UCLA Sued Over Handling of Pro-Hamas Encampment

A lawsuit accusing the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) of fostering a discriminatory learning environment was filed in federal court on Wednesday, another in a series of cases Jewish students have brought forth against their colleges in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel and ensuing riotous pro-Hamas protests which convulsed the 2023-2024 academic year.

“This rampant anti-Jewish environment burst into view on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas terrorists attacked Israel in a harrowing rampage that saw over one thousand innocent Jews, including infants and the elderly, murdered, raped, and mutilated,” said the complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Central District Court of California.

“In the wake of these horrifying events, UCLA should have taken steps to ensure that its Jewish students were safe and protected from harassment and undeterred in obtaining full access to campus facilities,” it continued. “Instead, UCLA officials routinely turned their backs on Jewish students, aiding and abetting a culture that has allowed calls for annihilation of the Jewish people, Nazi symbolism, and religious slurs to go unchecked.”

The suit — which names UCLA students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian as plaintiffs — went on to excoriate UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it, according to the complaint.

Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality.” In doing so, it continued, UCLA allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.

“If masked agitators had excluded any other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor [Gavin] Newsom rightly would have sent in the National Guard immediately,” Mark Renzi, chief executive officer of the legal advocacy group Becket Law, said in a press release. “But UCLA instead caved to the antisemitic activists and allowed its Jewish students to be segregated from the heart of their own campus. That is a profound and illegal failure of leadership.”

He continued, “This is America in 2024 — not Germany in 1939. It is disgusting that an elite American university would let itself devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. UCLA’s administration should have to answer for allowing the Jewish Exclusion Zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.”

Numerous antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the spring encampment, the complaint added.

Just five days after Oct. 7, it said, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”

Citing potential violations of Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Clause, the suit seeks “immediate injunctive relief.” If granted, UCLA would be prohibited from taking actions which violated the rights of Jewish students and faculty.

“We are aware of the lawsuit that has been filed, which to our knowledge has not yet been served,” UCLA said in a statement on Thursday. “We will review and respond in course. UCLA remains committed to supporting the safety and well-being of the entire Bruin community.”

“Gaza Solidarity Encampments” on US college campuses have caused immense harm to Jewish students, according to civil rights groups, which have cited incidents of antisemitic harassment and assault. Hesitating to restore order has so for led to legal consequences for Columbia University, which earlier this week settled a lawsuit that accused it of neglecting its obligation to foster a safe learning environment.

The resolution of the case, first reported by Reuters, calls for Columbia to hire a “Safe Passage Liaison” who will monitor protests and “walking escorts” who will accompany students whose safety is threatened around the campus. Other details of the settlement include “accommodations” for students whose academic lives are disrupted by protests and new security policies for controlling access to school property.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.