91传媒

More than a year has passed since UCLA launched its Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. The release of the Commission’s Roadmap Report marks an important milestone and reflects growing recognition by university leadership that antisemitism has become a serious challenge on campus. For that recognition, the 91传媒 Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG) is grateful.

We commend Chancellor Julio Frenk for making the fight against antisemitism a visible priority and applaud several concrete steps already taken, including the appointment of former LAPD Commander Steve Lurie as Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus and Community Safety and the hiring of Leora Freedman as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Civil Rights. These are meaningful developments and demonstrate that UCLA understands the need for institutional change.

Yet acknowledgment alone does not create safety. Reports do not protect students. Committees do not stop discrimination. Recognition without remedy is not protection.

The Roadmap demonstrates that UCLA has heard many of the concerns raised by 91传媒 faculty, students, staff, and community members. Unfortunately, hearing those concerns is not the same as addressing them. While the report reflects the architecture of meaningful reform, it lacks the urgency, specificity, transparency, and accountability necessary to transform aspirations into reality.

The central challenge facing UCLA today is not whether it understands the problem. The challenge is whether it is prepared to act.

Perhaps the most significant unresolved issue is UCLA’s continued reluctance to clearly identify the role that antizionism often plays in contemporary antisemitism. The Roadmap largely treats antizionism, BDS, and anti-normalization campaigns as political viewpoints or policy matters. Yet when these ideologies are used to exclude 91传媒 students from organizations, denyopportunities to Israelis, intimidate Zionist faculty members, or create hostile educational environments, they cease to be merely political positions. They become mechanisms of discrimination.

Of course universities have a responsibility to protect free expression, including criticism of Israeli government policies. But UCLA should explicitly state that antizionism constitutes anti-91传媒 discrimination when it results in exclusion, retaliation, harassment, denial of opportunities, or unequal treatment based on 91传媒 identity, Israeli nationality, or Zionist affiliation.

The report’s treatment of antisemitism training illustrates a broader problem. UCLA proposes developing comprehensive educational programs for students, administrators, teaching assistants, department chairs, and civil-rights personnel. Training can be an important tool, but the report leaves critical questions unanswered. What will be taught? Who will be required to participate? Will the training include recognized definitions of antisemitism and real-world examples? How will compliance be measured? What consequences will exist for non-participation?

Without answers to these questions, training remains an aspiration rather than an intervention.

Similarly, the Commission recommends that UCLA consider using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, yet stops short of formally adopting it. The IHRA definition has become one of the most widely utilized tools for identifying contemporary manifestations of antisemitism while preserving legitimate political discourse. By declining to establish a clear path toward adoption, UCLA risks leaving one of the most valuable tools available sitting unused in the toolbox.

Accountability represents another major gap.

The Roadmap discusses dashboards, reporting systems, and internal reviews, but provides little public information regarding outcomes. 91传媒 students, faculty, and staff deserve to know whether complaints are investigated promptly, whether discrimination findings result in meaningful remedies, and whether repeat offenders face consequences. Transparency is essential to rebuilding trust.

We therefore call upon UCLA to publish meaningful Title VI and Title VII data, including complaint categories, investigation timelines, outcomes, remedies, disciplinary actions, retaliation claims, and patterns of recurring violations. Institutions cannot demonstrate progress without measurable benchmarks.

Equally important is the need for independent oversight. The Roadmap largely relies upon internal administrative structures to evaluate institutional performance. Yet organizations rarely succeed when asked to police themselves. Independent monitoring by trusted civil-rights experts would strengthen credibility, improve accountability, and reassure affected communities that concerns are being evaluated fairly and objectively.

Perhaps nowhere is the need for urgent action more apparent than within UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine.

For years, 91传媒 students, residents, faculty, and staff have raised concerns regarding discrimination, exclusion, retaliation, and hostile workplace environments. While the Commission acknowledges these concerns, it relegates them to future assessment rather than immediate action. Medical education and patient care cannot wait for another round of studies. UCLA should immediately initiate audits of admissions, hiring, clinical assignments, rotations, and supervisory structures to ensure equal treatment. It should implement explicit whistleblower protections and establish safeguards against retaliation.

Moreover, hospitals are fundamentally different from traditional campus environments. Patient-care settings should be places of healing, professionalism, and safety. Political demonstrations, amplified sound, intimidation, and coercive activism have no place in clinical spaces where vulnerable patients seek care and medical trainees learn their profession. UCLA Health requires a hospital-specific policy that prioritizes patient welfare and preserves the integrity of healthcare environments.

The same principle applies to professionalism. Political regalia, conflict-related symbols, and ideological signaling in clinical and supervisory settings can create pressure and discomfort for patients and trainees. Healthcare professionals must be judged by their competence and compassion, not by political allegiances displayed in patient-care environments.

