Breaking News:

There is anti-Semitism on UCI’s campus and students and administrators may not know how to deal with it, the spokesman for a community task force looking into the issue said today.

“The acts of anti-Semitism are real and well documented,” the group’s report read. “Jewish students have been harassed. Hate speech has been unrelenting. There is no indication that the university is at all concerned about the disconnect between campus values and the values of the greater society.”

The report urges college-bound Jewish students to enroll elsewhere “until tangible changes are made.”

The task force’s assertions center around the Muslim Student Union and its protests and controversial speakers. For years, the group, along with Jewish groups, has brought polarizing speakers to the campus to represent both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate.

The independent task force of Jewish community leaders released its findings after nearly a year of interviews and investigation. The task force was formed in February 2007 by the Hillel Foundation of Orange County, which subsequently distanced itself from the task force over the summer, saying the foundation’s core values had changed.

The group reviewed a slew of Muslim Student Union-hosted speaker events and protests on campus in recent years, among other incidents, officials said. Task force members interviewed Jewish and non-Jewish students, teachers, politicians and community members alike for the investigation.

The report comes two months after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued its own report saying the university does not discriminate against Jewish students.

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.