In the meanwhile, UC students are carpet bombed with emails such as this, from Students for Just Us in Palestine, urging us to write in:

Sample 1;

Dear Dean of Students,

As a citizen of California, I am asking you not charge the students who disrupted Michael Oren's speech the other night, using either the law or university policies. I do not believe they broke any laws, and charging these students seems to me to be asking for trouble - fanning the flames on an already divisive issue. Heckling is an exercise in free speech, and I would hate to live in a state where students cannot heckle a speaker without being arrested or suspended from school.

----
Sample 2:

Dear Chancellor Drake

I have recently seen the video of the disruption of Israeli ambassador's speech at a UCI event. I have also seen e-mails (that perhaps reached you) asking you to suspend or expel some students. May I request that you ignore such calls for extreme action?

I understand the frustration of the Political Science dept that hosted the event as well as the issue of campus discipline. However, we must see the event in context of a recent bitter war that has affected many people. The Gaza war has been cited for war crimes by the UN. 37 schools were destroyed and a university was bombed to ashes. Its natural that such a war deeply affects some students like no war since the Vietnam war when similar disruptions were common.

History has shown extreme reactions by university administrators as imprudent. In the long run, they reflecting poorly on the university. Lets remember that while disruptions were forgotten in the past, high handed reaction by the university administration lasted as a stigma.

Perhaps a solution looking ahead for such contentious issues is that UCI promotes events that present perspectives from both sides. It would be a lasting solution in comparison to handing out heavy punishments under pressure from any group. It would allow both sides to be represented - as important an issue as Freedom of Speech.

Respectfully

Sample 3:

I am really worried that freedom of expression will be curtailed should the university prosecute the students responsible. It may not be the most popular thing to do, yet it is the right thing. I agree that the ambassador had the right of freedom of speech as well; and this is where the freedom of speech for both sides must be tolerated. In this case, it was only the ambassador´s freedom of speech that was respected. Both must be respected.

This may sound as impossible. It is not. For this is how our founding fathers believed: no one should be muzzled for the sake of another.

Now that the students were muzzled by the university, UCI has the duty of not prosecuting them. If UCI does prosecute the students, the institution of learning is, in fact, prosecuting freedom of expression and association in such a campus. This would be a dire mistake. One that would set a precedent that should be avoided at all costs.

I urge you, as an alumni and civil libertarian, that you not prosecute those that support unpopular views. Remember, dissent makes America!

---
Sample 4:

It is grossly unjust to arrest students for having the courage to stand up and speak out against a government responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Non-violent protest and civil disobedience has played a profoundly instrumental role in the civil rights movement in America - a movement being celebrated this very month.

Michael Oren represents a state condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world, and is in violation of more U.N. General Assembly resolutions than any other. Such a state does not deserve honor from U.C. Irvine.

As a concerned citezen, I think it is completely outrageous that an educational institution threatens to punish it's students with suspension and expulsion for standing up for their principles and exercising their constitutional rights.

Good thing they don't have bullshit filters on the Irvine email servers or those emails would never get read.

Note that I have updated the post with a video being circulated by StandWithUs that shows the clearly coordinated nature of the disruption.

The students sending those emails should spend more time studying and less time on their loathsome extracurricular activities. They're full of grammatical errors. Some samples:

• As an alumni. Maybe the alumnus/alumnae has multiple personality disorder.
• Its natural that such a war and punish it's students.
• In the long run, they reflecting poorly

Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-Islamofascism
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-Hate
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-Genocide
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-Baby Killing
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-Honor Killing
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-IED
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-al Qada
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-hamass
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-hezbullah
Anti-PaleSWINE
- Anti-thuggery
Anti-PaleSWINE

The students who screamed their interruptions and the students who protest their arrest frame the incident as an issue about free speech, when in fact, it is not. It is, as my wise professor at Hampshire College has said, about academic principles and community norms. These student frame their misguided arguments this way in order to distort the plain facts of the incident and convince others that their platform is the only richeous one. They wish others to believe that to disagree with the ideas or the tactics of the Muslim Student Org at Irvine is to be morally defunct. This is hogwash, plain and simple. Rosa parks disrespected no one in her quest for equal rights. These students have not even come close to following in her footsteps.
-A Hampshire College Zionist

Micheal oren is is a war propagandist, what else expect from a former IDF?

The funney thing is his claims that the USA does more business with israel than any other Middle east nation including KSA.

I must admit that Ambassadore Micheal Oren is a ver proffesional person for two reasons.
1) he uses false numbers
2) he uses these false numbers in front of people that cant catch his propoganda.

my question is: Does this include billions of american tax payers dollars that go for militery and financial aid to ISrael?

My friend michel oren
The KSA may give shade and shelter to people , but unlike your tiny country it doesn't accept the shade of others!

Any one that left the confrence room saved himself from lies and propoganda bombardment.

Harry Truman famously said:

"I am sorry Gentleman, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents"

quote from the book: FDR meets Ibn Saud, by W.A.Eddy.

God willing, those blessed students and their children will constitute a hard number in American politics.
then indeed America will be America.A fair nation to its inhabitants and other nations.

arabian, In the civilized World, Freedom of Speech is not braying like a jackass at a conference.

Your fellow jackasses only prove the perception that arabs are low class thugs, incapable of engaging in debate.

arabian, since your fellow jackasses exercise their Freedom of Speech to scream and shout at a conference, is it also OK with you for me to exercise MY Freedom of Speech by drawing and displaying cartoons of your "prophet" muhammed/mohammed.

Since your buddies like to burn the flag of the US and Israel, is it OK with you for me to burn the flag of saudi arabia (the home of 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11), the one with the quote from the koran/quran printed on it?

Arabian, for heaven's sake what are you talking about with the plates? And what does it have to do with modern times besides being a really nasty attempt to smear Jews? It's just as bad as people attacking you for being a Muslim!

Furthermore - does this have anything to do with the fact that Freedom of Speech comes with a responsibility also?

Your right to free speech doesn't mean you have the right to impose your voice over that of another who's trying to speak, and your rights don't mean more than the rights of those who came to hear the speaker - especially at a university where people are trying to learn.

Also it's one thing to protest, another to disrupt, threaten and abuse.

This particular university is well known for intimidating Jewish students. That isn't right is it?

Also - Michael Oren is a great scholar. If you would listen to him, read his books, you might actually learn something.

But, I fear your ears are already closed and your mind made up. That's a shame because the other aspect of free speech is the ability we have to learn from other points of view.

In fact that's the whole point of a university isn't it?

To listen to others and maybe even modity your positions based on what you learn - that's that great gift of both the university and the open society.

Those who disrupt the opportunity of others to listen and learn are abusing them.

There are other ways to protest than trying to prevent people from speaking, listening and learning and the worst of it is, those who protested are the ones who could have learned the most from Ambassador Oren.

Instead, they just acted like bullies with closed minds.

Sophia AKBAR!