February 8, 2012 | 2:00 pm

AN IMPORTANT ISSUE—-A CONTROVERSIAL BOOK

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

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Rarely does an issue, an article or a book generate such differing responses from people on the same side of the political spectrum as Charles Murray’s just published Coming Apart.

David Brooks, the conservative-leaning op/ed columnist at The New York Times, has described the book with the following superlatives, “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s ‘Coming Apart.’ I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”

Brooks describes the thrust of Murray’s work, “Murray’s argument is not new, that America is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s new is the incredible data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.”

I am a fan of David Brooks and his usually trenchant analysis of current ideas and events. I read his piece in the Times and ordered the Murray book from Amazon. I cited Brooks’ analysis in an email to my kids and nieces and nephews (who in typical millennial fashion dismissed my observations as dated)—-as evidence of the overly simplistic analysis that marks much of our political discourse.

According to Brooks,

Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Brooks’ description of Murray’s narrative seemed compelling and accurate.

Then I read another analyst’s view, David Frum. He’s the neo-con pundit and former Bush speechwriter who has evidenced a willingness to be less than doctrinaire in his opinions and analysis of current events. He too is a thoughtful and frequently incisive analyst. His take on the same Murray book is quite different.

He acknowledges that Coming Apart is “an important book that will have large influence. It is unfortunately not a good book—but its lack of merit in no way detracts from its importance.” He then proceeds to eviscerate Murray for his line of argument and methodology, “…this kind of polemical use of data is one—but only one—of the things that discredits Coming Apart as an explanation of the social trouble of our times.”

His book wants to lead readers to the conclusion that the white working class has suffered a moral collapse attributable to vaguely hinted at cultural forces. Yet he never specifies what those cultural forces might be, and he presents no evidence at all for a link between those forces and the moral collapse he sees…..

If you’re going to claim the mantle of social science for your claim that reducing government will ameliorate class disparities, then at some previous point in your work, you should make at least some minimal effort to demonstrate that government activity has caused those class disparities. Yet that effort is absent from Murray’s book. Indeed, at the outset of his book, Murray emphatically disclaims any interest in the causes of widening inequality…..

Yet at the end of the book, without ever suggesting any reason to believe that government is the problem, he insists that the reduction of government is the solution….

It’s puzzling, truly. The prescription comes without an etiology, the recommendation without any discussion of causation, verdict without proof or trial. Social science’s claims to be science are troubled enough without this wholesale jettisoning of—not only scientific method—but even the scientific outlook.

Frum’s critique is so impassioned that it has taken up four lengthy posts on The Daily Beast.

What these two thoughtful, yet divergent, commentators make clear is that this critically important issue—-the increasing gulf between the educated and successful and the unschooled and frustrated—- is a problem that may have myriad explanations and causes but is one that demands attention and a response from our leaders and citizenry.

Take a look at the links in this blog for some entertaining reading.

One thing is for sure, I’m going to read this provocative book.

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February 1, 2012 | 4:41 pm

One Serious Problem Gone

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

Over the past few days, the press reported a welcomed reminder of how America has been transforming itself over recent decades. Not in the depressing trajectory that is often the subject of the blather of 24/7 news outlets and their self-proclaimed “pundits.” Rather, by virtue of some startling data that has been reported, it appears that one of the goals of the civil rights community for half century is near attainment—-the desegregation of housing in America’s major cities.

It wasn’t all that long ago that “Fair Housing Councils” proliferated across the country to give voice to the goal of eliminating, or at least reducing, the isolation of minorities in cities and towns. Today, the Councils and others can take pride in the fact that the residential racial isolation that marked so much of the twentieth century in the United States is at the lowest level in nearly a century.

Two researchers at the Manhattan Institute, Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor, analyzed the data from the last thirteen censuses (going back over 100 years) and discovered some astounding trends. Namely:

• The most standard measure of segregation reveals that American cities are more integrated today than at any time since 1910—-before the mid-century black migration to our largest cities. 
• “All-white” neighborhoods are effectively extinct. Fifty years ago 20% of all urban neighborhoods had no blacks residing in them. Today virtually every neighborhood (199 out of 200) has African American residents.
• Gentrification and immigration are part of the story, but a major cause of the transformation is the suburbanization of America’s blacks.
• Ghetto neighborhoods persist, but most are in decline.

