An antisemitism task force championed by UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk released a report on Thursday urging the university to intensify its crackdown on anti-Jewish harassment, as the school continues to be enmeshed in legal battles with the Trump administration. 

The 42-page set of recommendations, issued by the Initiative to Combat Antisemitism action group, suggested that UCLA set a deadline of 120 days to resolve disciplinary cases. It also said the university should more clearly define consequences for violations to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

The committee further urged UCLA to prevent faculty groups from using university resources or authority to express institutional support for anti-Zionism or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and to implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism into rule enforcement and policy formation. 

“The roadmap announced today turns our values into action. It makes clear that antisemitism and all other forms discrimination and bigotry have no place at UCLA,” said Frenk, who took over the school’s leadership last year. 

UCLA’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism was formed last year following recommendations of the 2024 Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. It is led by Stuart Gabriel, a professor in UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. 

“Our work at UCLA is building a strong foundation for a campus free of discrimination, and we hope our initiative can serve as a blueprint for colleges and universities nationwide as they seek to build more inclusive campuses,” Gabriel said. 

Daniel Gold, a member of the committee and executive director of UCLA Hillel, told Jewish Insider, “While initial work of our Initiative has concluded with the release of this important report, the work of everyone else at UCLA now begins to implement these changes and uphold the commitment towards a campus free of antisemitism.”

The report comes shortly after the school’s student government condemned a campus event featuring former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, labeling the speaker selection as “selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence” and “a troubling disregard for Palestinian life.” 

UC Regent Jay Sures told JI at the time that UCLA’s student government was “shortsighted, antisemitic or both,” and called its members “lunatics” for condemning Shem Tov’s appearance. Sures, who is Jewish, had his home vandalized last year by UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine, which was since banned from campus. 

The federal government has been in a monthslong legal battle with UCLA, including a February lawsuit alleging that the campus failed to protect Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff in accordance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination.  

The DOJ complaint alleges that since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, UCLA “has ignored, and continues to ignore, gross and repeated violations of viewpoint-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. Jewish and Israeli faculty have been physically threatened, had their classrooms disrupted, and had their workplaces papered with disturbing images.”

Last year, UCLA settled a lawsuit with Jewish students who alleged that the university permitted antisemitic conduct during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampments on the campus.

The new report does not specifically mention the Trump administration crackdown. 

The anti-Israel campus protest movement is facing “fear and exhaustion” amid the Trump administration’s crackdown, Mahmoud Khalil, who led demonstrations against Israel on Columbia University’s campus in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, said on Sunday at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.

“With the Biden administration, you protest because you feel you can move the needle a little bit,” said Khalil. “But with Trump, it’s like plain tyranny. They would not listen.” 

Khalil, who spoke three days after an attempted terrorist attack at a synagogue in Michigan, noted that “antisemitism is real in this country” and condemned “violence against civilians.” 

At the same time, he argued that “claims of antisemitism are being weaponized to silence any critique of the U.S. support to Israel.” 

“All mainstream Jewish organizations in this country are disregarding real antisemitism in the Republican Party and just protecting Israel,” continued Khalil. He spoke in an hourlong conversation “on the cost of dissent,” with The Guardian editor Betsy Reed and Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center For Constitutional Rights who was a lawyer for Khalil in his ongoing deportation proceedings.

SXSW, a weeklong festival that convenes around 300,000 guests, including film and media professionals, executives and politicians to discuss culture, technology and innovation, faced scrutiny from some Jewish leaders over its decision to platform Khalil. 

Greg Rosenbaum, SXSW senior vice president of programming, told the Austin American-Statesman that hosting the discussion does not mean the festival endorses Khalil’s views.

“While many people, including us, may strongly disagree with some of the views, the reality is that expressing some of those views in a country with free speech protections led him to be imprisoned,” said Rosenbaum. “That doesn’t mean we support what he says, but it does mean that there’s a broader conversation that’s worth having about speech, disagreement and the consequences people face for expressing controversial ideas.”

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, expressed dismay at this justification. “But platforms amplify voices — that’s the point,” he wrote on X prior to Khalil’s appearance. “Giving him this platform is a mistake.

Khalil was a key organizer of Columbia University’s anti-Israel encampment in April 2024, a two-week demonstration in the center of campus during Israel’s war in Gaza. The demonstration included several incidents of assault on Jewish students. Protesters used threatening and antisemitic slogans, including, “Go back to Poland”; signs with the Hamas symbol and the words “I’m with them”; and chants calling for Hamas attacks on Tel Aviv. 

