides, and it’s not, Rosenblum said. The group said anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not mutually exclusive, and the Office of Civil Rights was bound by legal definitions — not moral ones — when arriving at its conclusions.

“[UCI] can discern the difference between the criticism of a sovereign nation on one hand and the call for the destruction of that country or saying hateful, unsavory things toward [Jews.] There’s a big difference between the two,” said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, an outspoken critic of the university’s handling of the Muslim-Jewish clashes at UCI over the years, but not a member of the task force. “I would be willing to bet you my 11-year-old daughter could tell the difference. The question becomes: Do you have the moral courage to speak up for it?”

The group also takes aim at Jewish groups.

“The major Jewish organizations, with few exceptions...have not held the university and its leadership accountable for its failure to support an environment conducive to all students,” according to the report. The Jewish Federation, Anti-Defamation League, Hill and the American Jewish Committee have not effectively represented the community or students at UCI, according to the report. Task force members urge Jewish students to enroll at other universities until UCI changes its ways.

The report’s recommendations require nothing from the Muslim Student Union. It stands by the group’s and its speakers’ right to free speech, but argue educators and leaders should condemn the worst offenses.

“There is a pretty bright line between doing what’s right and being passive in the face of evil,” DeVore said. “Certainly, once upon a time universities were the bastions for doing what’s right.”

The Orange County Task Force Report can be viewed here.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.