My Diaspora Judaism

Jeruslem Post op-ed: Leaving this here because it pretty much sums me up as a proud Diaspora Jew.

Many of us have a spiritual connection to the land of Israel and a physical connection to the places we live. For Israelis, those two identities are one and the same. But believe it or not, they can coexist separately.

My example is clear enough. I have a deep spiritual, nationalistic and political connection with this place. But my connection to California – to its people, its unique body politick, to the unshakable beauty of the Sierra Nevada, and even the cultural chaos of Los Angeles where I grew up – runs just as deep.

Older work

BEST OF (IMHO):

The unique and daunting legal hurdles facing anybody (most recently Wikimedia) seeking to challenge the NSA in court.

Hundreds of years of Jewish history – and Jews – buried beneath a market in Lviv, Ukraine. A particularly thorny example of a culturally painful problem all over the region.

A monument sits on the only undisturbed spot where remains of 500 years of Lviv’s Jewish population lie.

The weird politics of religion, marriage and citizenship in Israel. Would-be converts (and yes, their souls) caught up in a Knesset debate.

More stories from Israel:

• I visited the headquarters of Temech Development, an employment firm and startup hub dedicated to creating business opportunities for ultra-Orthodox women in Jerusalem. Here’s the feature I wrote.

• After being repeatedly nagged by Israelis (including several strangers) to make aliya – which is to say move to Israel – I got sort of fed up. So I wrote this op-ed about how chutzpan – which is to say forward – that request is.

• I met Rabbi Elyse Winick on Ben Yehuda street to talk about the Birthright trip she leads for individuals with autism. That interview spoke for itself, I think.

• Here’s my look into the exploding Airbnb market in Israel – which is allowing notoriously cash-strapped Israelis to drum up some extra income, but also providing a commercial tool for short-term renters that seriously undercuts the hotel industry.

• Here are two pieces I wrote for the Post’s In Jerusalem magazine: one about the Jerusalem snow disaster that failed to happen and another about Israel’s innovative United Hatzalah rescue service.

• Here’s my coverage of the Spanish parliamentary debate before and after the lower house decided to vote to recognize a Palestinian state, with reporting from Herb Keinon and Tovah Lazaroff (I did the Spanish language reporting for the stories).

• Here’s an op-ed I wrote following a trip to the Ukraine about the problem of preserving Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe.

• I wrote an article about the attack in Har Nof recently that killed five, four while silently at prayer. It really shocked the community. It shocked Jerusalem and the world, but it was felt very badly at Har Nof.

Shula Ben-Zev offering coffee to her guests: a balcony full of international journalists who converged on Har Nof following the attack. AP and Artuz 2 were filming the temple from her balcony (somebody flew a drone over the crowd from there at some point). NPR was sitting on the front porch of her building. (my picture).

The crowd that gathered in front of Shula’s building, across from Kehilat Bnei Torah in Har Nof for the funeral service. (my picture)

• Here’s a lighter piece about an Israeli company that’s shaking up the beer world by beefing up beer-tap analytics in a serious way.

Some columns

Every once in a while my nostalgia overcomes me and I look through some of my old columns. I’ll try to keep posting them here when that happens.

• A column of mine that I wrote while with the Daily Bruin won an Associated College Press Pacemaker for Editorial Writing. You can find that column here.

• This is one I’m particularly proud of, outlining the alarmingly cozy relationship between UCLA and a pair of its donors.

• You can find loads more of my columns on the Daily Bruin website.

Graphics portfolio

These are some of the more creative graphics I’ve had a chance to build. Note that the counterpart to these is a whole bunch of necessary but tedious pie graphs, bar graphs, and other such tiresome things.

http://morningconsult.com/2015/04/breaking-down-ex-im-financing-by-house-financial-services-committee-districts/

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/CBS-New-settlement-building-in-West-Bank-down-by-62-percent-in-2014-383282

http://dailybruin.com/2014/02/10/ryan-nelson-equipping-police-with-lapel-cameras-is-safe-cost-effective/

http://dailybruin.com/2014/05/29/chloe-lew-asucla-must-repair-customer-loyalty-with-students-faculty/

A snow disaster that failed to materialize

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post Premium Zone and you can find more like it there. Because you’ve taken the pains to visit my blog, here it is. It published in the Jan. 14 edition of the Jerusalem Post’s In Jerusalem Magazine. Here’s a pdf download.

