100 UC Irvine faculty members asked the district attorney to drop charges against 11 radical Muslim students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
Here is the video from the ambassador’s speech last year:
Eleven students have been arrested during a raucous lecture at University of California, Irvine, where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren spoke about U.S.-Israel relations. The UCI Muslim Student Union issued an email condemning Oren’s appearance on campus. It was not clear if the arrested students were members of the group.
The LA Times Blog reported:
A group of 100 faculty members at UC Irvine signed a letter asking the Orange County district attorney to drop criminal charges against 11 Muslim students who disrupted a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
The group, including five deans, said the Muslim Student Union was wrong to disrupt the speech last year by Ambassador Michael Oren but that the students and the group had already been disciplined by the university.
Orange County prosecutors announced last week they were charging the students with two misdemeanor counts, including conspiracy to disrupt the speech. If convicted, each faces up to six months in jail.
The decision to charge the students, the faculty letter says, “sets a dangerous precedent for the use of the criminal law against nonviolent protests on campus.”
It goes on to argue the charges are harmful and divisive to the school and risk “undoing the healing process” after widespread debate erupted following the protest and the decision to temporarily suspend the group.
