The University of California, Los Angeles settled a federal lawsuit this week with Jewish students who alleged that the university permitted antisemitic conduct during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampments on the campus, according to a settlement agreement shared by the university on Tuesday.

Yitzchok Frankel, then a second-year law student at UCLA, filed suit against the university in June 2024, claiming that he was “harassed and blocked from approaching the encampment by antisemitic activists, all with the assistance of UCLA security.” Two other Jewish UCLA students and a UCLA medical school professor later joined the suit. 

According to the settlement agreement, the university will be prohibited from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty and/or staff” from any UCLA programs or campus areas. Notably, the judgment stated that the prohibition also applies to the exclusion of Jewish UCLA affiliates “based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.” 

The agreement will remain in effect for 15 years. It follows a preliminary ruling last August stating that the university must allow Jewish students equal access to campus spaces and events.

“Today’s settlement reflects a critically important goal that we share with the plaintiffs: to foster a safe, secure and inclusive environment for all members of our community and ensure that there is no room for antisemitism anywhere on campus,” University of California Board of Regents Chair Janet Reilly said in a statement.

UCLA also agreed to pay each of the plaintiffs $50,000, and will cover $3.6 million of their legal fees. 

UCLA will contribute $2.33 million to several organizations fighting antisemitism on college campuses. Recipients include Hillel at UCLA, the Academic Engagement Network, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ Campus Impact Network, Chabad of UCLA, the Jewish Graduate Organization, the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus and The Film Collaborative, Inc., which will produce a short film about a former UCLA employee who is a Holocaust survivor.

The university also pledged to give $320,000 to UCLA’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, which was created by UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk in March. 

“It seems like it will be a signal to everyone, to not just the Jewish community but to everyone, that what happened and was allowed to happen to Jewish students was wrong, and the university understands it was wrong, and is acknowledging that it wants to fix what was wrong,” UCLA Hillel Executive Director Dan Gold said about the settlement. 

In March, the Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the case supporting Frankel, the other Jewish students and a Jewish professor who joined him in the suit. 

“The president, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Task Force know that every student must be free to attend school without being discriminated against on the basis of their race, religion or national origin,” DOJ senior counsel Leo Terrell, the chair of the federal antisemitism task force, said in March. 

The agreement comes as Frenk, who started at the university in January, has stated that countering antisemitism will be a priority of his tenure. 

“My position has been that, with all transparency and humility, we need to acknowledge that we have an antisemitism problem in universities. Denying it would be dishonest,” Frenk told Jewish Insider in May.