When I reached Tami Siboni by phone and asked her if it was a good time to talk, she responded that if I were to wait for a good time, I would never find one.

Siboni directs the Jerusalem Municipality department that oversees emergency services for homeless people. And nearly a week after the cold weather and sleet had rolled into the city, it was still keeping her and her employees extremely busy.

The large-scale destruction wrought by last year’s storm put the capital on edge. Both the municipality and residents braced for impact.

For Siboni and her staff, that meant expanding their shelter capacity from 16 to 40 people – by renting rooms at hotels across the city.

“It’s a lot – it’s more than double,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “And now we have a lot of work because we have to see and treat all these people, and see if they can get from the hotel or from the shelter to another place, not to the street again.”

Whereas for most Jerusalem residents the storm was a mere inconvenience, for inhabitants attempting to take shelter in abandoned structures or simply weathering it outdoors, it was life-threatening. As the municipality set up a situation room of utilities companies and emergency personnel leading up to the storm, Siboni’s team fanned out to search for those left in the cold.

They worked through the storm in rented 4×4 vehicles. While some refused their help (including, in some cases, mentally ill individuals), others took it gratefully.

In one case, Siboni said, social workers encountered a 71-year-old man who said he had purchased a plane ticket to Canada – he showed them the ticket – and had no money left to rent a room for the storm. They put him up in a hotel for the duration of the squall, and he left Monday under sunny skies.

“He was very grateful,” she said.

 

IN A DIFFERENT branch of the municipal government, Dr. Assaf Brill, who manages the city’s veterinary services, did his best to tend to Jerusalem’s vulnerable non-human residents.

“In extreme weather like we had last week, sick animals can have problems surviving,” Brill said. “They find places to hide, but they can get injured in very extreme weather if they are not healthy, and stray cats mostly are not very healthy.”

For the cats, at least, little can be done in the way of protection. The city impounds dogs as a matter of policy, but cats are only trapped if they’re sick, then released after they’re treated, Brill said. (Brill asked me to advise readers that, for this reason, many dogs impounded by the city are currently looking for homes.)

In fact, since fewer people were outdoors, the municipal veterinarians got fewer calls then normal to pick up sick cats during the storm – despite staying open 24/7 and retaining a 4×4 vehicle to navigate the treacherous streets, he said.

By contrast, those same icy streets led to a larger-than- normal number of medical aid calls from the city’s human residents.

Jerusalem’s emergency medical responders geared up for the task, bracing for the slips, falls, bumps, bruises and in particular, the traffic accidents that accompany frigid conditions.

“What scares me on the road is not the snow, it’s the drivers,” said Daniel Katzenstein, the international relations director for United Hatzalah, an emergency medical service that works in parallel with Magen David Adom.

In addition to the extra burden created by snow- and cold-related accidents, normal medical incidents tax the city’s emergency response system – as people are unable to navigate the slippery streets on their own.

“Many, many times, United Hatzalah doesn’t touch births, because people say, ‘OK honey, it’s time to go,’” noted Katzenstein, adding that because of the weather many people had no other way to reach the hospital.

To brace for these conditions, United Hatzalah contracted for extra 4x4s to reach regions impacted by snow and sleet.

It approached the icy roads with an “any means necessary” approach, going so far as to plant United Hatzalah volunteers in police vehicles to get to hard-to- reach areas like Mevaseret Zion.

“From day to day, the police have a lot to do,” said David Krispel, the organization’s CIO, who helped coordinate the response from its downtown headquarters. “Robberies and all that, going here and there. But even thieves don’t go out in the snow.”

But United Hatzalah’s effort in the inclement weather – dubbed Operation White Carpet – was more an exercise in emergency preparedness than emergency response.

“We learned from last year, we prepared,” said Katzenstein. “This was a trial snowstorm. We tested our systems.”

UNITED HATZALAH is not the only organization that learned from last year’s blizzard, which wreaked havoc by

downing trees across the capital.
Ora Ron and her volunteer group Ne’emanei Ilanot

BeYerushalayim (Guardians of the Trees of Jerusalem) lobbied the city to prune overgrown trees and prevent them from falling.

