This month, the UC Board of Regents will confirm Sadia Saifuddin as student regent for 2014-15. The Regents, inter alia, set educational policy for the 10 UC universities and appoint their senior officers. If confirmed, Saifuddin would represent almost 200,000 UC students.
Saifuddin is believed to be the first Muslim student nominated as regent. Let there be no mistake: it is right and laudable that a person of the Muslim faith should represent undergraduate UC students. But Saifuddin has chosen to align herself with radical organizations and as UC senator has promoted extremist and divisive agendas. Her nomination therefore does a disservice not only to students from the moderate, mainstream American Muslim community but to the UC student body as a whole.
Saifuddin has since a young age chosen to align herself with groups at the far right of the American Muslim community. She graduated from the Council on American Islamic Relations' (CAIR) Youth Leadership Program in “public speaking, media relations and governmental activism” in 2008 and has maintained close ties to CAIR since. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and Congress' appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, has repeatedly criticized CAIR for promoting radical Islam. The New York Times has reported that CAIR is largely funded by ultra-conservative Gulf regimes including Saudi-Arabia. Sam Harris has called CAIR “an Islamist public relations firm posing as a civil-rights lobby.” The Anti-Defamation League has even accused CAIR of racism and tacit support of Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, the FBI broke all of its ties with CAIR in 2009 for that reason. Accordingly, only 11.5% of American Muslims say that CAIR represents them. Despite this, Saifuddin has maintained intimate ties with CAIR to this day.
As student Senator, Saifuddin sponsored anti-Israel Boycott Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) initiatives on campus. BDS, which seeks to isolate Israel through cultural, economic and academic boycotts, has been criticized across the political spectrum as a hateful and dishonest[1] means of bringing about Israel's destruction. The Los Angeles City Council has forcefully condemned BDS and President Obama has pledged to oppose it. Ed Hussein of the Council on Foreign Relations has argued that BDS aims to hurt Israel rather than to help Palestinians. Indeed, Omar Barghouti, the Qatari-Egyptian founder of BDS, has admitted BDS' opposition to Israel's very existence. In fact, BDS measures of the kind that Saifuddin was promoting while senator may be illegal. A person having passionately advocated such radical and divisive policies as senator cannot be trusted to fairly represent all students as regent.
Most troubling, perhaps, is Saifuddin's reaction to UC Regents' efforts to improve campus climate and ensure that “students, regardless of their faith, encounter an atmosphere at the University of California that is conducive to their intellectual and personal growth.” Those efforts resulted in large part from the toxic atmosphere generated by BDS-type activities that Saiffudin celebrated. But in a strongly worded letter to UC President Mark Yudof, Saifuddin opposed the campus climate initiative for fear that it would impede anti-Israel activities. The letter was penned by CAIR, in Saifuddin's name.
Saifuddin has tightly aligned herself with radical groups. She has dedicated herself while senator to promoting extreme policies that have poisoned campus life for thousands and have been condemned as discriminatory. And she has opposed UC Regents' efforts to foster a more tolerant campus atmosphere because such efforts threaten anti-Israel propagandists. Is there no more fitting a candidate to represent the diverse UC student body?
The Regents can be contacted at the following:
Email: regentsoffice@ucop.edu
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY AND CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE REGENTS
1111 Franklin St., 12th floor
Oakland, CA 94607
fax: (510) 987-9224
http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/contact.html
