Building on a monthslong battle between the Trump administration and the University of California, the Department of Justice filed a suit on Tuesday against the university system, alleging that its Los Angeles 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 81-page DOJ complaint, filed in California’s Central District, 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.”

“Numerous Jewish and Israeli employees have been forced to take leave, work from home, and even leave their jobs to avoid the hostile work environment,” the suit alleges. 

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor of strategic communications, said the university has “taken concrete and significant steps to strengthen campus safety, enforce policies, and combat antisemitism in a systemic and sustained manner.”

Osako said those efforts have included hiring a Title VI/Title VII officer “to ensure professionalized oversight and accountability” and strengthened time, place, and manner policies “to protect both free expression and campus operations.”  

The federal suit is a significant escalation of the government’s crackdown on what it alleges are failures across the University of California system to address antisemitism. Multiple civil rights investigations have been launched into the system and individual campuses.

The lawsuit comes seven months after UCLA settled a federal lawsuit with Jewish students who alleged that the university permitted antisemitic conduct during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampments on the campus.

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. As part of the settlement, UCLA agreed to provide support to community organizations engaged in combating antisemitism.

Last year, the Trump administration sought more than $1 billion and a range of concessions from the university in order to restore funding frozen over alleged antisemitism, which was never paid — even after some research money was restored. 

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled in November in a preliminary injunction that the Trump administration could not fine the University of California or cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other types of discrimination.  

The government did not offer a specific financial demand of UCLA in Tuesday’s lawsuit, but it suggested “awarding damages” to “aggrieved Jewish and Israeli UCLA employees.”

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. 

When the leaders of Georgetown University, the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley sat down on Tuesday morning to testify at a congressional hearing about antisemitism, they clearly came prepared, having learned the lessons of the now-infamous December 2023 hearing with the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, each of whom refused to outright say that calls for genocide violated their schools’ codes of conduct. 

Georgetown interim President Robert Groves, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez and UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons were all quick to denounce antisemitism and even anti-Zionism at Tuesday’s House Education and Workforce Committee hearing examining the role of faculty, funding and ideology in campus antisemitism. 

But while the university administrators readily criticized antisemitism broadly, they struggled to apply that commitment directly to their field of academia. 

Lyons in particular offered a revealing look at the gulf between a university’s stated values and its difficulty in carrying them out. 

He was asked to account for the promotion of Ussama Makdisi, a Berkeley history professor who described the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks as “resistance” and later wrote on X that he “could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7.” Why, Lyons was asked by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and Lisa McClain (R-MI), did Berkeley announce last September that Makdisi had been named the university’s inaugural chair of Palestinian and Arab studies? 

Lyons first defended Makdisi: “Ussama Makdisi, Professor Makdisi, is a fine scholar. He was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards,” Lyons said.  

Later, when McClain followed Fine’s line of questioning, Lyons went to great lengths to avoid criticizing Makdisi. 

“I want to separate the phrase from the person. If I heard some other person —” he said, before McClain cut him off. What, McClain asked, did Lyons think Makdisi meant with his tweet?

For five seconds, Lyons sat in silence. 

“I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on Oct. 7,” he replied slowly. 

He shared that he had spoken to Makdisi about the social media post. Pressed to share what the conversation was like, Lyons returned to an earlier line: “He’s a fine scholar,” Lyons said. 

Lyons, like Matos Rodriguez and Groves, acknowledged that antisemitism exists at his campus. But they all struggled to reckon with what Republican lawmakers alleged was an explosion in antisemitism at each of the three schools after Oct. 7. 

“I believe that most Jewish students feel safe on our campus,” Lyons said, though he also said that he knows some do not feel safe. When asked why they may not feel safe, he demurred. 

“Well, I think there are Jewish people that don’t feel safe in lots of parts —” he said, cut off again by McClain, who asked him to speak specifically about UC Berkeley. 

“I think there is antisemitism in society,” Lyons said, before he was cut off again. 

Lyons repeatedly attempted to make the same point: “I do believe that public universities are reflections of society, and I believe the antisemitism in society is present on our campus,” Lyons said. Asked whether the actions that he takes or that his faculty take can influence the campus environment, he said yes. McClain accused him of “avoiding the question,” and asked: Would he commit to act to make sure all Jewish students and all students feel safe?

“I’m committing to striving to reach that goal,” said Lyons.

Each of the university leaders was asked, at different occasions, to account for faculty members who had shared antisemitic or pro-Hamas rhetoric. Matos Rodriguez, the CUNY chancellor, did not deny that the New York City university system employs antisemitic faculty, though he did not specify whether any action would be taken against them.

