Students arrested for heckling Oren at Irvine speech
February 9, 2010
NEW YORK (JTA) -- At least 11 students were arrested for interrupting a lecture by Israel's U.S. ambassador at a California university.
Michael Oren was interrupted repeatedly during his speech Monday night at the University of California, Irvine, which for years has been at the center of campus wars over Israel.
Oren was removed from the stage for a period because of the outbursts, prompting a university faculty member to take the podium and admonish the crowd, calling the incident "embarrassing."
Oren returned to finish his speech but did not take questions from the audience, as was scheduled, Haaretz reported.
In a statement received by the Orange County Register, the university's Muslim Student Union said, "We condemn and oppose the presence of Michael Oren, the ambassador of Israel to the United States, on our campus today."
The University of California, Irvine has long been a flashpoint for the Israel wars on American campuses, with both sides leveling accusations of intimidation. The Zionist Organization of America complained about the situation to the U.S. Department of Education, which concluded there was insufficient evidence that the university had failed to adequately respond to complaints of harassment.
More recently, the ZOA called on the Department of Justice to probe alleged fund-raising activities on behalf of Hamas by Irvine students.
A Sense of Peoplehood is not a Pathology
It is not racist for a professor such as Alan Dershowitz or for a professor like Kevin MacDonald to advocate for their ethnic group interests.
The words for bigotry, that are often used, such as: ant-Semitic, anti-white, anti-black, anti-Arab, anti-feminist, anti-gay and hundreds of other labels, are for the most part overstated. Instead, it should be seen as pro-white, or pro-Jewish or pro-women or pro-traditional family and not be ashamed of it.
These "pro" sensibilities are part of the human condition, not to be pathologized into an "anti."
It is about group interests.
A race or an ethnie without a sense of peoplehood or ethnichood will end up being used to achieve the goals of other ethnies. (Yes, ethnie, not ethnic).
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