The US Department of Justice is investigating the University of California system for possible antisemitic discrimination after demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza took place on campuses last year.
“This Department of Justice will always defend Jewish Americans, protect civil rights, and leverage our resources to eradicate institutional Antisemitism in our nation’s universities,” read a statement by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, released on Wednesday.
The investigation will look into whether UC violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by engaging 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”, according to the statement.
Campus demonstrations over the war in Gaza have taken place in the US since April 2024, sparking inflamed divisions in universities across the country. Columbia University in New York City kickstarted the protests after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks that killed almost 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 48,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced nearly 2 million survivors with severe food shortages, a lack of fuel and medical supplies amid Israeli aid restrictions.
The conflict prompted hundreds of campus demonstrations nationwide, including at the University of California at Los Angeles and other UC system campuses. The protest were some of the largest demonstrations to take place on US campuses since the anti-Vietnam war protests of the 1960s.
Students voiced a variety of demands, including calls for universities to publicly support a ceasefire in Gaza, divest from Israeli companies and companies that supply Israel’s military, and cut ties with Israeli universities.
The protests in the US inspired similar demonstrations across the UK and Europe.
Protests at UCLA attracted national attention after violence between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators erupted on the campus in late April. Shortly after, hundreds of police in riot gear gathered in the encampment and ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to disperse or face arrest.
In a statement announcing the investigation on Wednesday, Leo Terrell, a member of the Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism and senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said: “The impact upon UC’s students has been the subject of considerable media attention and multiple federal investigations. But these campuses are also workplaces, and the Jewish faculty and staff employed there deserve a working environment free of antisemitic hostility and hate.”
The Department of Justice’s investigation comes months after the US Department of Education investigated nine complaints against UC schools in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Davis and Santa Cruz, and reached an agreement with the UC system. The complaints alleged the schools failed to respond effectively to antisemitic and anti-Arab harassment.
The UC system agreed to step up reporting of complaints to the department’s Office for Civil Rights and review all complaints and reports of harassment from the past two academic years to determine whether further action is needed. The agreement also calls for more training of university employees and campus police officers about their obligations under federal law.
The investigation into UCLA stemmed partly from concerns of compliance related to about 150 reports the school received about rallies in October and November 2023 as well as a pro-Palestinian encampment in the spring, the department said.
The new investigation comes at the heels of Donald Trump’s threat to pull federal funding from any school that continued to allow what he called “illegal protests”.
“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on [sic] the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” the US president wrote on Truth Social.
The Trump administration specifically named Columbia University in a previous statement announcing it would review, and could pull more than $50m from, government contracts from the Ivy League’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students”.
A report found that 97% of US campus protests over the Gaza war since mid-April have been peaceful. Fewer than 20 protests involved serious violence or property damage out of 553 demonstrations analyzed between 18 April and 3 May.