The volunteers also took matters into their own hands, raising funds privately and hiring gardeners to prune trees in some areas, Ron said. In the areas they covered, she said, no trees fell in either this year or last year’s tempest.

“It shows what volunteers can do with no money, no professional budget,” she said.

Ron described the city’s efforts at upkeep to be generally negligent, and reactive rather than proactive.

But properly spooked by last year, it seems, the municipality did take some precautions, trimming trees in some areas and urging residents to do the same on their own, where necessary.

For their part, residents were likewise spooked – stocking up on provisions before the storm rolled in and hunkering down in their homes. And with sleet and freezing rain far outstripping the snow, parents around the capital were busy creating indoor diversions for their children.

And they were not alone: Before the storm, caretakers at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo devised activities to stave off boredom for animals that would be cooped up for days due to the unseasonable weather, said zoological director Dr. Nili Avni-Magen.

For the most part, the zoo’s inhabitants weathered the rain-lashed weekend in indoor enclosures – “all the animals except the Israeli ones, they don’t need indoor facilities,” said Avin-Magen wryly.

For those that couldn’t be moved, like the crocodiles, generators were set up to make sure they wouldn’t suffer from cold.

But just as important as their physical health is their mental well-being. Avni-Magen said her team spends a lot of time coming up with “enrichment” activities – games and puzzles, largely – to keep the animals entertained. That effort was redoubled because of the weather.

“Before stormy days like we had this week, we sit for a few days, thinking or building if we need to, and preparing ourselves for the long days that we have to keep our animals busy indoors,” she said.

Like the kids, the critters found some respite from their confinement on Saturday morning, as the skies cleared up and some snow clung to the ground. The heartier animals – elephants and tigers, for example – were allowed outdoors for a brief romp in the snow, Avni- Magen said.

Lessons learned from last year and an abundance of preparedness measures proved crucial in battling the cold and sleet. Though snowmen may have been decidedly lackluster, the city managed to weather the storm not much worse for wear. •

Israel watchdog releases analysis of 7,000+ cabinet decisions under Netanyahu and Olmert

The Citizen’s Empowerment Center in Israel released the quantative study to inform voters ahead of March elections

 

“The main finding indicated that a greater share of government orders passed by the cabinet deal not with substantive or legislative issues but with bureaucratic ones – for instance, approving travel plans for MKs or transferring jurisdictions between ministries.”

 

Analysis of the last three cabinets (Eitan Arom)

JPost article:

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Watchdog-report-finds-bottleneck-in-cabinet-decisions-386317

Extended analysis: עשור של החלטות ממשלה – מחקר המרכז להעצמת האזרח

News roundup: Wednesday’s corruption scandal

By EITAN AROM

Even in a country constantly topping itself with new corruption scandals, Thursday’s lead Jerusalem Post headline, “Dozens of officials arrested in massive corruption probe,” marked a distinct escalation.

Indeed, Wednesday allegations of widespread bribery were unprecedented.

“A police official said he could not think of another corruption case involving public officials that was this broad in scope and involved so many people mutually covering for one another and conspiring together,” writes crime reporter Ben Hartman

Here’s a roundup of the Post’s coverage in Thursday’s paper.

Yisrael Beytenu deputy minister among 30 nabbed in massive corruption probe

The gist of the story is that the police are alleging the existence of a rats’ nest of quid-pro-quo bribery and political favors centered on national-religious party Yisrael Beytenu.

The allegations go far deeper than anyone expected when former Yisrael Beytenu tourism minister Stas Meseznikov was named the target of a bribery investigation in September.

In a sentence that reads like the pitch for a Hollywood political drama, Hartman reported that 30 officials were detained in connection with, “the pilfering of public funds through falsified documents, false government tenders and the funneling of millions of shekels through a series of nongovernmental organizations, in most of which [Yisrael Beytenu’s Deputy Interior Minister Fania] Kirschenbaum allegedly played a central or leading roll.”

Yisrael Beytenu remains defiant despite corruption probe

In the face of the allegations, which surfaced in the media after police lifted a gag order, party spokespeople aired accusations of their own, saying the police were conspiring against Yisrael Beytenu and its leader, Avigdor Liberman, Knesset reporter Lahav Harkov wrote.