In a short but fascinating study, Glaeser and Vigdor point out what a complex process the desegregation of American cities has been. It isn’t attributable just to the suburbanization of blacks or the immigration of Latinos or the gentrification of inner city neighborhoods or the ending of malevolent government policies (e.g. the denial of mortgage credit to residents in mixed race neighborhoods or the enforcement of restrictive covenants) or the removal of enormous public housing projects that concentrated poor and minority residents (e.g. Pruitt-Igoe). It is all these and more and the change is enormous.

According to one of the indices used in the study, Los Angeles has become the least racially isolated large city in America with an “isolation index” of 22—compared to New York’s 42.4 and Chicago’s 57.5. This index measures the tendency for residents of one group to live in neighborhoods where their share of the population is above the citywide average (the lower the number the less isolated the residents).

The authors remind their readers that in the 1960’s there were those who argued that curing housing segregation would be the key to transforming America; “once the races mixed more readily, all would be well.” It turns out, of course, that there are no silver bullets. Housing segregation is only one part of a very complex and inter-connected series of problems.

There are those who will attempt to find fault with the study to avoid even the hint of good news on the inter-group front. There will also be those who will suggest that few problems remain if we are living side by side. In fact, leave it to John McWhorter in an essay in The Root for a sober analysis of the report’s implications:

This report is not designed to shut people up about injustice. Its final words are “While the decline in segregation remains good news, far too many Americans lack the opportunity to achieve meaningful success.”

However, there is a crucial implication of this and the report. As the authors put it, “The persistence of inequality, even as segregation has receded, suggests that inequality is a far more complex phenomenon.” That is, while black America does suffer from overall socioeconomic inequality with the mainstream, addressing that will not be a matter of worrying about whether black people live in neighborhoods with too many other black people in them.

We should welcome this news. It means that we no longer have to put up with smart people telling us that when too many black people live in one place, you have to expect all hell to break loose. It is rather striking how this insult to black dignity is so warmly received as kindly wisdom.

In any case, the upshot is simple. Black residential segregation is at its lowest in more than 90 years. It’s good someone decided to find that out. We should keep it in mind the next time someone tells us that blackness is a pathology—be it Newt Gingrich or a social science professor who says he or she is doing the right thing by warning black people about the pitfalls of poor black people hanging out only with other poor black people.

The Glaeser/Vigdor study is indeed welcome news—-while one problem has dramatically receded, it is clear that other profound challenges remain.

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January 13, 2012 | 12:37 pm

Higher Education’s Future?

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

A standing room only crowd attended the panel discussion at KPCC's
Crawford Family Forum.

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2008, 2.2 million freshman students, or 68.6 percent of all high school graduates, were enrolled in college. Most of the high school graduates who attend college are full-time students, though just under 40 percent of non-traditional, older or working students went to college full-time.

Higher education is still considered necessary for success in the American economy, but institutions of higher learning are being challenged as never before by rising tuition, rising operating costs, student unrest, online learning, challenges from for-profit colleges and reductions in funding for public colleges and universities.

What is the future of higher education in America? Is the four-year degree model with students living on or near a campus, is the idea of creating a well-read, well-rounded cohort of critical thinkers perhaps outdated? Can the nation’s colleges and universities prepare students for the competitive challenges of a global economy?

A distinguished panel of university heads that represent the diversity of California’s higher education institutions participated in a Community Advocates/KPCC panel discussion moderated by Airtalk’s Larry Mantle.  It was made possible by generous grants from the Righteous Persons Foundation and the California Wellness Foundation.
Listen to the broadcast.

Guests:
Chancellor Gene Block became chancellor of UCLA in August 2007. As chief executive officer, he oversees the university’s three-part mission of education, research and service. He holds faculty appointments in the David Geffen School of Medicine and the College of Letters and Science. Chancellor Block serves as chairman of the board of the Association of Public Land-grant Universities, the nation’s oldest higher education association. Chancellor Block has called for UCLA to define for California and the nation the role of a great public research university in a major urban center in the 21st century.

President C. Max Nikias has been president of USC since 2010. He has been part of the USC community for more than twenty years, having previously served in a number of positions, including provost and dean. He is an internationally recognized engineer who also holds an appointment in USC’s department of classics.

Chancellor Jack Scott is chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Chancellor Scott came to his statewide office in 2009 after a distinguished career in academia and politics. He was the president of Pasadena City College from 1987 until his election to the California legislature in 1996. He served four years in the state Assembly and eight years in state Senate. He earned his doctorate in American history from Claremont Graduate University.

