Sadia Saifuddin, a UC Berkeley senior and a member of the MSA and Students for Justice in Palestine, Muslim Brotherhood front groups that regularly sponsor “Israel Apartheid Weeks,” was recently nominated to become the University of California student regent for the 2014-15 academic year. In addition to sponsoring anti-Israel resolutions on campus including one calling for divestment from companies that do business with Israel, she is behind the vicious attack on Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and one of the lone defenders of Israel amongst faculty within the University of California system. The following is an open letter to the Regents of the University of California, urging them not to confirm Saifuddin when they convene next month.

The Regents of the University of California

1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor

Oakland, CA 94607

Dear Regent:

We are concerned by your nomination of Sadia Saifuddin, a leading figure in two organizations that conduct an annual hate campaign against the state of Israel and Jewish students on UC campuses to be a University of California student regent for 2014-15. Appointing Sadia Saifuddin to the Board of Regents would be an offense to the “Principles of Community” for UC Berkeley which are supposed to be core values in the UC system, and which calls on UC students to “ respect the differences as well as the commonalities that bring us together and call for civility and respect in our personal interactions.” How is it respectful for the organizations that Sadia Saifuddin represents to sponsor “Israeli Apartheid Weeks” which support terrorist organizations like Hamas and call for the destruction of the Jewish state?

Sadia Saifuddin has been an active participant in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement which eminent academics like Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz of Harvard have described as “anti-Semitic” and which call for the destruction of the Jewish state. Two student senators at UC Berkeley who voted against the divestment resolution that Sadia Saifuddin and her organizations support reported that they had received death threats.

Sadia Saifuddin is a leader of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine who have featured speakers that promote hate against Jews at multiple campuses in the UC system. Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, a leading figure in these organizations who has spoken at UCLA, UC Irvine and other UC campuses under the auspices of the MSA and SJP openly supports the terrorist organization Hamas, calls for a war against America and describes Jews “the new Nazis.” And Malik-Ali is not alone.

> Recently, Saifuddin has been behind the vicious attacks on Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz who is also a co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a grass-roots advocacy coalition dedicated to protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism on UC campuses.



The nomination of Sadia Saifuddin as the student regent is inappropriate, and if she were confirmed, it would set a dangerous precedent to encourage escalated anti-Semitism on campus, which is already a big problem in the UC system. We urge you to reconsider Saifuddin’s nomination and not to confirm her as a Regent next month.