The University of California, Los Angeles launched a new initiative Monday designed to combat antisemitism as the Trump administration scrutinizes anti-Israel activity at major U.S. academic institutions.
UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk announced an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” which aims to improve the school’s complaint system, enhance relevant training and education, enforce existing discrimination and harassment policies, and implement new rules to protect Jewish students.
UCLA Anderson School of Management Professor Stuart Gabriel is leading the “action group” tasked with implementing recommendations to combat antisemitism. The group will report directly to Frenk.
The Trump administration has intensified pressure on colleges and universities to safeguard Jewish students and their right to access an equal education. It is also investigating the University of California system to assess possible violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The Justice Department intends to determine “whether UC has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race, religion and national origin against its professors, staff and other employees by allowing an Antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses.”
On Monday, Education Department officials sent a warning letter to 60 leading academic institutions, including eight in California and four in the UC system, reminding them that they risk federal enforcement actions if they do not ensure that Jewish students are protected.
A UC system spokeswoman said the institution is “aware that a few campuses of the University of California system received letters from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reminding them of their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students.”
“We want to be clear: the University of California is unwavering in its commitment to combating antisemitism and protecting the civil rights of all our students, faculty, staff, and visitors,” UC spokeswoman Rachel Zaentz told the Washington Examiner. “We continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment for everyone in the university community.”
Over the weekend, anti-Israel activists received a clear signal that federal tolerance for antisemitic activity has limits when federal immigration authorities arrested Mahmoud Khalil. The Palestinian activist, who led Columbia University’s encampment movement last year, had his green card revoked last week due to his “activities aligned to Hamas.”
Members of UCLA’s Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Arab Racism condemned the university’s new initiative combating antisemitism in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that tied to the effort to Khalil’s arrest.
“We all know why this is being announced today,” said Gaye Johnson, an associate professor in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies and the co-chairwoman of the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim, and Anti-Arab Racism. “We know UCLA is looking at Columbia. We know UCLA has already been scrutinized for something we all find ridiculous … not having a strong enough response [to protests] even though our students were among the most brutalized of all the peaceful protesters across the country.”
UCLA students have organized multiple protests against Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state, including a vandalism incident last month at the home of Jewish University of California Regent Jay Sures.
Activists left red handprints on Sures’s walls, surrounded his wife’s car, and left a banner on his bushes that read, “Jay Sures you will pay until the day you die,” surrounded by antisemitic imagery of pigs wearing military caps. The UCLA groups that spearheaded the incident were suspended by the university.
ANTI-ISRAEL ACTIVISTS VANDALIZE JEWISH UC REGENT’S HOME WITH RED HANDPRINTS ON WALLS
During a press release explaining UCLA’s initiative combatting antisemitism Monday, Frenk wrote that during conversations with the university community, “I heard one point time and time again: We must double down on the efforts to combat antisemitism in our Bruin community.”
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” he added. “UCLA is at an inflection point. Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively.”
