Report:

The UCI Muslim Student Union endorses hate speech against Jews, and UCI administrators and local Jewish groups need to do a better job condemning it, according to a report released Tuesday by an independent community task force that investigated anti-Semitism at UCI.

“The acts of anti-Semitism are real and well-documented,” according to the group’s report. “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 group conducted more than 80 hours of interviews with dozens of Jewish and non-Jewish students, faculty, community members, and elected officials. Chancellor Michael Drake declined requests to participate in the investigation, school officials said.

Among the criticisms the group volleys at the university is that the faculty is afflicted with a “politically correct” orthodoxy that prevents it from condemning provocative speeches and actions at Muslim Student Union-sponsored events out of fear for appearing biased.

Efforts to reach the Muslim Student Union’s spokeswoman and president were unsuccessful Tuesday.

“We don’t want to proscribe speech, we don’t want [UCI] to enforce any kind of censorship, but we want to have a public discussion of what leaders should be saying and should be doing in the face of this outrage,” said task force member Jesse Rosenblum. “We’re asking the university to take a moral stance with American values.”

In February 2007, the Hillel Foundation of Orange County created a task force of Jewish community leaders to investigate anti-Semitism at the university following a number of clashes between Jewish and Muslim students in recent years sparked by controversial speakers and protests on both sides. The Hillel board of directors dropped the investigation over the summer, but the group decided to push on independently.

In a statement released to the media, Drake pointed to a U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights report released in December that says the university does not discriminate against Jews.