by Edwin Black
Recent efforts by StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center to prosecute event disruptors seem to have had a deterrent effect on BDS activity on California campuses – at least for the time being.
Royce Hall, UCLA, photo via Flickr CC
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,082, February 5, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The University of
California system has gone out of its way to protect BDS activists by
shielding them from prosecution. However, recent efforts by StandWithUs
and the Brandeis Center to prosecute event disruptors seem to have had a
deterrent effect on BDS activity on California campuses – at least for
the time being.
Organized disruptors – both students and
non-students – who shut down a pro-Israel gathering at University of
California Los Angeles in May 2018 might not be prosecuted, according to
information from LA City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office. Instead, they
will be called to a confidential but mandatory proceeding called a “City
Attorney Hearing,” an alternative to prosecution that can be described
as a “warning” not to repeat the conduct. One legal expert compared it
to a “deferred prosecution,” but stressed that a full trial could still
result.
Victims generally do not appear at such a hearing,
the City Attorney’s office explained, and generally no criminal record
attaches to the accused. Still, the prosecutor retains the right to
issue charges later if he feels the illegal conduct has recurred or may
recur.
Los Angeles conducts hundreds of such closed-door
hearings each year to dispose of minor misdemeanors arising from, for
example, neighbor disputes, domestic disharmony, or curfew violations.
South of Los Angeles, in Orange County, newly
installed prosecutor Todd Spitzer is still undecided about prosecuting
rambunctious disruptors of a pro-Israel event at University of
California Irvine that also took place last May, according to official
university sources. Spitzer’s office has asked for additional police
investigation to develop more facts.
With or without actual prosecution, the two
incidents and the Jewish community’s response have potentially changed
the landscape for belligerent disruption of pro-Israel events on
California campuses, which last year were arguably among the most
pernicious in the nation. Those involved in the two California events –
the affected students and the Jewish communal groups who rose up to
invoke prosecutions – expressed a range of reactions on whether justice
has been either minimally obtained or seriously delayed.
StandWithUs and Brandeis Center for Human Rights
pivotally intervened to jump-start the criminal referral process on both
UC campuses. Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO, commented, “It shows good
progress that the [Los Angeles] authorities are holding the disruptors
accountable for attempting to remove the freedom of speech from those
they disagree with.” Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis
Center for Human Rights Under Law, added, “We are gratified by this
development. At long last, the universities are holding responsible the
perpetrators of these egregious event disruptions. We trust this will
deter similar behavior in the future and demonstrate that universities
must take such criminal conduct seriously.”
A spokesperson for Canary Mission, the anonymous
online watchdog that closely monitored both cases, commented, “This is
not a strong enough response.” Justin Feldman, president of Students
Supporting Israel, himself victimized by the harassment, agreed,
stating, “As one of the proponents of the effort to hold disruptors
accountable at UCLA, I am deeply disappointed that such accused students
will merely face a ‘slap on the wrist’ for their deliberate misconduct
in silencing student voices on campus.”
Outrage first erupted after two separate but
particularly belligerent disruptions of pro-Israel UC student events
took place in May 2018. On May 7, College Republicans at UCI, hosting
Israeli reservists, saw their session shattered by a sudden invasion of
bullhorn-wielding BDS advocates chanting anti-Israel slogans. A few days
later, on May 17, Students Supporting Israel at UCLA sponsored an
outreach panel discussion with indigenous students only to have it
violently shut down by nose-to-nose BDS harassment. Both dramatic
disruptions were captured on viral video.
For Jewish students and legal defense groups,
these two egregious incidents were the tipping point of campus
harassment at UC schools. The consensus among Jewish leadership and
students was that the school administrations had consciously created a
permissive anti-Israel atmosphere so toxic that it virtually encouraged
increasingly severe forms of anti-Israel harassment. At UCI, the video
shows bull-horn disruption going for several minutes as police and
university administrators watched.
Disruption of public meetings explicitly violates California law. Three statutes pertain.
Title 11, Sec. 403
concerns event disruption. “Every person who … willfully disturbs or
breaks up any assembly or meeting … is guilty of a misdemeanor.” This
was the very statute used to successfully prosecute and convict the “Irvine 11.” Title 11, Sec. 415
involves disturbing the peace. The statute calls for jail time for “any
person who maliciously and willfully disturbs another person by loud
and unreasonable noise.” Title 11, Sec. 182, a conspiracy statute, can be invoked when “two or more persons conspire to commit any crime.”
Initially, both UCLA and UCI administrations
declined to refer the incidents to the police for investigation and
prosecution. This reinforced the belief that the permissive environment
on campus actually promoted harassment as a bizarre species of free
speech. Moreover, the legal system itself permits the universities to
exercise broad discretion, allowing them to simply look the other way.
