Editor, Daily Nexus,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. It seems that less than half a century after Dr. King gave his life in dedication to this noble credo, we students have forgotten the foundation for his words. It seems the pedagoguery and fear-mongering of one inept English major and former Marxist have illuminated the profound simplicity and bigotry with which we actually view the world. Or perhaps the recent slurs by my fellow students inciting hate and fear against Muslims on this campus and Islam in general are simply the unwarranted rants of an unsophisticated and ignorant few. Clearly, the latter must be the case, for the former would be a reality unacceptable to the institution that is the University of California. What has this institution devolved into? Were we not the standard-bearers for enlightened thinking? Were we not the impetus for positive change? Were we not the source for progress in this land? These are the questions we should be asking. We should not, as the educated elite, be demanding Muslims prove their separation from those who would bomb in the name of Islam, just as we should not demand Catholics prove their separation from the pedophilia within the church or ask Jews to prove their separation from the settlers in the West Bank.

I have no issue with the concerns of peoples if they are voiced in a manner contributing to discourse. But the recent slurs against an important faction of our community do not contribute anything but the reinforcement of stereotypes and fear of what is foreign. So let us, as the educated progressives of society, move past this sort of ill-conceived consternation and rally around our common existence and our shared humanity.