From Roadmap to Reality: UCLA Must Move Beyond Aspirational Commitments in Combating Antisemitism

More than a year has passed since UCLA launched its Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. The release of the Commission’s Roadmap Report marks an important milestone and reflects growing recognition by university leadership that antisemitism has become a serious challenge on campus. For that recognition, the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG) is grateful.

We commend Chancellor Julio Frenk for making the fight against antisemitism a visible priority and applaud several concrete steps already taken, including the appointment of former LAPD Commander Steve Lurie as Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus and Community Safety and the hiring of Leora Freedman as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Civil Rights. These are meaningful developments and demonstrate that UCLA understands the need for institutional change.

Yet acknowledgment alone does not create safety. Reports do not protect students. Committees do not stop discrimination. Recognition without remedy is not protection.

The Roadmap demonstrates that UCLA has heard many of the concerns raised by Jewish faculty, students, staff, and community members. Unfortunately, hearing those concerns is not the same as addressing them. While the report reflects the architecture of meaningful reform, it lacks the urgency, specificity, transparency, and accountability necessary to transform aspirations into reality.

The central challenge facing UCLA today is not whether it understands the problem. The challenge is whether it is prepared to act.

Perhaps the most significant unresolved issue is UCLA’s continued reluctance to clearly identify the role that antizionism often plays in contemporary antisemitism. The Roadmap largely treats antizionism, BDS, and anti-normalization campaigns as political viewpoints or policy matters. Yet when these ideologies are used to exclude Jewish students from organizations, denyopportunities to Israelis, intimidate Zionist faculty members, or create hostile educational environments, they cease to be merely political positions. They become mechanisms of discrimination.

Of course universities have a responsibility to protect free expression, including criticism of Israeli government policies. But UCLA should explicitly state that antizionism constitutes anti-Jewish discrimination when it results in exclusion, retaliation, harassment, denial of opportunities, or unequal treatment based on Jewish identity, Israeli nationality, or Zionist affiliation.

The report’s treatment of antisemitism training illustrates a broader problem. UCLA proposes developing comprehensive educational programs for students, administrators, teaching assistants, department chairs, and civil-rights personnel. Training can be an important tool, but the report leaves critical questions unanswered. What will be taught? Who will be required to participate? Will the training include recognized definitions of antisemitism and real-world examples? How will compliance be measured? What consequences will exist for non-participation?

Without answers to these questions, training remains an aspiration rather than an intervention.

Similarly, the Commission recommends that UCLA consider using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, yet stops short of formally adopting it. The IHRA definition has become one of the most widely utilized tools for identifying contemporary manifestations of antisemitism while preserving legitimate political discourse. By declining to establish a clear path toward adoption, UCLA risks leaving one of the most valuable tools available sitting unused in the toolbox.

Accountability represents another major gap.

The Roadmap discusses dashboards, reporting systems, and internal reviews, but provides little public information regarding outcomes. Jewish students, faculty, and staff deserve to know whether complaints are investigated promptly, whether discrimination findings result in meaningful remedies, and whether repeat offenders face consequences. Transparency is essential to rebuilding trust.

We therefore call upon UCLA to publish meaningful Title VI and Title VII data, including complaint categories, investigation timelines, outcomes, remedies, disciplinary actions, retaliation claims, and patterns of recurring violations. Institutions cannot demonstrate progress without measurable benchmarks.

Equally important is the need for independent oversight. The Roadmap largely relies upon internal administrative structures to evaluate institutional performance. Yet organizations rarely succeed when asked to police themselves. Independent monitoring by trusted civil-rights experts would strengthen credibility, improve accountability, and reassure affected communities that concerns are being evaluated fairly and objectively.

Perhaps nowhere is the need for urgent action more apparent than within UCLA Health and the David Geffen School of Medicine.

For years, Jewish students, residents, faculty, and staff have raised concerns regarding discrimination, exclusion, retaliation, and hostile workplace environments. While the Commission acknowledges these concerns, it relegates them to future assessment rather than immediate action. Medical education and patient care cannot wait for another round of studies. UCLA should immediately initiate audits of admissions, hiring, clinical assignments, rotations, and supervisory structures to ensure equal treatment. It should implement explicit whistleblower protections and establish safeguards against retaliation.

Moreover, hospitals are fundamentally different from traditional campus environments. Patient-care settings should be places of healing, professionalism, and safety. Political demonstrations, amplified sound, intimidation, and coercive activism have no place in clinical spaces where vulnerable patients seek care and medical trainees learn their profession. UCLA Health requires a hospital-specific policy that prioritizes patient welfare and preserves the integrity of healthcare environments.

The same principle applies to professionalism. Political regalia, conflict-related symbols, and ideological signaling in clinical and supervisory settings can create pressure and discomfort for patients and trainees. Healthcare professionals must be judged by their competence and compassion, not by political allegiances displayed in patient-care environments.

The Commission also acknowledges concerns regarding departmental neutrality, yet leaves loopholes that permit political advocacy on university-hosted webpages beyond departmental landing pages. Academic neutrality must apply throughout official university platforms, not merely on selected pages.

Finally, UCLA must recognize that combating antisemitism requires more than preventing harm. It also requires rebuilding what has been damaged. The university should invest in Jewish Studies, Hebrew language instruction, Israeli history, Jewish peoplehood, and rigorous scholarship that reflects the diversity and complexity of Jewish identity. Intellectual balance is not achieved through neutrality alone; it requires active support for serious scholarship and academic inquiry.

The Commission’s Roadmap represents an important beginning. It demonstrates that persistent advocacy by Jewish faculty and community members has succeeded in placing critical issues on UCLA’s agenda. But beginnings are not endings.

The Jewish community has heard many promises over the past year. What it seeks now is evidence.

UCLA has an opportunity to become a national model for confronting antisemitism through principled leadership, transparent accountability, and meaningful action. To achieve that goal, the university must move beyond assessments, committees, and aspirations. It must embrace implementation, enforcement, and measurable results.

The time for diagnosis has passed. The time for treatment has arrived.

Matthew Davidson is Executive Director Jewish Faculty Resilience Group and Deborah Termeie, DDS, Continuing Lecturer, UCLA School of Dentistry is JFRG at UCLA Advisory Council Spokesperson.

Jewish Faculty Resilience Group is recognized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization (Tax ID: 99-3377476). Donations are tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.