President Laura Skandera Trombley is in her tenth year as president of Pitzer College. She is an internationally renowned Mark Twain scholar and has authored three books, with her latest, “Mark Twain’s Other Woman,” published by Knopf. Under her leadership, Pitzer has annually produced more Fulbright scholars than any other undergraduate college or university in the country. She is also a national leader in sustainable building with eight new residence halls built at the highest LEED levels.

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December 21, 2011 | 5:09 pm

Ron Paul, The Media is Waking Up—Better Late Than Never

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

We are nearly a year out from the next presidential election and there have been about a dozen Republican debates——more than enough time for the 24/7 news cycle and voracious cable news channels to inspect, examine and scour each candidate for every present and former wart. The fascination with the sensational and the media’s compulsion to “inform” the public seems endless.

Four years ago, Tom Brokaw, one of the elder statesmen of the news business, in a post New Hampshire moment of insight admonished his colleagues that “we have too many hours to fill and too little imagination to fill them creatively.”  One might have hoped, after the Brokaw quip, for a little introspection this time around and, perhaps, an interest by the cable mavens to probe beyond the sensational and actually offer insight as to what the candidates are all about. No chance.

The news channels and others in the media have demonstrated a continued interest in the trivial and the sensational, while ignoring the vital. Recent discussions of Gingrich’s marriages, Romney’s stiffness, or Gov. Perry’s gaffes—- might make for great TV and amusing YouTube clips, but they aren’t all that media should be focusing their attention on.

There is no better example of the media’s glossing over the fundamentals to focus on the superficial than the candidacy of Congressman Ron Paul.

Less sensational, and probably videotape-less, is the troubling evidence of racism and insensitivity by Ron Paul that has gone virtually unremarked on and, until this week, largely ignored. When Paul was just a cranky figure decorating the debate stages, one might excuse the lapse. When he appears to be the leader in the Iowa caucuses, the oversight has been inexcusable. 

Congressman Ron Paul, the Republican/libertarian candidate, is treated in the press, and in the countless debates of the Republican candidates, as if he were simply an eccentric uncle. His musings about returning to the gold standard and the evils of the IRS are interludes where the other candidates seem to catch their collective breath and figure out a witty riposte to the questions that he doesn’t respond to. The moderators don’t accord him much attention, though he fully exploits the platform he is onto reach millions of viewers with his bizarre views.

In fact, his quirkiness is seen as endearing by young voters on the right and the left who seem to have bought the media’s portrayal of him as a sage truth teller who doesn’t bend to the vagaries of what’s “in” or “out”.

He is neither a harmless eccentric nor just a bit offbeat; Cong. Paul has a long, well documented track record of racial and religious insensitivity and bigotry that has gone largely unexamined.

As The New Republic observed in 2008, Paul’s newsletters reveal,

“decades’ worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing—-but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.”

The instances of outrageous comments in his newsletters over thirty years are virtually endless. For example, the Ron Paul Political Report opined that the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “ended when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began;” the media was denounced for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks;” an article about a racial disturbance in Washington, D.C. was titled “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo”; Martin Luther King is accused of having “seduced underage girls and boys”; regarding gays, the newsletter suggested, “homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities;” and vis a vis Israel, “it is an aggressive, national socialist state;” a newsletter questioned (whether) the 1993 World Trade Center bombing may have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, (it) matters little.”

The quotes from Paul’s newsletters are truly incendiary—-not manufactured slights that one needs to “decode”.  The libertarian magazine Reason, in its on-line website, concluded that through his newsletters, Ron Paul, “became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists.” With limited exceptions most noteworthy The New Republic,—- and this week, The Weekly Standard,  The Atlantic and The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times—-the media have simply not adequately scrutinized Paul and his sordid record.

Paul has excused the newsletter outrages as having been done “under my name that I did not edit.” However, The Weekly Standard revealed that the company that published the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, had millions of dollars in income—-and Paul and his wife were officers of the company. If the newsletters’ comments troubled him, he could have, and should have, objected to what was going out over his name. Failure to do so indicates, at a minimum, terrible judgment, if not acquiescence.

That the media has failed to scrutinize Paul can’t be rationalized away simply because Paul won’t be the next president of the United States. He is a serious player—-he has raised millions of dollars, he is a potential winner in the Iowa caucuses, and young voters seem to be attracted to his avuncular quirkiness. Paul’s seeming “frankness” ought not allow him to be cleansed of the taint of having tolerated and promoted bigotry.