Khalil later described the Oct. 7 attacks as “a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here. That was my interpretation of why Hamas did the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel,” he said in a New York Times interview.  

A former Columbia graduate student who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, Khalil was released in June from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he had been held for three months pending deportation proceedings. A federal appeals court ruled in January that Khalil could be rearrested. 

Asked on Sunday by Reed about his repeated refusal to denounce Hamas in a CNN interview shortly after being released from detention, Khalil still did not condemn the terrorist organization. Instead, he said he “would never answer such a question in a 20-second sound bite,” and argued that it was a “double standard” to be asked the question in the first place.   

“When Palestinians get asked this question, they are not interested in my views,” he said. “That question was asked a month after my release. If you say yes, maybe you are worth listening to and if not, then you’re discredited. That’s why I refused to answer that question. 

“You can never justify violence and Oct. 7 but to them you can never contextualize Oct. 7, [yet] Oct. 7 justifies everything that happened after. To me that’s a double standard. These are all deliberate attempts to silence people.”  

A bipartisan group of 23 senators introduced a resolution on Wednesday condemning the Iranian government for its crackdown on protesters and attempts to cut off internet access across the country.

The resolution highlights the massive scope of the crackdown, which some reports indicate has included more than 30,000 deaths and more than 40,000 arrests. It puts ultimate responsibility for these actions on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and notes that the regime has a long-standing pattern of such crackdowns against protesters and other dissidents, as well as religious minorities.

“Iranian civilians’ unprecedented nationwide protests and bravery, confronted with the regime’s unprecedented widespread extrajudicial killing of thousands and disruption of all electronic communication, have profoundly destabilized the country and constitute changed conditions in Iran,” the resolution reads, highlighting that the regime’s suppression and killing of protesters continues.

The resolution “strongly condemns” the Iranian government massacres, as well as its violations of Iranians’ human rights, and “commends the courage of the Iranian people.”

It calls on the Iranian government to hold open elections and “supports the calls of the Iranian people to bring human rights violators to justice.”

The resolution is led by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and co-sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), John Boozman (R-AR), Katie Britt (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Hoeven (R-ND), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Andy Kim (D-NJ) and Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Support for the resolution, which includes lawmakers from a wide political and ideological spectrum, highlights the widespread outrage on Capitol Hill at the Iranian government’s actions against Iranian civilians.

“The Iranian regime has a long record of threatening Americans and our allies while denying its own people the most basic freedoms,” Lankford said in a statement. “For weeks, security forces have fired live rounds into crowds, overwhelmed hospitals and morgues, and carried out mass arrests as Iranians gathered to assemble peacefully in protest. Innocent civilians, including children and bystanders, have been killed in the streets. The United States stands with the Iranian people in their pursuit of freedom and will continue to condemn the regime for its ongoing human rights abuses against its own citizens.”

Multiple Senate Republicans voiced support for President Donald Trump’s threat that the U.S. would intervene directly should the Iranian regime escalate its crackdown on the protests sweeping Iran — which appears to have already begun.

Trump warned in a post on his Truth Social platform last Friday that if Iran shoots “and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

The president renewed that threat on Thursday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” saying, “If they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots, they have lots of riots. If they do it, we’re going to hit them very hard.” But on Fox News’s “Hannity,” he said that “for the most part” the regime has not engaged in mass killings of protesters.

Asked on Thursday about the possibility of the U.S. helping the Iranian protesters, Vice President JD Vance expressed his support for the protesters but said he’d defer to Trump on what actions they would take. He also said the U.S. remains open to a “real negotiation” with Iran on its nuclear program.

“I’ll let the president speak to what we’re going to do in the future, but we certainly stand with anybody across the world, including the Iranian people, who are advocating for their rights,” he added.

Trump’s threat has been largely well-received by GOP lawmakers, but lawmakers from both parties have expressed support for the protesters generally. 

“To the people of Iran: We stand with you tonight,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News on Tuesday evening. “We stand for you taking back your country from the ayatollah, a religious Nazi who kills you and terrorizes the world,” he said, referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “We pray for you. We support you. Donald J. Trump is not Barack Obama. He has your back. … Help is on the way.”

“And to the ayatollah: You need to understand, if you keep killing your people who are demanding a better life, Donald J. Trump is gonna kill you. Change is coming to Iran. It’ll be the biggest change in the history of the Mideast to get rid of this Nazi regime.”

