Fabienne Roth

Fabienne Roth discriminated against a Jewish student as a member of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) in 2015. 

As of February 2020, Roth’s LinkedIn page said she was “Journal Launch Specialist” at Frontiers Media, based in Switzerland, since September 2019. It also said she worked there in two other roles since February 2018.

As of February 2020, Roth’s LinkedIn page said she graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and English Literature in 2016.

Discriminating Against a Jewish Student

On February 10, 2015, Roth was one of four members of the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) who voted [00:16:20] against a student’s appointment to USAC because she was Jewish. 

The student, Rachel Beyda, had been nominated to the council’s Judicial Board. At the February 10 USAC meeting, Roth asked [00:01:21] Beyda: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community… how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” 

Once Beyda left the room, the council debated “about whether her faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations… meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions that come before the board.” 

Roth said [00:08:02]: “My issue is… I think she’s pretty great. She’s smart, she like knows her stuff, she’s like probably going to be a really great lawyer. But like I’m not going to pretend this isn’t about conflict of interest… she’s part of a community, like that’s very invested in USAC and in very specific outcomes that judicial boards make decisions on every year and I can’t separate those two from being, like, not together…” 

After a faculty member interjected that “belonging to Jewish organizations was not a conflict of interest,” the students held a re-vote and unanimously voted to appoint Beyda to the board. 

The New York Times reported that the discussion, which was recorded in written minutes and captured on video, “seemed to echo the kind of questions, prejudices and tropes — particularly about divided loyalties — that have plagued Jews across the globe for centuries, students and Jewish leaders said.”

Roth and the other three council members who had voted against Beyda submitted a collective letter to the Daily Bruin apologizing to the Jewish community.

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fabienne.a.roth [Deleted]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/fabienne_roth [Private]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/fabienne-roth