Whatever his views on the gold standard, the Fed or the deficit are irrelevant to his incendiary musings on race, religion, sexual orientation and related topics. Congressman Paul is an extremist who is legitimized every time he shares a stage with national leaders. 

His very presence seems to model for young people that intolerant views on race, religion and sexual orientation can be parsed from economic and other positions. America’s message for decades has been that bigotry taints a political figure and ought to lead to ignominy and ostracism.

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October 21, 2011 | 10:46 am

BILL STOUT AWARDS TO OLNEY, MORRISON AND MANTLE

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

Marc Cooper, Larry Mantle, Patt Morrison and Warren Olney

Earlier this week Community Advocates, in conjunction with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the Greater Los Angeles Press Club, KPCC 89.3 FM and KCRW, honored LA’s three finest broadcast journalists: Warren Olney, Patt Morrison and Larry Mantle. The three pillars of Los Angeles news had never before appeared on a program together.

They received the inaugural Bill Stout Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism named in memory of the groundbreaking television journalist who graced the Los Angeles airwaves for decades. The awards were presented by distinguished Angelenos: former Mayor Richard J. Riordan, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and former Times’ editor Bill Boyarsky.

Following the presentations, Morrison, Mantle and Olney participated in a panel discussion on the future of broadcast journalism moderated by USC Annenberg School of Journalism professor, Marc Cooper.

The entire proceedings will be on-line shortly.

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October 20, 2011 | 1:54 pm

The City Council’s Shameless Pander

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

Pander — to indulge somebody’s weaknesses or questionable wishes and tastes.

When Webster comes out with its next edition, it might have as an exemplar of the phenomenon the resolution recently introduced and co-authored by seven members of the Los Angeles City Council on the Occupy Los Angeles demonstration.

City Council members Alarcon, Rosendahl, Huizar, Koretz, Zine, Reyes and Garcetti introduced the resolution that offers the “SUPPORT (sic) [of the city of Los Angeles] for the continuation of the peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights carried out by ‘Occupy Los Angeles’ on the City Hall lawn.” Last week the Council unanimously (with three absences) adopted the statement of support.

This official endorsement of an amorphous cause whose purpose has yet to be defined might be ascribed to the electeds’ eagerness to identify with the underdog and those battered by economic hard times. A few demonstrators camp on the grounds of City Hall, rail against Wall Street and big banks, attract a few movie stars, and Messrs. Alarcon et al. figure they have nothing to lose — after all, who loves big banks?

But the three-page council resolution goes beyond just expressing sympathy for demonstrators at First and Main streets; it lauds Occupy Los Angeles as “fueled by Angelenos from all walks of life who have come together in a demonstration of solidarity with and support for the national movement started by the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests.” The resolution proceeds to cite the Web site of the Occupy Wall Street movement as an “overview of the goals and unifying principles of the ‘Occupy’ movement.”

Elected leaders who write our laws and hope to command our respect can’t facilely pander to the sentiment du jour and hope to retain their credibility. “Indulging” (Webster’s word) the demands of constituents without discriminating between what is legitimate and what is extreme or media hype betrays a troubling lack of principles.

The Council resolution, by citing the Occupy Wall Street resolution with approval, mindlessly invokes a manifesto that is, to be generous, bizarre; akin to junior high school level Marxism. An observer of the Wall Street demonstrators noted a striking resemblance to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2004 “Team America” movie, “in which a disgruntled and effusive Tim Robbins puppet complains that ‘the corporations sit there in their … in their corporation buildings, and … and, and see, they’re all corporation-y … and they make money.’ ”

It is a collection of angry accusations against corporations — who are uniformly accused of “place[ing] profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, [and who] run our governments.” “They” are accused of virtually every crime (from murder to poisoning) plaguing the world but for droughts in the Sahara. A sampling:

“They” have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

“They” have poisoned the food supply through negligence and undermining the farming system through monopolization.

“They” have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

“They” purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

“They” have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

“They” have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

That is not even to mention the troubling connection of the Occupy Wall Street folks to Adbusters magazine and its noisome history (see David Brooks’ Oct. 10 New York Times piece).

That our local political leaders might imply support for such conspiratorial and incendiary charges by endorsing broadly the Occupy movement is troubling —their specific citation of the Wall Street document’s paranoia is mind-boggling. Either they have staffs that don’t bother to fact check data included in documents that they sign, or even more disturbing, they actually believe this errant nonsense.