A spokesperson for Liberman told Harkov, “Just like in the previous times, after the media noise quiets down, it will be clear that there is nothing behind the reports except for the desire to harm Yisrael Beytenu, which will not succeed.”

In speech, Liberman declares himself the ‘pragmatic national camp’

Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Liberman himself chose not to address the scandal at length.

Diplomatic reporter Herb Keinon writes, “At the outset of his 10-minute address, Liberman said he did not know anything about the swirling allegations concerning corruption in his Yisrael Beytenu party beyond what already had been reported in the press in the morning.”

No such thing as bad publicity for Yisrael Beytenu – until now?

In what may be the most surprising twist, Wednesday’s revelations may not sink Yisrael Beytenu’s election chances – and the opposite may in fact be true, Harkov wrote in her analysis in this morning’s paper.

“The theory behind criminal investigations boosting Yisrael Beytenu in the polls is that they awaken a sense of otherness and victimhood in its traditional voter base – immigrants from the former Soviet Union – since they are half of the party’s current MKs.
“The probes also attract right-wing voters who feel like the Left runs the country, the media, the police, etc., even though the Right has been in power for years,” she writes.

For more on the scandal as it emerges, follow Lahav Harkov on Twitter at @LahavHarkov, Ben Hartman at @BenHartman, and Herb Keinon at @HerbKeinon.

A fire fueled by hate unites a determined community in the Pat neighborhood

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post Premium Zone and you can find more like it there. Because you’ve taken the pains to visit my blog, here it is. It published in the Dec. 4 edition of the Jerusalem Post’s In Jerusalem Magazine.

By EITAN AROM

Little evidence remains of an arson attack Saturday that scorched a classroom complex in one of Israel’s few integrated Arab-Jewish schools.

Shortly after Arabic and Hebrew books were piled in the center of a classroom and set ablaze, a team from the Jerusalem Municipality quickly restored the floor, ceiling, walls and windows.

The only remaining indication of what happened is the smell of smoke – that, and a sharp heightening of solidarity, support and sudden media attention to a nearly unique instance of collaborative education, all unintended consequences of the arsonists’ attempt at intimidation.

“I guess they didn’t think about [that], but I guess they didn’t think about anything – other than interfering with this interaction between Jews and Arabs, trying to share their lives,” said Ronit Rosenthal, head of the parent-teacher association at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Center for Bilingual Education.

“Hatred is the main motive.”

As violence rages in the capital, the school in Jerusalem’s Pat neighborhood has become a focal point for racism towards the residents of city’s Arab areas, such as nearby Beit Safafa. Police arrested two 14-year-old boys Monday for posting signs such as one reading “Arabs are cancer” on the exterior walls.

Across the street, Jimmy Ben-Sadon, who owns a convenience store often frequented by the school’s pupils, pointed out white splotches on a Jerusalem stone wall where municipality workers had wiped away the words “Mavet le’aravim” (Death to Arabs), painted there during a spate of terror attacks last month.

But Saturday’s arson marks an escalation in the assaults against the school.

“It’s the first time that something bad happened inside the school.” Rosenthal said. “We’ve had graffiti like ‘mavet le’aravim’ in the past four or five years, but it’s the first time someone came inside and did real damage in the school, so it’s quite a shock. It’s much more scary than just graffiti outside, because all over Jerusalem you have ‘mavet le’aravim.’” Rosenthal said that when she heard about the blaze from one of the school’s principals (the high school and primary school are each headed by one Arab and one Israeli Jew), she immediately drove there “to see what was going on and what can I do to help.” Upon arriving, she found that many students, parents, teachers and graduates had gathered at the school. “People just came here because they felt like their home was burning,” she said. “It’s a second home for us.”

Rattled but determined not to be intimidated, Rosenthal said, “gathering together strengthened us,” tightening the bonds of an already close community.

Community members weren’t the only ones to respond. A roster of Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni visited the school the morning after the fire to denounce radicalism and take photos with students. Media outlets from around the world sent correspondents.

Hatem Mattar has a daughter in the 12th grade and another who has graduated. He lives nearby, in a home with “two entrances, one in Beit Safafa and one in Pat,” and was one of the first people at the scene when the fire broke out.

