We may never know what motivated Faisal Mohammad's stabbing spree at UC Merced. We do know that whatever hatred filled his heart found expression in the brutal stabbing of innocent victims.
We also know that the freshman's rampage and the massive tragedy in San Bernardino, where one of the assailants did his undergraduate and graduate work at California State University as recently as 2014, have caused students across California to feel vulnerable.
This is particularly true for many Jewish students who are struggling with an escalation of hateful anti-Semitic acts at UC. This past fall, swastikas and "F--- Jews" were carved into multiple cars, and a female Jewish student was followed and harassed by a male member of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine. Last year, swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity, and "grout out the Jews" defaced the Hillel House at UC Davis; "Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber" was scrawled at UC Berkeley; fliers blaming Jews for 9/11 were posted at UC Santa Barbara, and a candidate for the UCLA student judicial board was challenged that her Jewishness rendered her ineligible.
This article was originally published in the San Jose Mercury News