The latter may be the case, since even a cursory review of the Occupy Los Angeles Web site ought to give a politician pause about embracing this inchoate collection of paranoia. The Web site includes a section titled “Rothschild’s Illuminati Will Fail! Jesus for President” — which refers to a long-standing loony conspiracy theory with anti-Semitism at its heart — as well as a call to ban military recruiters from high school campuses, among other provocative themes. Certainly enough to give a mainstream politician pause about identifying with a view of the world that ultimately will view them as the enemy of the victimized “99%” too.

Occupy Los Angeles and its analogues are a collection of grievances with no particular political or rational coherence; they seem to have attracted both genuinely hurting folks, and political extremists and conspiracy-mongers. They have an undisputed right to express their concerns and their anger; that is beyond question.

But, the demonstrators must be parsed from the 10 members of the City Council who have cast their lot, and the reputation of this city, with this teeming bundle of populist anger that is simply a balm for feeling superior and pure. Leadership means more than pandering to the base from which one hopes future votes might come — it means separating moderates from extremists, rational advocates from screaming conspiracy theorists and serious critics from perpetual complainers. We desperately need leadership on L.A.’s City Council who can tell the difference. Its absence in this case is telling.

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September 28, 2011 | 3:07 pm

Dance with who brung you

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

The following op/ed appears on the Jewish Journal‘s opinion page today:

That Zev Yaroslavsky is the most important local elected Jewish official is beyond dispute. For over three decades he has been a voice of reason and courage for, to and in the Jewish community.

That three significant Jewish agencies would lend support to an effort to undermine Supervisor Yaroslavsky and his constituents is beyond comprehension.

Yet last week, in the middle of the fight over redrawing the county’s supervisorial districts for the next decade, three major Jewish organizations (American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, and Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles) unquestioningly bought the MALDEF/Gloria Molina/ACLU line of argument that the Latino community was insufficiently represented in electoral politics, business and media. The three organizations and their Latino colleagues issued a joint statement that they had came to a “consensus” that the logic of ethnic representation should prevail and trump all other concerns that normally effect the decisions on where to draw district lines (e.g. population balance, contiguity of cities, varying communities of interest, etc.).

Yesterday’s vote of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors fortunately rejected the push by Supervisor Molina and her allies to create a second majority Latino district ostensibly to comply with the Federal Voting Rights Act. The rationale for the Molina plan was that the failure to endorse it would “limit the rights of Latino voters.” The days’ long debate was held with the threat of a lawsuit hanging over the Board if it didn’t acquiesce to the proposed gerrymander and with occasional assertions of racism hurled at those who dissented from the Molina position.

It has been a contentious debate with the contiguity and strength of the Third Supervisorial district (presently represented by Zev Yaroslavsky) in some jeopardy. The Molina plan would have stretched the new Third from Sylmar to Huntington Park (presently the Third is most of north central LA) with much of the Jewish community divided between three districts. Additionally, it would have added to the isolation of the Asian-Pacific Islander community (a seldom discussed side effect).

An often ignored fact is that the Latino percentage of the county’s population has only increased by 3.2% over the past decade and the plan that was adopted on Tuesday was essentially what MALDEF had requested and the court had ordered in 1990.

Apparently, at the conclusion of a day-long retreat last week, Latino and Jewish “leaders” issued a five point statement—-four of the statements are the kind of milquetoast that is the usual fare at gatherings of this type (oppose anti-Semitism and anti-Latino sentiment, stand together to face and prevent vitriolic rhetoric, etc.)—-only the one on “fair representation” of Latinos has ramifications in the real world.

It is a measure of the paucity of Jewish institutional leadership in LA that these three major organizations would, either unwittingly or purposefully, sign on to a statement that undercuts the single most prominent local political leader in the Jewish community at a time when he was in a nasty confrontation to preserve the demographic and geographic integrity of the district in which a plurality, if not the vast majority, of LA’s Jewish population resides.  Their sin is compounded by their endorsing a worldview that is anathema to the Jewish community’s interests—-that proportional ethnic and racial representation is the measure of fairness.

The political ineptitude is mind boggling. The three leading Jewish organizations became a tool to be used against the community itself.

To buy into the Molina/MALDEF/ACLU assertions one would have to believe that population numbers alone constitute the measure of what a group’s presence “ought to be” in politics, business and the media——a worldview that has been rejected by thinking Jewish leaders for decades. We don’t believe in quotas—-not in politics, not in business not in the media!