He said he did “27 or 28” media interviews between Saturday and Tuesday; the attack also invoked an influx of support from “a lot of people we couldn’t believe were supporting us.”

“They’re giving us the chance to prove we are right,” he said. “They came here, they sent us a lot of letters, a lot of telephone calls. It made me proud of what we’re doing.”

Meanwhile, the response from the neighborhood was to reaffirm their support. After the attack, residents hung a sign on the front door reading in Hebrew, “We’re ashamed of the racism and violence, and we’re really happy you’re in our neighborhood.”

Sadon, the store owner, said that in spite of the recent vandalism and the incidents that preceded it, “student feel comfortable” and neighbors remain in favor of the school.

“Not even one person said ‘Wow, how good that they did this,’” he noted. “Not one person said it – nobody,” he added in English for emphasis.

The school security guard who first apprehended the two teenagers on Monday before they were arrested by police said that though incidents of graffiti happen from time to time, in general relations with residents of the Pat neighborhood are amiable.

“We have here a good neighborhood,” he said, minutes after the arrest.

The number of students in integrated schools like the Hand in Hand Center is so minuscule that mixed Jewish and Arab schools are not listed in statistical abstracts from the Central Bureau of Statistics. The 1,200 students in the five campuses run by the Hand in Hand nonprofit across Israel – half of them at the Jerusalem campus – are part of a system that exists on the fringes of Israel’s education complex, largely split between Arab and Jewish schools.

Here, Hebrew and Arabic education happens literally side-by-side. Up until the sixth grade, classes are taught by both an Arab and a Jewish teacher, with the extra educators paid via philanthropy and a NIS 500 monthly parent fee, said communications coordinator Noa Yammer. Thereafter, classes are taught in either Hebrew or Arabic – except for history classes, where both Palestinian and Jewish narratives are taught.

Each campus is a homegrown effort, arising due to demand from local Jewish and Arab parents, Yammer said. Once a community displays interest, Hand in Hand hires a community organizer and secures support and funding from local authorities.

In this way, campuses have sprung up in Haifa, Jaffa and the Arab towns of Sakhnin in the Galilee and Kafr Kara in the Center.

Yammer noted that the nonprofit plans to open five to 10 more schools in the next decade.

At various points throughout the day, the sound of children playing mingles with the call of the muezzin from Beit Safafa, which sits on hills overlooking Pat.

In a kindergarten class at the Jerusalem campus on Tuesday, a teacher rapidly switched back and forth between Arabic and Hebrew, asking children to name words beginning with each letter of the Arabic alphabet.

Outside, a seventh-grade Hebrew class took place on a set of steps in a sunny courtyard. The seventh graders had given up their classroom, so the first graders would have a place to learn while the burnt classrooms were restored. •

Har Nof in the wake of an unspeakable act

This article is published in the Jerusalem Post Premium Zone and you can find more like it there. Because you’ve taken the pains to visit my blog, here it is. It published in the Nov. 21 edition of the Jerusalem Post’s In Jerusalem Magazine.

Jerusalemites stream into the Har Nof cul-de-sac where the attack happened. (My picture)

By Eitan Arom

News on the bus from Jerusalem’s city center to Har Nof Tuesday spread the old-fashioned way, by word of mouth: Such-and-such has a cousin who was hurt, so-and-so is in critical condition.

The brutal murders of four rabbis during their morning prayer sent shock waves of tragic stories and expressions of concern and grief reverberating through Har Nof’s religious community, which occupies a hilly outcrop on the western fringe of the capital .

A woman on the bus said someone she “knows well” was just that moment going into surgery. She described the residents of the religious community of Har Nof as “amazing people, righteous people.”

Instead of taking a right onto the long, curving streets of Har Nof, the bus on Tuesday afternoon veered abruptly off its normal path, continuing instead along a main thoroughfare. The commuters revolted, but the driver insisted the standard route was blocked off (it wasn’t, just choked with news vans).

On the walk up to the synagogue where the attack had taken place on Harav Shimon Agassi Street, children stood on balconies and in yards, watching passersby. School had been canceled – the combination of the killings and a strike by Arab bus drivers had made the logistics of getting there too difficult.

The adults paced in front of their congregations, sharing news over the phone. One told his partner on the other end of the line that one of those hurt had been “someone named Goldberg.”