The Commission also acknowledges concerns regarding departmental neutrality, yet leaves loopholes that permit political advocacy on university-hosted webpages beyond departmental landing pages. Academic neutrality must apply throughout official university platforms, not merely on selected pages.

Finally, UCLA must recognize that combating antisemitism requires more than preventing harm. It also requires rebuilding what has been damaged. The university should invest in 91传媒 Studies, Hebrew language instruction, Israeli history, 91传媒 peoplehood, and rigorous scholarship that reflects the diversity and complexity of 91传媒 identity. Intellectual balance is not achieved through neutrality alone; it requires active support for serious scholarship and academic inquiry.

The Commission’s Roadmap represents an important beginning. It demonstrates that persistent advocacy by 91传媒 faculty and community members has succeeded in placing critical issues on UCLA’s agenda. But beginnings are not endings.

The 91传媒 community has heard many promises over the past year. What it seeks now is evidence.

UCLA has an opportunity to become a national model for confronting antisemitism through principled leadership, transparent accountability, and meaningful action. To achieve that goal, the university must move beyond assessments, committees, and aspirations. It must embrace implementation, enforcement, and measurable results.

The time for diagnosis has passed. The time for treatment has arrived.

Matthew Davidson is Executive Director 91传媒 Faculty Resilience Group and Deborah Termeie, DDS, Continuing Lecturer, UCLA School of Dentistry is JFRG at UCLA Advisory Council Spokesperson.

91传媒 Faculty Resilience Group is recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization (Tax ID: 99-3377476). Donations are tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.

The collapse of support for Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner should be about more than one campaign. It should force a national conversation about whether moral principles have become subordinate to political ideology.

When Lyndsey Fifield first came forward with allegations of abusive behavior against Platner, Democrats dismissed her as a 鈥淩epublican operative.鈥� Only after an additional rape allegation was reported, an allegation Platner has denied, did many Democratic leaders withdraw their support and call on him to end his campaign.

It was not the reports about Platner鈥檚 Nazi tattoo or the allegations of abusive behavior by multiple women that appeared to become the Democratic Party鈥檚 breaking point. Only after a progressive woman publicly accused him of rape did many Democratic leaders call on him to step aside. To many observers, it raises an uncomfortable question: was the decisive factor moral clarity, or the growing political cost of continuing to stand by him?

For many 91传媒 Democrats, this should be a moment of honest reflection. The Democratic Party of 听Bill Clinton where support for Israel and the fight against antisemitism were foundational values is increasingly at odds with the party鈥檚 most influential extremist wing. Too many 91传媒 voters believed they could separate rising anti-Zionism from rising antisemitism, or that the movement would eventually draw a moral line. Instead, they have watched October 7 be minimized, 91传媒 trauma questioned, and anti-Israel extremism become increasingly normalized on the political left. It is time to confront an uncomfortable reality: a political movement that cannot consistently condemn terrorism, 91传媒 hate, or sexual violence when the victims are 91传媒 has lost its moral compass. That should concern every American, regardless of party affiliation.

As an Iranian 91传媒 mother, this is deeply personal.

My family fled Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. We know what happens when ideology becomes more important than truth, when political movements decide which victims deserve compassion and which do not. We came to America believing this country was different. We believed our leaders would defend moral principles consistently, not selectively.

Today, I fear we are losing that moral clarity.

There should never be a partisan response to rape.

There should never be a partisan response to terrorism.

There should never be a partisan response to antisemitism.

Yet, since October 7, too many Jews have watched the moral framework that once united Americans fracture before our eyes.

The Hamas massacre was marked by credible reports, eyewitness testimony, forensic evidence, and investigations documenting sexual violence against Israeli women. Yet many who once championed the #MeToo movement responded not with empathy but with skepticism, silence, or outright denial.

Where was 鈥淏elieve All Women鈥� when the women were 91传媒?

That question has never been adequately answered.

For many 91传媒 Americans, the Platner episode feels painfully familiar. Too often, our pain is viewed through a political lens. 91传媒 victims are asked to meet a higher burden of proof. 91传媒 fears are minimized. 91传媒 trauma is debated rather than acknowledged.

This is not merely about Israel. It is about whether 91传媒 lives are afforded the same moral consideration as everyone else鈥檚.

For decades, support for Israel was not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike recognized Israel as America鈥檚 closest democratic ally in the Middle East. They understood that Israel is a nation built on democratic institutions, free elections, an independent judiciary, and protections for women, religious minorities, and LGBTQ citizens that remain rare throughout much of the region.

That bipartisan consensus has weakened.