In fact, Jewish leaders have not been alone in finding the Molina argument specious. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in the case of Cano v Davis, having to do with Congressional redistricting in Southern California in 2002 rejected nearly identical claims of Latino under-representation. The court denied the offensive view of the world that assumes the non-Latinos won’t vote for Latinos and therefore need special “majority minority” districts to succeed:

There are challenging questions regarding the applicability of voting rights doctrines developed in a fundamentally different context than the rapidly changing multi-racial and multi-ethnic community that is present day Southern California.
                                                    ****************
Latinos are, as a practical matter, a far more formidable political force than they were in the 1980’s.

The court rejected MALDEF’s assertions.

The three agencies seem to have been overly eager to find “consensus” in their day long retreat last week. They forgot whom they represent and the principles that have undergirded Jewish community relations efforts for decades—be honest, forthright and forthcoming but don’t forget who your constituents are.

Common ground is nice, but not if it undermines the very foundation on which your community stands. They managed to cut the ground out from under the very community and a leader they purport to represent at a time when they were most needed. They have done serious harm and owe the community an apology.

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September 23, 2011 | 4:58 pm

Justice is Done at UC Irvine

Posted by  David A. Lehrer

The following appears in today’s OC Register:

Today, the jury returned its verdict in the case of the “Irvine 11.” The case involved students who disrupted the speech of former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren at UC Irvine in February 2010. The jury properly found the students guilty of the disruption and of conspiracy to commit the disruption and issued an appropriate penalty.

Not surprisingly, leaders of the Muslim community and voices on the left are upset, claiming that a grave injustice has been done to the community and that the First Amendment rights of the 10 defendants have been abrogated

If one views the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w96UR79TBw ) of the speech, it is transparently clear that the university sponsors of the event committed to a dialogue with the large and hostile Muslim Student Union contingent that was in the room. The organizers repeatedly said there would be a question-and-answer session after the presentation and literally pleaded with the students to allow the ambassador’s speech to proceed.

As the court record and numerous documents make clear, the Muslim Student Union membership wanted to disrupt, not engage with, the ambassador. Prior to the lecture, the Muslim Student Union members signaled both their intention to disrupt and their contempt for the notion of civil dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

They asserted that, “Oren and his partners should only be granted a speakers platform in the International Criminal Court and should not be honored on our campus.” At a meeting of the MSU’s general assembly the goal of the protest was unambiguously declared to be “disrupt the whole event” with the aim to “shut [it] down with individual disruption.”

In the words of UCI Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, “They shouted him (Ambassador Oren) down.”

In the year and a half since the event, much silliness has been written about what the First Amendment means. Salam al Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee has argued that the tactics employed by the students, the “heckler’s veto,” is really just an “exercise in free speech ... these students had the courage and conscience to stand up against aggression, using peaceful means ... we cannot allow our educational institutions to be used as a platform to threaten and discourage students who choose to practice their First Amendment right.”

This week, the local office of the Council on American Islamic Relations claimed that the students were the victims of an “abuse of prosecutorial discretion” having been singled out because they were Muslim “in a growing anti-Muslim environment.” The CAIR spokesperson intimated that the suffering of Muslims is so grievous that normal, civil dialogue and discourse is out of the question: “the mode of expression these young men chose is essential to their freedom to express themselves,” – participating in a civil Q&A session is, apparently, out of the question; the only way they can appropriately express themselves is by shutting down their opponents.

As Prof. Chemerinsky, with his constitutional law scholar hat on, has rightly asserted, “There is no right to a heckler’s veto.”
UCI is an educational institution and these students (and many of their supporters) clearly need an education in free speech and the compromises it entails. Listening to and allowing the expression of ideas that one can’t abide is part of the bargain; silencing opponents – no matter how aggrieved one may feel – isn’t. To make our system works, it must be crystal clear that those who don’t play by the rules have to bear the consequences; if there are no consequences to squelching the rights of others, society becomes a cacophonous free-for-all and the loudest, most raucous, voices would be the only ones heard.

The conscious decision to disrupt and harass a guest speaker on a university campus, after repeated warnings, demanded a response from the university and the community that such conduct was simply not acceptable.

UC Irvine and the Orange County District Attorney deserve credit for the extra tutorial on the Constitution and the law that they gave to the Irvine 11.

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