A couple of hours later, a car drove onto Agassi Street, a speaker fastened to its roof mournfully chanting the names of victims. Among them was Rabbi Avraham Goldberg.

The massacre, which also claimed the life of a Druse police officer who arrived on the scene, generated a spate of graphic images that set fire to media locally and abroad. But here, the tales were of personal danger avoided, and of those who were not so lucky.

A teenager standing in the growing crowd in front of the Bnei Torah Synagogue described sitting in a lounge in the back of the synagogue during the attacks when he heard someone coming down the stairs towards it. He said they stopped and turned around. He speculated it might have been one of the terrorists.

One oft-repeated fact was the double tragedy for the family of one victim. Three years ago, the daughter of Rabbi Aryeh Kopinsky, slain Tuesday, died suddenly.

Neighborhood residents poured into Agassi Street over the course of the clear and sunny afternoon, greeting each other with embraces and whatever news they had.

Accompanying the grief over the deaths was frustration with the political and security situation that led to them. Dror Shamir, a sports therapist from Givatayim who traveled to Har Nof that morning to “be a part of it” and provide whatever comfort possible, said the violence in Jerusalem has ceased to be passing unrest and has instead become a pattern.

He condemned the government for not involving the military and instead leaving it up to the police, when “this is not their job.”

“You have people getting killed in the middle of the capital,” said a man f rom New York with a long, graying beard and watering eyes. “It’s insanity.”

Several blocks from the synagogue, a group of girls clad in Orthodox garb on the side of the street held a large Hebrew banner reading “We are at war.”

Some were still less conciliatory. As I walked through the park overlooking Agassi Street, a man arriving for the funeral noticed I was a journalist and asked, “What are you writing?” He told me, “Write that soon in Jebl Mukaber there will be a big attack.”
AS PEOPLE gathered for the funeral, police and synagogue officials needed to move a car parked in front of the main entrance that had belonged to one of the victims. A crowd of Orthodox men rapidly gathered around the beige mid-sized vehicle, now pockmarked with bullet holes.

Dozens of hands pressed down on the hood and roof, bouncing the car up and down to make it easier to maneuver, as one man held the wheel and others pushed from the back. A young boy with some of the baby teeth missing in his grin took it upon himself to direct the effort, chanting, “More! More! More!” Weaving through the crowd in front of the police line with a metal pot of hot water and a bowl of Turkish coffee, 18-year-old Avishai Illuz and 16-yearold Neriah Cohen offered coffee to police officers and ambulance technicians, most of whom turned them down graciously.

Journalists watched the happenings from a secondfloor balcony belonging to Shula Ben-Zev. She had seen that morning’s episode standing just outside her kitchen, from which she was now offering hot coffee to reporters.

Shula Ben-Zev offers coffee to the journalists camping out on her balcony. (My picture)

She said her husband, Shlomo Ben-Zev, regularly attends the prayer service that was attacked. On Tuesday morning, he awoke with a bad pain in his knee and a slight fever. Shula told him to stay home and pray there.

“Never in my life have I told him not to go pray, never,” she said.

Just as her husband began to pray at home, Shula heard gunshots and went to the balcony to see what was happening.

Outside the synagogue, across the street, a partially decapitated man was sitting on the street. Within minutes, the police arrived and fired on the terrorists.

She watched the whole scene play out from the balcony.

She said that if her husband had been there, his bad knee would have prevented him from running. She attributes his survival to nothing less than divine providence.

“I’m telling you, it’s a miracle,” she said. “It’s just before Hanukka, and my miracle came.”

New Regent

Richard Sherman, 61, of Pacific Palisades, has been appointed to the University of California Board of Regents. Sherman has been chief executive officer at the David Geffen Company since 1992. He was a partner at Breslauer Jacobson Rutman and Sherman from 1977 to 1992 and a senior accountant at Peat Marwick and Mitchell from 1973 to 1977. Sherman is a member of the Aviva Family and Children’s Services Board of Directors, the Geffen Playhouse Board of Directors and the David Geffen Foundation Board of Directors. He was a member of the Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc. Board of Directors from 2008 to 2013. Sherman earned a Master of Business Taxation degree from the University of Southern California. This position requires Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Sherman is a Democrat.

Another Hollywood executive appointed to the UC Board of Regents.