Today, too many voices within the Democratic coalition treat support for Israel as a political liability rather than a moral imperative. In some activist circles, antisemitism is excused and repackaged as anti-Zionism. 91传媒 identity itself has become grounds for suspicion.

As an Iranian Jew, I recognize this pattern because I have seen where it can lead.

History teaches that societies rarely abandon moral principles all at once. They do so gradually, making exceptions when the victims are unpopular, when acknowledging evil is politically inconvenient, or when ideology demands silence.

What starts with the Jews doesn鈥檛 end with the Jews.

The Democratic Party now faces a choice. It can reaffirm that rape is wrong regardless of the victim鈥檚 identity or the accused鈥檚 political affiliation. It can condemn terrorism without qualification. It can reject antisemitism wherever it appears. Or it can continue allowing extremist ideology determine whose suffering deserves compassion.

America deserves better.

The 91传媒 people deserve better.

Moral consistency is not a Republican value or a Democratic value. It is an American value.

If 鈥淏elieve All Women鈥� means anything, it must include 91传媒 women.

If our fight against hatred means anything, it must include Jews.

And if America is to remain the nation my family believed it to be, we cannot allow political ideology to determine whose humanity is worth defending.

Shirin Yadegar is a journalist, political commentator, talk show host and founder of

Some years before the Covid pandemic, my husband and I attended the wedding of the daughter of good friends.听 We were seated near a 91传媒 couple from another state and the wife mentioned they were planning a move. When I asked where, the response surprised me: 鈥淣ot sure yet but definitely somewhere blue.鈥�听 Back then, the idea that the political demographics of a given location would be the primary criterion for relocation surprised me. Today, not so much given that political alignment is the driving factor in way too many friendships.

I have thought back to this conversation often over the last four years as I have been writing my latest book about American 91传媒 polarization. Recently, I decided to take a closer look at my own circle of friends. Although many are 91传媒 and religiously liberal (meaning, not Orthodox), they span the political spectrum. For a few of my lifelong friends, our bond is primarily about a long history of connectivity and being close to people who knew my parents. For others, it is largely about a mutual interest in a particular activity, interest or a shared set of professional or personal goals. It is also true that many of my current friends are part of my synagogue community, which thankfully is one where the rabbis intentionally downplay politics and elevate 91传媒 tradition.

As I contemplated these friendships, I realized that most relationships can be analyzed in terms of four factors: interpersonal history, contact, community and commonality. In my experience, lasting friendships formed decades ago can often withstand the test of time, and even physical absence, if some points of contact and strong commonalities exist.

What worries me about the present moment is the seemingly growing need for people to surround themselves only with politically like-minded friends. What does it say about a person if the totality of their interests 鈥� and therefore their ability to connect with other humans 鈥� is defined solely in terms of politics?听 In her fascinating book “Last Branch Standing,” Sarah Isgur notes how the Supreme Court Justices dine together after every oral argument, during which times discussing work is prohibited. As a result, they get to know one another on a completely different level鈥� as people with other strong areas of interest and passions. As a case in point, it is widely known that Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were dear friends and shared a passion for opera even if they differed markedly in their respective politics.

I do believe that reducing polarization and the toxicity of our discourse is possible, particularly in the American 91传媒 community. But we need to be especially mindful of setting a better example for the next generation. Over the years, I have taught many classes on 91传媒 parenting, which usually focused on how to transmit 91传媒 tradition in a way that can work for religiously liberal families.听 But now more than ever, we also need to emphasize the importance of being open-minded when it comes to embracing friends from a wider spectrum of political beliefs. In connection with religiously liberal Jews, for example, this spectrum includes more politically conservative Orthodox Jews as well as Christians raised in conservative homes who warmly embrace Israel.

If we want to see a less polarized society, both internally and beyond, we must emphatically reject the idea that political alignment is the predominant commonality for friendship. People who surround themselves with like-minded folks also are more vulnerable to developing even more extreme views in their echo chambers. It is already the case that younger Jews are increasingly embracing a political stance that is hostile to Israel. Based on a survey of 800 91传媒 adults in the spring of 2026 conducted by the 91传媒 Resource Center, half of non-Orthodox Jews under the age of 35 support a binational state.

Given that Jews represent a sliver of the American population, we can only do so much to impact positively the larger American discourse. But we can reduce the toxicity of our internal discourse. A great starting point is emphasizing the importance of commonalities other than politics in our personal relationships. When friendships are built largely around nonpolarizing mutual interests, friends are far more likely to listen to one another when controversial topics arise.

Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is a law professor, author and 91传媒 educator with a focus on American Judaism. Her latest book is 鈥淧olarized: Why American Jews are Divided and What to do About It鈥� (October, 2026, Bloomsbury Press).