For employment at UCLA cultural affairs commission, Jews need not apply

Antisemitism doesn’t bother Alicia Verdugo, in fact she’s a fan, but she is bothered, mightily, by Jewish students and doesn’t want any of them hired by the UCLA Cultural Affairs Commission.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Frontpage Magazine

How far has the antisemitic rot spread on American campuses?

This far: at UCLA, students who identified as Jews, or who were suspected of being Jews, were refused employment at the Cultural Affairs Commission of the Undergraduate Students Association Council.

More on this antisemitic discrimination can be found here:

“UCLA student culture group accused of hiring discrimination against Jews,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, December 4, 2024:

A petition alleging that the Cultural Affairs Commission of the University of California, Los Angeles Undergraduate Students Association Council actively avoided hiring Jews because of their assumed Zionist perspective was accepted by the USAC Judicial Board, according to a memorandum.

A preliminary hearing will be held on Tuesday for the petition filed by the editor-in-chief of Ha’Am, UCLA’s Jewish news magazine, Bella Brannon, on Monday against CAC Commissioner Alicia Verdugo.

According to Ha’Am, the petition contended that every student who revealed their Jewish identity in their applications for CAC staff was rejected.

One rejected applicant allegedly said they would need to observe Shabbat during the staff retreat, and another noted that as a Jew, one campus issue that was important to them was the right to express religious identity.

In an allegedly leaked internal communication published by Ha’Am, Verdugo allegedly warned subordinates that “lots of Zionists are applying – please do your research when you look at applicants, and I will also share a doc[ument] of [a] no-hire list during [the] retreat.”

In another supposed leaked document, CAC laid out its hiring policy as reserving the right “to remove any staff member who dispels anti-blackness, colorism, racism, white supremacy, Zionism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, ableism, and any/all other hateful/bigoted ideologies.”

Ha’Am noted that not only was the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people in their historic homeland singled out among political movements to be included among forms of discrimination, but antisemitism was not mentioned in the list.

The petition reportedly argued that the references to Zionism and the rejection patterns indicated that Jews were not hired because it was assumed that because they were Jewish, they were Zionists….

Apparently Alicia Verdugo is quite worried about such recently-invented pathologies as “colorism,” but as for the oldest hatred, the one with the most victims — within living memory, six million people were murdered because of it — antisemitism, she doesn’t even bother to list it among the eleven kinds of discrimination she does list.

Antisemitism doesn’t bother Alicia Verdugo, in fact she’s a fan, but she is bothered, mightily, by Jewish students and doesn’t want any of them hired by the UCLA Cultural Affairs Commission.

That she heads.

The logic of the antisemites such as Alicia Verdugo is this: 1) all Jews are Zionists 2) all Zionists are bad, 3) therefore all Jews are bad. Both the Major and Minor Premises of the syllogism are way off: not all Jews are Zionists, and Zionists (many of whom are not Jews) are not bad for supporting the simple desire and proven need of Jews to reclaim their ancestral homeland as a refuge for the most persecuted people in the history of humanity.

Verdugo didn’t want any critical media coverage of an event she organized at the CAC, protesting the university’s decision to prohibit pro-Palestinian encampments on campus.

So she kept all Jewish reporters out of the event. Sounds like discrimination to me.

Just two days after Hamas’ atrocities carried out on October 7, 2023, this same Alicia Verdugo, a one-woman bottomless well of anti-Israel hate, took that occasion not to denounce Hamas, but to proclaim that CAC would continue to be unwavering in its support for Palestinian “liberation.”

She did not mention at all, so as to exempt from that declared support, the 6,000 Hamas members who had just been engaged in the torture, rape, mutilation, and murder of 1,200 Israelis.

Instead, the CAC wanted to “honor the Palestinians on the front lines,” which sounds to me like a reference to those Hamas members on flatbed trucks and motorcycles who smashed into Israel on October 7.

And her declaration ended with the line “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which, rightly understood, is a call for the disappearance of Israel and its replacement by a 23rd Arab state.

The CAC Instagram post also recommended that followers read the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization’s Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine. PFLP is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Verdugo emphasized in the statement that the condemnation of Israel was not mutually exclusive with condemnations of antisemitism and assured that “Judaism is separate from the political movement of Zionism.”

Verdugo’s Instagram recommends that UCLA students read a pamphlet on Palestinian strategy put out by the PFLP, long designated as a foreign terrorist group by the State Department.

This recommendation could be interpreted as giving legitimacy to, and support for, the terror group, by helping to spread its propaganda. This may well violate American law.

Perhaps those lawyers no doubt working pro bono for Jewish students on the UCLA campus, could bring a charge against Alicia Verdugo of knowingly providing support for the PFLP, a designated terror group.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, that has for many months been investigating antisemitism on college campuses, will no doubt want to look into the antisemitic practices — the refusal to employ anyone suspected of being Jewish, the promotion of PLFP propaganda — by UCLA’s Cultural Affairs Commission, as directed by its head, Ms. Verdugo, who is about to learn a lesson that she won’t soon forget.

A world of woe awaits you, Alicia Verdugo. Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

AntisemitismCultural Affairs CommissionUCLA