“President Trump has been very clear: If the ayatollah harms the protesters, the consequences would be catastrophically painful,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Jewish Insider. “The regime should understand that the president is deadly serious and will enjoy strong support in Congress.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI that “what the president said … [is] one of the things that we can do to help protect the Iranians who are protesting.”

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told JI that the U.S. should act “in any possible way to support the Iranian protesters” and said he’d back any efforts in Congress to do so. 

“That’s the real truth to power. They started to kill people there. Remember, they are now so desperate. They’re trying to offer people $7 a month. They’re that desperate,” Fetterman said. “How courageous those protesters are — and that’s a testament to the opportunities Israel and our strikes created — they inspire me. These are Iranian protesters. That is real courage and real — being willing to either get killed, beaten, tortured or disappeared, that’s what happens in true autocracies.”

Other senators spoke more broadly about offering U.S. support for the protesters without addressing direct intervention. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) noted that lawmakers haven’t engaged extensively about ways for Congress to support the protesters since returning from the holiday recess on Monday, but said it was important for them to express their support. “I’m open to any ideas. I think there’s been very little talk [among lawmakers] in specific terms,” Blumenthal told JI.

“We should speak out and support them in spirit,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t know how much we can do, practically speaking. I know the president has talked about some kind of measures if anyone is killed. I don’t know exactly what he has in mind, but we ought to be supporting the freedom fighters and brave protesters in any way we can.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said that the “biggest thing that we can do is actually have public officials speak out that our problem with Iran is not the people of Iran, it’s the Iranian regime. Our problem is the same problem the people of Iran have.”

“The regime oppresses them, prevents them from actually being [as] successful as they could be. The people of Iran [are] extremely well educated, extremely sharp people [and] could be a lot more prosperous than they are, but they’re trapped behind a regime that’s obsessed with terrorism, and so they’re holding back their entire country so they can fund Hezbollah,” Lankford said. “So people can’t get food, people can’t have a stable currency, because they want to fund terrorism. Until they have an ability to be able to pick new leaders that will actually represent their values, they’re stuck.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said it is “wonderful” to see the protests happening and that the U.S. “should support them diplomatically, technologically and in other ways, so that they can communicate.”

“But I think we should be very hesitant about expressing our willingness to use military force in yet another country for yet another reason,” Schiff added.

Other Democrats have also discouraged the use of U.S. military force in response to the protests.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said the U.S. should “continue to show attention” toward Iran, “making sure we’re not just losing track of everything because of Venezuela, and just continuing to show that we want to make sure that the regime doesn’t crack down brutally as they have in the past.”

“I think that that’s an important sign right now, as this is continuing on,” Kim continued.

The arrest on Monday of a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations was the latest front in the Trump administration’s closely scrutinized crackdown on foreign activists who have expressed sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested and detained by federal immigration officers on Monday after he appeared at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont, where he resides.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Mahdawi “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we generally will not comment on Department actions with respect to specific cases,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday.

Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on Monday calling his detention unlawful. “This case concerns the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech,” the petition said.    

Representatives for Columbia declined to comment on Mahdawi’s arrest, citing federal student privacy law.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration agents last month, Mahdawi has not yet been charged with a crime. Instead, he appears to have been detained on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to justify expelling foreigners who are seen as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security, which the petition also challenges.

Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered that Khalil can be deported, determining such arguments are sufficient grounds for his removal, in a decision that is expected to face further challenges.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled on Monday that Mahdawi must be held in the state and cannot be removed from the country for now. 

Mahdawi’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.    

Mahdawi had been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He helped to found Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which has expressed pro-Hamas rhetoric, among other student anti-Israel groups. 

For his part, Mahdawi, who moved to the U.S. from a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2014, called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” shortly after the attacks and reportedly helped to write a statement released by Columbia student groups on Oct. 14, 2023, claiming that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

He also appeared at a rally a month after the attack alongside Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that advocates for armed resistance against Israel. 

In an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi voiced sympathy for Hamas’ terror attacks.

“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize,” he said. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

On his Instagram page in August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted photos commemorating what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, describing him as a “fierce resistance fighter,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. 

“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.

While the petition filed by his legal team notes that he stepped back from such activism in March 2024, Mahdawi’s public statements drew intense scrutiny from several antisemitism watchdog groups that are pushing the Trump administration to target campus protest leaders.

Mahdawi, who was an undergraduate at Columbia University, was planning to pursue a master’s degree in the fall, according to the petition.

His arrest drew criticism on Monday from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who said in a statement that “he must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.”