“We have faculty that might conduct themselves in antisemitic behavior, and we have no tolerance for it, and we’re clear about the expectations to follow all our rules and policies,” Matos Rodriguez said. “If any individual breaks those rules, they will be investigated, and the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken if warranted.” 

Presented with the cases of two faculty members who had shared pro-Hamas content on social media, Matos Rodriguez condemned Hamas, but did not say specifically if their rhetoric violated codes of conduct or led to any consequences.

“I have been very clear that Hamas is a horrible terrorist organization, and we have no tolerance at the City University of New York for anyone who would embrace that support of Hamas,” said Matos Rodriguez. “I clearly condemn the statements, and it’s been my testimony here, and our practice, that if any member of the City University community violates our policies and our code of conduct, we will conduct an investigation, and if discipline is warranted, we will take it, and we will not hesitate to do that, and we have done so.”

Groves, Georgetown’s president, shared early in the hearing that the university had taken action against Jonathan Brown, a tenured professor who faced criticism last month for a tweet calling for Iran to conduct a “symbolic strike” on a U.S. military base after Washington struck Iranian nuclear sites. Brown is no longer the chair of the university’s Arabic and Islamic studies program, Groves said, and he has been placed on leave pending an investigation. 

Groves, who faced several questions about Georgetown’s ties to Qatar, pledged to commit to disclosing every dollar that Georgetown receives from foreign sources. 

At the same time, he stood by Georgetown’s decision to award Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of the Qatari emir, with the university’s president’s medal in April. Sheikha Moza has a history of incendiary anti-Israel commentary on social media, including several posts praising the Oct. 7 attacks and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the violence. Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) asked Groves why Georgetown gave her a medal, given those posts.

The medal was awarded because of her “decades-long work for educating, getting access to education, to the poorest children around the world,” Groves said. 

“I don’t support that tweet,” he added, when asked if Georgetown’s values include calls for the destruction of Israel. “That tweet is not consistent with Georgetown policy. We honored her for her decades of work in access to education to the poorest children of the world.” Georgetown would not consider revoking the award, he added.

Groves’ stated commitment to transparency about its sources of foreign funding — the university’s 20-year relationship with Qatar is well-documented and oft-criticized — stood in contrast to Lyons’ response to questions about whether he would disclose all foreign funding to Berkeley. 

“As a public university, I am not ready to commit to that on the fly. There are different donors to the university who request anonymity,” Lyons said. “What I’d be very, very happy to be very transparent about is exactly what is our process for vetting those things. We say no to a lot of foreign money. I promise you that.”

He would not give an example of foreign money he had rejected. 

Democrats at the hearing mostly used their time to criticize President Donald Trump’s approach to higher education, and his funding cuts that are affecting scientific and medical research at top universities. They highlighted his administration’s massive cuts to the Education Department, including at the Office for Civil Rights, the division tasked with investigating civil rights violations — including antisemitism — at American schools and universities.

A University of California, San Francisco, medical school professor whom Jewish colleagues allege has routinely posted antisemitic content on social media during the Gaza war has been fired by the university, more than a year after concerns about her behavior first surfaced. 

Dr. Rupa Marya worked at UCSF for 23 years, beginning as a resident before becoming a professor of internal medicine and a regular lecturer on social justice topics. With an active social media presence, Marya began posting about Israel’s war against Hamas soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. Her posts included attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli colleagues and students. 

In a federal lawsuit filed against UCSF this week, Marya alleged that the university violated her constitutional free speech protections by firing her in a retaliatory fashion over posts published on her personal account, which Marya claimed the university wilfully misconstrued. She asserted that “neither her views nor her posts are antisemitic.” 

In January 2024, Marya published a blog post attacking by name a Jewish colleague who had urged a hospital antiracism task force not to issue a statement calling for a ceasefire, saying it would empower Hamas. She had been criticizing him on social media for weeks. (Marya’s account on X, once a very active home for her commentary, has since been disabled.) 

Marya also published a thread on X arguing that Zionism should not be present in medicine, calling it a “structural impediment to health equity.” 

“There are so many Jewish doctors who don’t espouse an ideology of supremacism and justification of land theft, apartheid and genocide. They are not the issue here,” she wrote in January 2024. “The issue is Zionist doctors who will sit in an ‘antiracism task force’ meeting” — a clear reference to the doctor she later named in her blog — “and try to stop brown doctors who want to issue a Ceasefire statement by saying that a ceasefire would be a bad thing (read: let’s keep killing brown people in Gaza).” 

This post from Marya earned a rebuke by the university — UCSF posted on social media soon after about a “tired and familiar racist conspiracy theory … stating that ‘Zionist’ doctors are a threat to Arab, Palestinian, South Asian, Muslim and Black patients, as well as the U.S. health system.” The university called it a “sweeping, baseless and racist generalization” that “must be condemned,” and identified the trope as antisemitism. 

