The post was updated Oct. 11 at 12:15 p.m.
Dear Editor,
In your Sept. 18 article concerning a letter by many Jewish members of the UCLA community protesting the federal funding freeze, you seem to single out the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group as having a special reluctance to sign it.
It is important to note that the JFRG, as a nonpartisan organization focused on addressing antisemitism, has never taken a position on signing that letter. Some of our members signed it; others didn’t. We have no data regarding numbers because, again, we as an organization never considered the letter or whether to sign it.
By specifically identifying JFRG as Zionist – supporting the right of Israel to exist – in the article, you may have inadvertently created an implication that our members are thereby prone to resisting support of UC and UCLA in the current crisis. But many of our members were directly or indirectly adversely affected by the federal funding freeze. The individuals who most often question the support of the UC and UCLA are anti-Zionists, who are angry about steps taken to end encampments and building occupations, steps to enforce Time, Place and Manner rules and steps to halt intimidation.
Our members did not create the illegal encampments, occupations and acts of intimidation that brought about UCLA’s recent crisis. As an organization, we support steps taken by UC and UCLA to combat antisemitism on campus and have suggested other steps that could be taken.
That is our only position.
Sincerely,
Kira Stein, MD,
chair and founder of the JFRG,
assistant clinical professor, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Mark Kligman, PhD,
co-chair of the JFRG,
professor of musicology, ethnomusicology and humanities,
Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music and
director of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of the American Jewish Experience
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