California’s unusual state laws juridically enable the universities to
potentially create a double standard and promote unequal justice. The UC
administration can decide who shall be referred to its own police force
and who shall be given a pass, or subjected to so-called “academic
discipline.” No referral to the police means no referral to prosecutors.
Two California statutes uphold this system. The
California Education Code empowers UC officials to function as
jurisdictions unto themselves, as though they are small cities. They can
hire their own police departments and exercise discretion on police
policy and conduct. Section 92600 states, “The Regents of the University
of California are authorized and empowered to appoint one or more
persons to be members of the University of California Police Department …
[and] are peace officers … upon the campuses of the University of
California and an area within one mile of the exterior boundaries of
each thereof.”
Section 830.2 of the California Penal Code states:
“A member of the University of California Police Department, appointed
pursuant to Section 92600 of the Education Code, is a peace officer
whose authority extends to any place in the state … specified in Section
92600 of the Education Code.” The law also vests campus officers with
“concurrent jurisdiction with local law enforcement agencies.”
Within legal limits, UC police departments
function like a private force, answerable to the campus administration,
which, in turn, often pivots on the dictates of the college’s public
affairs managers. If a university wants to downplay an incident, it can
exercise discretion and instruct the police forces to overlook a
disruption. If the police departments do not investigate and refer a
case to prosecutors, no criminal action will be taken by prosecutors.
Observers believe a built-in conflict of interest
and a system of unequal justice can emerge when publicity-shy media
relations managers can give campus police their marching orders.
One Jewish organization president called it
“shameful,” adding, “UCLA is not acting ‘neutrally’ when it shields
students from prosecution.”
Indeed, at UCLA, the campus administration
officials were extremely sensitive to the adverse publicity attending
the video of SSI students being harassed. Campus police referred all
inquiries to UCLA Media Relations. When this writer first contacted Tad
Tamberg, senior executive director of media relations at UCLA, Tamberg
referred to a Letter to the Editor in the campus newspaper and declined
to discuss the matter further or answer any questions. At one point,
when this writer said, “May I ask a question?” Tamberg snapped back,
“No, you may not.”
UCLA campus police, eager to address the offense,
repeatedly and apologetically declined to answer any questions, stating
they were under specific instructions from Media Relations to refuse to
answer. This included even UCPD media spokesmen. Ironically, the UCLA
police manual mandates in section 505, entitled “NEWS MEDIA,” that “In
accordance with department policy, employees shall make every effort to
cooperate and assist members of the news media, using care to ensure
that any release of information is not detrimental to the conduct of
police operations.”
UCI had a very different response. Its media
manager facilitated exploration of the criminal aspect of the incident
and quickly assured its police department would investigate and refer
the matter to prosecutors. The UCI investigation is still underway.
UCLA’s refusal to refer its students for
prosecution or even investigate the crime was thwarted when legal staff
at StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center converged on the campus to walk
students into the UCLA PD and UCI police stations to file criminal
complaints. Filing those complaints forced the police to investigate and
then refer the cases to prosecutors. Ultimately, that included both
student and non-student participants.
Whether or not the perpetrators at UCLA or UCI are
prosecuted, it seems the reality on the ground at UC campuses has been
altered. In the days after Thanksgiving 2018, this writer delivered four
consecutive lectures on Israel history at California campuses: UC
Davis, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, and UCLA. Despite concerns, no
interference or disruption manifested.
The UCLA event was sponsored by a coalition of
groups including the same Students Supporting Israel chapter that had
been harassed last May. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, attended to kick off the livestreamed event. At
UCLA, it was a new day. When campus police learned of the event, they
took immediate steps to ensure it would proceed without interference.
Two UCLA PD officers were dispatched to the event itself, both highly
trained and deeply conversant with the pro-Israel and Jewish communal
scene. A representative of the administration joined the officers. The
police and administration declared that, in the event of a disruption,
perpetrators would be given one warning to immediately cease and desist;
and if they did not, “they will be arrested and charged.” This, coupled
with the LA Prosecutor’s watchful eye, combined to insulate the event
from criminal disruption.
Thus, thanks to leadership from StandWithUs and
the Brandeis Center and the courage of the students who stepped forward,
combined with intense media scrutiny, the rate of acceleration of
anti-Semitism on campus and especially at UC colleges has been slowed –
at least for the moment.
This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Algemeiner on January 17, 2019.
Edwin Black is the New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust and Financing the Flames. He can be followed @Edwinblackbook. Anyone with information regarding disruptions at any UC campus may send it confidentially to ucla-uci-info@edwinblack.com.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/bds-prosecution-university-california/
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