The University of California has resolved nine federal civil rights complaints of antisemitism and bias against Muslim, Arab and pro-Palestinian students stemming from Israel-Hamas war protests at five UC campuses, the U.S. Department of Education announced Friday.
The complaints alleged that UCLA and UCs Santa Barbara, San Diego, Davis and Santa Cruz failed to respond promptly or effectively to harassment of their students based on their actual or perceived national origin and that some of the UC campuses subjected these students to different treatment in regard to access to university programs.
UCLA was a hot spot, receiving more than 150 bias complaints about protests and rallies in October and November 2023, as well as reports related to a large pro-Palestinian encampment on campus over the spring. The reported incidents included chants of “death to Israel” and “intifada now” and complaints that checkpoints at the encampment allegedly denied entry to Jewish students who refused to denounce Zionism.
Muslim, Palestinian American and pro-Palestinian students also reported cases of unwanted filming, doxxing and being followed on and near UCLA campus by other students and members of the public. Many of the members of the pro-Palestinian encampment were Jewish students who identified as anti-Zionist.
Violence at the UCLA encampment against Jewish, Israeli American and pro-Palestinian protesters was “of particular concern,” the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said.
Officials noted allegations that UCLA, through its campus police, failed to protect Palestinian, Arab and/or pro-Palestinian student protesters while they were violently attacked, injured and intimidated by counter-protesters, including third parties. An independent review released last month by the UC Office of the President found a “chaotic” response by both administrators and campus police that resulted in a failure to protect students.
UC has agreed to take stronger action to review reports of bias incidents, share campus responses with the federal civil rights office and obtain the office’s approval for any revisions to university policies related to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
As part of the agreement, each campus must reexamine all harassment complaints from the last two academic years and evaluate whether more needs to be done.
On its website, the Department of Education broadly defines the harassment it investigates, including “slurs, taunts, stereotypes, or name-calling, as well as racially-motivated physical threats, attacks, or other hateful conduct.”
The laws the Office for Civil Rights enforces do not specifically address religious discrimination, but the department said it investigates “complaints that students were subjected to ethnic or ancestral slurs; harassed for how they look, dress, or speak in ways linked to ethnicity or ancestry (e.g. skin color, religious attire, language spoken); or stereotyped based on perceived shared ancestral or ethnic characteristics.”
The department cites Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh people as among the groups that can experience such harassment.
UC also agreed to train employees, public safety personnel and campus police officers responsible for handling such complaints.
“The University of California unequivocally rejects antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of harassment and discrimination,” UC said in a statement.
“The University is pleased to share that it has entered a voluntary resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), furthering UC’s commitment to cultivate a respectful and welcoming environment free from discrimination and harassment based on national origin. This agreement builds upon the university’s ongoing efforts to combat discrimination and harassment based on national origin, including Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim ancestry, and/or association with these actual or perceived identities.”
Kira Stein, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, leads a university-wide Jewish faculty group that has been critical of the administrative response to protests. She said the agreement was a “golden opportunity” for the university system.
The Department of Education “is presenting the UC Regents with a golden opportunity to start addressing the civil rights challenges Jewish students and faculty have encountered on their campuses,” said Stein, who chairs the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group. “It’s imperative they approach this with greater urgency and respond more swiftly than their campus chancellors — delays will only worsen the situation.”
The agreement with the university follows similar pacts signed this year by Brown University and the University of Illinois, which also faced federal civil rights complaints tied to protests prompted by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza. Dozens of other complaints stemming from campus protests and encampments across the U.S. are still open.
Although UC has come to an agreement with the federal government on the civil rights complaints, it still faces additional protest-related legal challenges from students and staff. Several center on UCLA.
In October, a group of pro-Palestinian UCLA students and faculty members filed a lawsuit in state court, alleging that the university violated their free speech rights when it cleared the spring encampment and wrongly subjected them to disciplinary measures over protesting. The protesters, represented by the ACLU of Southern California, have asked the court to bar UCLA police from declaring an “unlawful assembly” when demonstrations violate only university policy — limiting the order to acts of violence or if demonstrators appear to be breaking criminal laws.
In August, a federal judge in a separate case ordered UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students, three of whom alleged that the university enabled encampment protesters to block Jews from parts of campus. That case is scheduled for trial in late 2025.
