DOJ sues UCLA over alleged failure to protect Jewish, Israeli students
The Department of Justice launches a lawsuit against UCLA, citing the university’s alleged indifference to discrimination and violence targeting Jewish and Israeli students during a 2024 protest where agitators beat and pepper-sprayed students. Human rights attorney Brooke Goldstein discusses how antisemitism is being politicized.
University campuses have been at the center of the national discussion about antisemitism since the beginning of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war and the wave of protests and encampments that followed. However, a new Anti-Defamation League report found that while the attention on campuses was focused on students, there was far less scrutiny over what was happening behind classroom doors.
The report documents allegations of professors and teaching assistants injecting anti-Israel activism into coursework, even going so far as to offer extra credit for attending anti-Israel events. Some have been accused of singling out Jewish and Israeli students in classroom settings.
While public attention has largely focused on student-led protests and demonstrations, the ADL said faculty conduct and curriculum choices occur in the “relative opacity of academic spaces,” making them more difficult for outsiders to observe.
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The Anti-Defamation League warns in a new report that antisemitism is not only found at on-campus protests, but also in classrooms. (Drazen Zigic/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
In January 2025, the ADL released a campus antisemitism report conducted in partnership with Hillel International and College Pulse, stating that 27.3% of Jewish students reported observing antisemitic behavior by faculty. The organization noted that its January 2025 report showed that exposure to faculty engaging in antisemitic rhetoric was associated with higher perceptions of a hostile campus environment.
The report points to several ways in which those dynamics have surfaced in classrooms, including course content and assigned readings, political activism and the treatment of Jewish and Israeli students. According to the ADL, there were reported instances of faculty canceling classes in order for students to attend anti-Israel protests. The organization said that as part of a course at the University of California, Berkeley, students were allegedly offered “extra credit” for attending a university-sponsored event series titled “Thinking from Palestine: Dispossession, Liberation, and Return.”
In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, UC Berkeley Asst. Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof said the school had “no record of students being offered extra credit to attend the lecture in question.”
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In a new report regarding antisemitism on campuses across the country, the ADL cited examples from schools within the UC system. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
This was not the only reported incident at UC Berkeley. In October 2023, just weeks after Hamas’ attacks on Israel, a teaching assistant at the school offered students extra credit for participating in an anti-Israel walkout that she said was “against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza.” The email went viral and drew scrutiny from social media users. The ADL noted that the university addressed the issue, citing a policy prohibiting political indoctrination on campus.
Other schools in the UC system faced similar allegations. The ADL reported that in October 2023 a teaching assistant at UCLA allegedly told students they could receive extra credit for attending an “Emergency Teach-in on the Crisis in Palestine.”
In addition to course content and incentives for participation in political events, the report also documented allegations of instances in which Jewish and Israeli students were allegedly singled out by faculty.
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Anti-Israel protesters hold a “CUNY 4 Palestine” banner as NYPD officers stand nearby during a demonstration on April 30, 2026. (Rachel Wolf/Fox News Digital)
The ADL cited findings from Columbia University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, which released a report on the classroom experience at the school. The task force reported that an Israeli student was asked: “You must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that?” In another instance, an unnamed instructor pointed at a student who held a combat role in the Israel Defense Forces and said that “she should be considered as one of the murderers.”
Columbia’s task force also noted that a Jewish student, who was not Israeli, reported being told, “It’s such a shame that your people survived in order to commit mass genocide.”
In response to a request for comment, a university spokesperson provided a statement and directed Fox News Digital to a letter from Columbia’s then-acting President Claire Shipman, which was released after the task force’s report.
“Over the past year, Columbia has prioritized implementing the recommendations of faculty, students, staff, and the University’s Task Force on Antisemitism, focusing on enhancing reporting mechanisms for bias incidents, enforcing campus protest policies to ensure non-discriminatory environments, and fostering inclusive classroom settings where Jewish students can engage in academic life without fear of harassment,” the spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Fox News Digital.
“We will continue to work alongside Columbia’s vibrant Jewish organizations, like Hillel and Chabad, to support their community building and improve the campus experience for our Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” the spokesperson added.
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Columbia University was cited in an ADL report on antisemitism on campuses across the country. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The ADL argued that incidents of antisemitism involving faculty carried added weight because of the power that professors hold over students. The organization warned that “such activity from trusted professors contributes disproportionately to an unsafe and hostile environment for Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.”
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In its report, the ADL encouraged universities to “implement comprehensive measures” aimed at combatting antisemitism and creating a safe environment for all students.
