Trending through difficult places

If you’ve been active on social media over the past few days, you may have heard word of a brief but concentrated burst of anti-Semitism which appeared on the campus of UCLA recently. A brief rundown: in mid-February, a second-year economics major named Rachel Beyda was up for confirmation for the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association CouncilJudicial Board. Some of those involved in confirming her nomination debated for over 40 video-recorded minutes whether her involvement in various Jewish groups on campus would constitute a “conflict of interest” when dealing with certain topics the Judicial Board – essentially UCLA’s equivalent of the Supreme Court – would come across. (One council member put it bluntly: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”) The incident and its resulting fallout have slowly been gaining national traction over the past few weeks. Many have slammed the students involved for their anti-Semitic remarks, and the council members involved have issued an apology for “remarks made” at the confirmation hearing.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I’ve been privileged to have been raised in a largely Jewish suburb of Boston for most of my life, and I don’t think I can remember a single time when I’ve been the specific target of anti-Jewish sentiments. This mostly stems from the fact that my Jewishness is not the most visible tenet of my identity. Though I wholeheartedly identify as Jewish, I’m very much a “cultural Jew” — my religion is important to me not because of my belief in God but because I’m able to gather with other Jews at brisket-laden holiday meals in celebration of our shared heritage. As such, in terms of societal oppression I’m viewed primarily as white, male and straight instead of primarily Jewish, and the anti-Semitic discrimination I’ve seen (especially in the U.S.) pales in comparison to the staggering amount of discrimination I’m able to avoid due to my race, gender and sexuality.

On the other hand, though, some of the statements made in the confirmation hearing strike me as particularly ominous. There’s the obvious, like the aforementioned quote. Then, there are the other highly-unsettling statements recorded at the hearing — things like “For some reason, I’m not 100 percent comfortable. I don’t know why” or “[Beyda is] part of a community that is very invested in… very specific outcomes that judicial boards make decisions on every year.”

What’s more, the apology issued by the students involved does little to mollify the situation. It focuses specifically on the “words used during the meeting” as opposed to the actual attempt to block Beyda’s confirmation based on what we can only assume is her Jewish identity, as those students haven’t named any other reason they might have opposed her. This seems akin to, say, Lululemon’s CEO apologizing for the “repercussions of [his] actions” (“actions” here refers to controversial remarks he made on Bloomberg TV regarding complaints of too-sheer leggings) instead of apologizing for the sexism it conveyed. It feels as though the council members, instead of owning up to their words and actions and emphasizing the power of the “learning experience,”issued a vague, somewhat sanctimonious declaration that their “intentions were never to attack, insult or delegitimize the identity of an individual or people.”

As Princeton students, we have a responsibility to tackle this kind of bigotry head-on. What happened at UCLA is relevant to life here because it prompts us to think critically about our own latent biases. I very much understand my position of privilege in society, but at the same time I don’t doubt that, sooner or later, I will run into the kind of virulent anti-Semitism I’ve seen and heard accounts of manifesting almost everywhere, even in other students’ experiences at Princeton. Ideally, we can use these events to spark discussions — whether campus-wide or on a smaller scale — about what it means to be Jewish and what we can do to ensure such public displays of anti-Jewish sentiments don’t happen even closer to home. I realize I’m an outspoken advocate for the power of dialogue, but I really believe in its power for “engaging [people] in cross-cultural exchange.”If we’re willing to engage with our peers on a human-to-human level, we can discuss our differences in a way that is constructive and healthy for all involved.

This column, then, intends to be less an indictment of what happened at UCLA than a clarion call for continued dialogue to ensure that the pervasive anti-Jewish sentiments expressed there don’t surface here. The student council members’ poor decisions must act as a sort of public learning experience for all of us. Especially in light of the unacceptable video footage that has come out of the University of Oklahoma over the past few days (which I haven’t covered up to this point in part because I feel wholly unqualified to present anything more than a complete condemnation of the events), we need more than ever to grasp the reins others are unwilling to hold. If we want to be able to rid ourselves of bigotry and oppression, we must be willing to take what we’ve been nurtured to think and review it in the harsh light of the negative actions of others. As the young people who will inherit control of our world very soon, the less pervasive and deeply-rooted we can make our bigotry, the better we all will be for it.

Will Rivitz is a freshman from Brookline, Mass. He can be reached at wrivitz@princeton.edu.