The Department of Justice is suing the University of California system over alleged antisemitism against students following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
The UCLA-focused lawsuit is serving as a follow-up legal action to a complaint over the treatment of Israeli and Jewish staff at the university.
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students,” Dhillon added.
The complaint alleges that “UCLA failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli students” and went against Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“UCLA’s top administrators knew that armed demonstrators beat up Jews and physically prevented Jewish and Israeli students from attending class,” the complaint stated, noting that the school’s DEI office got “over one hundred complaints” related to “antisemitism and anti-Israeli hostility,” but were “routinely ignored.”
“In short, UCLA was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students and declined to take meaningful action to protect them. Its behavior exemplifies the deliberate indifference towards discrimination that Title VI prohibits,” the lawsuit continues.
A key focus of the lawsuit was the pro-Palestine encampment on the school’s campus, which lasted for roughly a week in the spring of 2024. Proponents of the UCLA encampment were seeking financial divestment from Israel, but the complaint notes how there were blatant antisemitic elements from the protest, including “F*** ALL Jews" being painted on a building.
Universities from coast-to-coast had encampment protests, which created nationwide safety concerns for Jewish students, as law enforcement had a broad range of responses.
"The University of California has consistently opposed calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel," the university system stated in an April 26, 2024, statement. "While the University affirms the right of our community members to express diverse viewpoints, a boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses."
The complaint not only highlights the tense environment created for students during that time, but it also alleges that pro-Palestine sentiments trickled into the classroom.
“Some faculty members ‘excused class attendance or assignments due to students or the faculty themselves participating in the encampment,” the lawsuit states.
“There were also reports of courses offering extra credit for attendance at the encampment or related events,’ in violation of UCLA policy prohibiting faculty from interrupting “progress of an academic course … for purposes of political indoctrination or discussion of matters unrelated to course content,” it continues.
On Tuesday afternoon, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk slammed the administration's legal action.
“Let me be direct: the suggestion that UCLA has been passive in the face of antisemitism is simply wrong. Combating antisemitism is a moral imperative — one rooted, for me, in personal history that makes indifference unthinkable. In the past year alone, we've taken numerous concrete actions to combat antisemitism," Frenk stated. "We recruited an associate vice chancellor for campus and community safety. We reorganized our Civil Rights Office. We appointed a Title VI officer. And we strengthened our policies to protect both free expression and the safety of every member of our community.”
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