UCF Official Tells Jewish Student to Pray Against Antisemitism
UCF's Head of DEI appears to think it's not her job to fight campus antisemitism.
At a impromptu meeting with Jewish students and their allies on June 28th, Dr. Guzman repeatedly denied doing too little to address campus antisemitism - going as far as to suggest that a Jewish student pray if they felt too unsafe on campus to remain a student at UCF.
"As a woman of faith - and I know we’re different faiths - I recommend you seriously pray before you decide to leave UCF, because things are a lot worse at other places, and at least we’re willing to have a conversation with you guys,” Guzman reportedly stated, as corroborated by two witnesses.
Dr. Guzman additionally accused Jewish students of failing to understand the disciplinary processes at UCF, stating “that’s why you feel like nothing is being done.” UCF Jewish Monitor has repeatedly documented multiple instances where these same disciplinary processes failed to redress obvious violations of UCF's own Code of Conduct. The Monitor knows that in the vast majority of these cases, either Dr. Guzman herself or someone under her purview was made aware of the incident.
In reference to an incident where a representative of a student antisemitic organization openly endorsed Hamas, Dr. Guzman bizarrely stated that UCF could not discipline anybody involved because the video evidence of the act was inadmissible, according to a witness. She appeared to have been referencing Florida’s wiretapping law, which requires all parties in a private conversation to consent to a recording before it can begin, except that the video was taped in a public space and nobody involved had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Dr. Guzman’s interpretation of the law would imply that recordings of public meetings are illegal without consent, which would be a very unorthodox interpretation. Making the situation even stranger is that Dr. Guzman had previously stated a different reason for UCF’s failure to discipline those involved.
According to witnesses of the conversation, Dr. Guzman became noticeably irate when Jewish students pointed out the natural progression from flyers promoting the murder of Jews to threats of mass shootings against Jews, which the student described as an escalation of violence. They reported that Dr. Guzman yelled “There’s no escalation of violence! Don’t call it that!” in reply to that comment. A student in the room pushed back against Dr. Guzman’s whitewash, stating that “when it starts with flyers and ends with a shooting threat… that’s an escalation of violence.”
Witnesses reported that Dr. Guzman also stated that there are “complaints on both sides” regarding student behavior. UCF Jewish Monitor has not seen any evidence of a Jewish student threatening to shoot up a group of Palestinians as of publication time.
Dr. Guzman’s comments fly in the face of clear and convincing evidence of UCF’s discrimination against Jewish students in multiple areas. Dr. Guzman’s inaction and complicity with campus antisemitism was previously detailed in our Profile about her.
We will keep you updated regarding the complicity of campus administrators in the creation of an unsafe environment for Jews. In the meantime, we will leave you with a quote from one of the students at the meeting: “Jewish and Israeli students deserve better than ‘we’re not worse.’”
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Update: Added date of the meeting.