Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

You can term anything whatever you want, doesn't make it true. The "Jew Exclusion Zone" term was coined by the plaintiff in this case.

A lot of the college protesters are in fact Jewish. This is a fact the pro-Israel propaganda would rather you not know about. Otherwise, how could they claim "antisemitism" whenever you criticize the actions of the foreign country.

To add some more anec-data: I have a couple of Jewish colleagues. Several of them received death threats. This is not acceptable.

I don't particularly care what the cause is, physically barring students from entering an area of campus is bloody absurd.

And, for the record, I think it's willfully ignorant to pretend that Jews and non-jews are given equal amounts of leeway by all Palestine protesters. While the majority may be doing so in good faith, I've seen far too many people being viewed with suspicion for wearing Jewish traditional headware by supposedly unbiased activists to believe that anti-Semites aren't using the movement to get a free ride.

I agree that is unacceptable, however it's unclear whether your colleagues received death threats for supporting Palestine or supporting Israel.

From what I know, some received the death threats because they were Jewish, some because they supported Israel. One of them had the photos of the missing hostages up on the door. They were torn down repeatedly.

It's a strongly divisive issue. A number of the protestors on campus were Jewish and upset with the behaviour of factions in Israel. From my reading of material across several countries and various points of view a lot of death threats were thrown about at a great many people spanning all sides of the dispute.

Firstly, as others have noted, the claim that these protests were anti-Jewish is used by detractors to denounce the topic of the protests. There is absolutely zero evidence that Jews were targeted or excluded in any way.

Secondly, protests are escalatory by definition. If no one is listening to a protest, and absolutely no one is impacted, it will escalate until people listen.

You can denounce this form of protest - which I would argue is the only form of protest - from a high perch, but when push comes to shove, if it were your cause, you would do the exact same thing.

Look back at history, and you’ll see the same pattern in all high stakes college protests, from anti-war protests to anti-apartheid protests. The fact that you are either unaware or indifferent to this truth means the machine is working as intended.

https://epicenter.wcfia.harvard.edu/blog/student-protests-an...

My point is this: I do think that some universities gave the protestors way too much leeway. It clearly created a hostile work environment for some - Jewish, and I grant you also Muslim students. The universities responsibility is to keep that in check, and some failed badly. Some did better.

I also want to add my own observation, which might be biased: There was a clear, sizeable fraction of the protests that was beyond "pro-Palestine / anti-Israel's Palestine policy". There was celebration of Hamas and of the attack, especially in the first days.

In your opinion, should any university that punishes this alleged celebration of Hamas also crack down on any group or movement that is openly sympathetic towards Netanyahu / far-right factions in Israel? Just trying to figure out what consistent policy we’re meant to follow here.