A report released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Oct. 30 found that UCLA “failed to act” when the anti-Israel encampment established during the spring “violated Jewish students’ civil rights and placed campus at risk.”
The 124-page report was based on the committee’s year-long investigation into antisemitism on campuses across the country. Regarding UCLA, the report stated, “Documents obtained by the Committee have revealed a stunning failure by UCLA administrators to enforce existing policies, creating the conditions for a violent end to the unlawful, antisemitic encampment that plagued campus for more than a week. The melee that occurred on the night of April 30, 2024, was the direct result of UCLA’s failure to hold rule-breaking students and their trespassing allies in the encampment accountable for days of civil rights violations and violence targeted at Jewish students and supporters of the existence of the state of Israel.” The report noted that UCLA could have ended the encampment right away, as it violated time, place and manner restrictions, was an unauthorized structure; instead, the university instructed university police to “hold off” taking action against the encampment went if first started and let it fester for more than a week.
“The melee that occurred on the night of April 30, 2024, was the direct result of UCLA’s failure to hold rule-breaking students and their trespassing allies in the encampment accountable for days of civil rights violations and violence targeted at Jewish students and supporters of the existence of the state of Israel.” – From the report
The university had sent out a campus alert stating that the encampment was “mostly peaceful” and they would keep tabs on the situation, but “it was obvious to many campus leaders that the encampment on Royce Quad violated a long list of University policies and presented a clear and present danger to Jewish students,” the report stated. “As early as April 25, violence was documented within and around the encampment. A notable incident outlined in the UCLA Task Force on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias report involved a Native American Jewish woman who was assaulted by a protestor with a stick.”
The committee obtained documents showing that university police “had requested a drone operator, at least 100 security contractors, and an LAPD mobile field force (MFF). At the same time, UCLA SJP was leading ‘self-defense’ and security training inside the encampment, promoting slogans like ‘WE KEEP US SAFE’ to denote opposition to the presence of University police.” The report stated that the university was ill-prepared to handle the violence that occurred on the evening of April 30, and “UCLA’s failure to quickly remove the encampment in violation of its own policy set the stage for the eruption of violence … If UCLA had taken action to halt the formation of the encampment, it would have prevented both the construction of hostile antisemitic checkpoints that denied students access to areas of campus and the proliferation of a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
The report also noted that “according to a federal judge, there is no dispute that the [encampment’s] checkpoints excluded Jewish students, but UCLA claimed that it had no responsibility to ensure that Jewish students could access campus. In doing so, UCLA allowed the creation of an environment hostile to Jewish students in direct violation of their Title VI rights.”
Of the 96 students arrested at the encampment, “92 signed resolution agreements that let them off the hook without consequence,” according to the report, and none of the students involved in barring access to parts of campus from Jewish students have been disciplined, let alone been identified by the university.
In a statement to The Journal, UCLA claimed it “is committed to combating antisemitism and fostering an environment where every member of our community feels safe and welcome. We have learned valuable lessons from the events of last spring, and ahead of the start of this academic year, instituted reforms and programs to combat discrimination and enhance campus safety. We launched our Four-Point Plan for a Safer, Stronger UCLA; issued revised Time, Place and Manner policies for public expression activities on campus; and are working with multiple campus offices and stakeholders, including UCLA Hillel, to promote safety and protect civil rights.”
Other universities included the committee’s report were Columbia, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale and UC Berkeley. According to Jewish Insider, the committee obtained correspondences in which then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik claimed that Senator Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told her that “the universities[’] political problems are really only among Republicans” and that his staff advised them “to keep [their] heads down.” The report also stated that Columbia only gave a student who said that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” probation for those remarks and suspended him for a year after directing encampment members to form a human chain to bar students from entering the encampment.
The report also criticizes the Department of Education for not doing “enough to hold these institutions accountable” and concluded by stating that “the Committee’s findings indicate the need for a fundamental reassessment of federal support for postsecondary institutions that have failed to meet their obligations to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff, and to maintain a safe and uninterrupted learning environment for all students.”
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is chaired by North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx; membership includes Orange County Republican Michelle Steel.
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