Muslim union hurting UCI’s reputation

As students at UC Irvine, we respectfully disagree with the Zionist Organization of America’s position that students should stop attending UCI, and that donors should stop supporting the many programs at the school.

This is both counterproductive and one of the worst ways to deal with the Muslim Student Union at UCI.

Instead, we believe the best response is to be proactive by engaging in positive dialogue and peace-seeking efforts. An important part of this is to bring more students to the campus who are interested in making progress toward peace among groups on campus, as well as in the Middle East.

The 11 students and their supporters claim that they were only exercising their own free speech, but as U.S. constitutional scholars Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UCI Law School, explain, the organized disruptions by these students were not protected by freedom of speech.

We applaud the UCI Police Department for arresting students suspected of breaking the law. We also applaud the university administration for swiftly beginning the student conduct judicial review process, which can result in suspension or expulsion. We know that this process may be lengthy, and we patiently await its outcome.

The ZOA also criticized Chancellor Michael V. Drake for not exercising his own freedom of speech and publicly condemning the MSU’s regular programs and its members’ actions during Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren’s speech. While the authors of ZOA’s statement were not present at the program, we were, and Drake did in fact publicly speak out against the disruptions and subsequently released a statement on the school’s website.

We can all agree that MSU’s consistently anti-Israel programs are reprehensible, offensive and embarrassing for the university. However, this is not reason enough to advise prospective students to avoid attending UCI, and recommend to the school’s donors to stop their financial support. As students on this campus, we feel that one of the very best ways to send a message to the MSU is to increase the attendance of students who will speak out against them and stand up for American principles such as freedom of speech. One of the greatest advantages of living in this country is access to a quality university education, and we are proud that UCI is one of the finest and safest academic institutions in the nation. Why would anyone want to deny a student this benefit?

One of the reasons that UCI has become such a high-ranking university is because of the array of academic programs, extracurricular opportunities and innovative faculty. One recent example is UCI’s new school of law. All this would not be possible without the financial support of many generous donors in the community.

Unfortunately, the MSU continues to bring negative programming to campus, which continues to give UCI an undeserving reputation. As proud UCI Anteaters, the rest of us will continue to build a thriving and robust campus life.

Michael Hirschberg

Ami Kurzweil

Courtney Kravitz