BYRON DE ARAKAL -- Between the Lines

Josh Ludmir has an appreciation for the nuances of tolerance. And if

his experiences over the past year are any indication, he just might be

one of the few folks in Newport Beach who do.

Ludmir is an 18-year-old Corona del Mar High School senior, and the

brains behind Tolerance Day, an all-day symposium scheduled for May 30 on

the high school’s campus. The confab -- which Ludmir hatched to fulfill

his senior-project requirements for graduation -- will expose Corona del

Mar students to six separate seminars on hate crime, internal and

external prejudice, interfaith relations and faith diversity.

“Corona del Mar is not a very diverse environment,” Ludmir told me.

“We live in a very homogenous community, and I wanted to get my peers to

think about their own prejudice and how they interact with people.”

That this handsome lad with jet-black hair -- Harvard-bound this fall

-- would be the flint behind a tolerance movement among his high school

brethren wasn’t readily apparent to me a week ago when I met him. That’s

because he was standing before the trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District, dishing up a reasoned and articulate affirmation of the

board’s controversial action to put the clamps on campus bullies under

the district’s zero-tolerance policy. In so doing, he displayed his own

conviction that the shenanigans of schoolyard thugs are not something he

tolerates.

Now shallow thinking will grind gears trying to decipher why a

proponent of tolerance would be advocating such a policy of absolute

intolerance. After all, adolescent ruffians have been prowling our

playgrounds for generations, which is our lame rationalization for

tolerating them. But Ludmir is smarter than that. For in his sharp

testimony before the trustees, he was drawing a subtle distinction

between intolerance of what people do and tolerance of who people are.

That’s pretty deft and insightful discernment from one so young. Yet

it is all the more remarkable in my book because the adults wielding the

approval power over Ludmir’s Tolerance Day event apparently don’t possess

the same wisdom.

Ludmir says he was inspired to produce his Tolerance Day project after

attending the “Walk In My Shoes” tolerance symposium sponsored by the

Orange County Human Relations Commission and UC Irvine.

“I found it inspiring,” he recalls, “that they were able to get people

of different cultural, ethnic, religious and sexual orientations to come

together at one time and in one place. I wanted to re-create that on our

campus.”

To fulfill his senior project requirement, Ludmir decided to

orchestrate his own tolerance symposium. His vision was to assemble small

groups of 50 students who would attend six rotating seminars featuring

various guest speakers. After the series of lectures, the students would

all assemble for a keynote address by a distinguished authority on

tolerance and interpersonal relations.

Ludmir says his original Tolerance Day lineup was to include a seminar

on homophobia led by a representative of People for Lesbians and Gays.

But the real headline-grabber was his original choice to deliver the

keynote address. Ludmir wanted T.J. Leyden, a former neo-Nazi skinhead

who is now a member of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Task Force Against

Hate.

While Ludmir says Corona del Mar High School administrators -- and

presumably the powers that be at district headquarters -- had long since

given him the go-ahead to produce his Tolerance Day symposium, he says

they would not OK Leyden’s proposed appearance or that of a gay and

lesbian representative.

Apparently, Ludmir was asking for too much tolerance.

Or perhaps not. Maybe Josh Ludmir’s Tolerance Day might have actually

promoted tolerance for who people are, even though we might be less

tolerant -- and even intolerant -- of what they do.

At least Ludmir knows the difference.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. Readers may reach him with news tips and comments via

e-mail at [email protected].