In September 2024, Marya announced that she had been suspended from her faculty position. The news came after she had raised concerns about an Israeli student attending the medical school. Students are “asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating into medical school in CA,” she wrote. “How do we address this in our professional ranks?” She was fired in May, nine months after her suspension. 

A UCSF spokesperson declined to comment.

After Columbia interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation on Friday, several of the university’s congressional antagonists quickly jumped in to criticize Armstrong’s successor, former ABC News journalist Claire Shipman, the co-chair of Columbia’s board. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the former chair of the House Education Committee, said that Shipman’s tenure as interim president would be “short-lived.” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), freshly returned to Capitol Hill after President Donald Trump withdrew her nomination to be U.N. ambassador, called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” 

But a different reaction came from the White House: subtle praise. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force called Columbia’s Friday night actions an “important step,” which an administration official confirmed to Jewish Insider was in reaction to Shipman’s appointment. News reports last week indicated that days before her resignation, Armstrong had promised the Trump administration she would enforce a mask ban on campus while telling faculty privately that she would not. 

On Columbia’s campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.

“We’re in desperate need of strong leadership willing to make the deep-seated reforms necessary to save the university at this pivotal moment,” said Eden Yadegar, a senior studying Middle East studies and modern Jewish studies who last year testified before Congress about the antisemitism she has faced on Columbia’s campus. Yadegar declined to elaborate on whether she believes Shipman will bring about those reforms. 

Lishi Baker, a junior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the campus Israel advocacy group Aryeh, also said he would take a wait-and-see approach to Shipman. Baker expects university leadership to bring “deep structural and cultural changes at Columbia [that] are necessary to restore our campus to its primary mission of teaching, learning, and research,” he said. 

“Some of these changes can happen immediately and some will take longer,” Baker told JI. 

The university’s Hillel director, Brian Cohen, praised Shipman in a statement to JI, saying that she “is deeply committed to Columbia University and has consistently demonstrated concern for the well-being and needs of its Jewish community.”

“I look forward to working with her in this new role,” Cohen said.    

Major Jewish organizations have largely avoided weighing in on Shipman’s appointment. The Anti-Defamation League told JI that it was “too early.” 

Shipman, a veteran reporter and author with no academic leadership experience, has publicly stood by the university’s leadership as co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees in response to the antisemitism that exploded on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza. 

From the beginning of her tenure, Shipman will be contending with a complex campus landscape: Many liberal faculty and students are angry about the university’s decision to acquiesce to Trump’s demands as a way to regain access to $400 million in federal funding that his administration pulled in March, citing Columbia’s failure to properly address antisemitism. 

She will also face a tough negotiating partner in Washington, and pressure from Jewish students and alumni to take a stronger stance against a campus culture in which anti-Israel protests have thrived, with little consequences for rule-breaking activists until recently.

“In an existential crisis, they need to collaborate and to be candid in the exchanges with the Trump administration and what they’ll do, and they need to stick with that,” Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California, offered as advice for Shipman. “You need good faith implementation of what you agree with with the administration, that you’re not looking for loopholes.”

In a message sent to the Columbia community on Monday, Shipman expressed a desire to meet with people across Columbia’s campus as she navigates this “precarious moment” for the university. She did not reference the circumstances of her appointment, nor did she discuss antisemitism on campus, although she hinted at the seriousness of the task before her. 

“My request, right now, is that we all — students, faculty, staff and everyone in this remarkable place — come together and work to protect and support this invaluable repository of knowledge, this home to the next generation of intellectual explorers, and this place of great and continuing promise,” Shipman wrote. 

Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing about antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her role in August, and board Co-Chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce that she knows Columbia has “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.” 

The hearing generally avoided the splashy headlines that followed testimony from the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in December 2023. (Shipman reportedly described that hearing as “capital [sic] hill nonsense,” according to a congressional report published in October.) 

But her Capitol Hill appearance with Shafik and Greenwald was followed by the erecting of Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment — the first such protest in the country, which touched off dozens of others. Columbia’s response to the encampment earned criticism from bipartisan lawmakers, even as Shipman and her fellow board members stood by Shafik’s handling of the protests, which turned violent when students occupied a campus building. 

Choosing a university president from outside of academia is an unusual choice, even for an interim position. Shipman, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, graduated from Columbia College in 1986 and returned to earn a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in 1994. She reported from Moscow for CNN, covered the Clinton administration at NBC News and spent 15 years covering politics and international affairs at ABC News. 

Shipman, notably, also spent time earlier in her career covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on assignment in the Middle East.