An Open Letter from UCLA Jewish Faculty and Staff Opposing the DOJ’s Title VII Lawsuit Against UCLA

An Open Letter from UCLA Jewish Faculty and Staff Opposing the DOJ’s Title VII Lawsuit Against UCLA

77 signatories (below) as of March 6, 10:21pm

Dear Attorney General Bondi, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon, UC President Milliken, UCLA Chancellor Frenk, and University of California Regents,

We are Jewish faculty and staff at UCLA, including student employees. We write to condemn the Title VII lawsuit against UCLA filed by the Department of Justice ostensibly on our behalf. Although we hold varying views about Gaza, Israel, Zionism, and pro-Palestinian protests at UCLA—matters that have deeply divided the Jewish community—we are absolutely united in our vehement opposition to this ill-conceived lawsuit.

The DOJ’s claim that Jews as a group face a hostile work environment at UCLA because of our religion or ethnicity is false. The DOJ takes advantage of Jewish concerns about antisemitism to attack free speech and academic freedom. The resulting lawsuit, which cynically invokes Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, will do absolutely nothing to protect Jews at UCLA. What it will do is inflict yet more damage to the culture of free expression and inquiry that is the beating heart of the university. Like the Trump Administration’s attempt last year to extort $1 billion from UCLA on the basis of a supposed Title VI claim, this lawsuit uses charges of antisemitism as part of a broader assault on civil rights and academic freedom at U.S. universities.[1]

The complaint paints a picture of our campus that we do not recognize. Many UCLA students, including Jewish students, are critical of Israel and its war in Gaza and have protested against it. The complaint relies on insinuation and misdirection to recast these students as antisemitic. The complaint includes images of antisemitic graffiti with no evidence that it was written by UCLA community members. On the other hand, the complaint fails to produce a single image of any student in any protest at UCLA holding up an antisemitic sign—and the DOJ would surely have included many such photos if they could. In reality, the students’ numerous signs, images of which are widely available on the Internet, show anti-war, divestment, and “Free Palestine” messages. The lawsuit deliberately conflates the students’ messages with distinct antisemitic messages in order to falsely characterize pro-Palestinian protest as antisemitic.[2]

These insinuations and lies do nothing to protect Jewish faculty, staff, or students at UCLA. Quite the opposite. Mischaracterizing pro-Palestinian speech and protest as antisemitic makes it more difficult to identify and respond to the serious problem of actual antisemitism, especially antisemitic incidents that do not conform to the DOJ’s preferred narrative. That is, conflating pro-Palestinian and antisemitic speech endangers Jewish community members whose critical views about Israel the university disfavors. The Jewish UCLA students who were physically attacked and beaten by a mob where one man reportedly yelled “we’re here to finish what Hitler started” were the Jewish students in the pro-Palestinian encampment. Ironically, the DOJ cannot even recognize antisemitism when it occurs through a white nationalist attack on Jews, Muslims and students of color, because the DOJ is so obsessed with conflating pro-Palestinian and antisemitic speech.[3] Mischaracterizing pro-Palestinian speech and protest as antisemitic also unjustly scapegoats our protesting students and colleagues who are disproportionately Muslim and/or people of color, creating an excuse for violating their civil rights.

The legal basis for this lawsuit is exceptionally thin. A “hostile work environment” under Title VII is one where we are being harassed so severely or pervasively as to alter our conditions of employment. It would be legally unprecedented for a court to rule that any category of faculty and staff faces such a hostile work environment primarily on the basis of student speech. Moreover, the lawsuit must prove under Title VII that UCLA negligently failed to take corrective action against this harassment. But much of the complained-of “harassment” consists of students expressing their First Amendment-protected viewpoints, which the university is required by federal and state law to protect rather than punish.[4]

Although it would be highly unlikely for the DOJ to be able to prove in court that the environment at UCLA was an objectively hostile work environment for Jewish employees, and even more unlikely that they could show UCLA failed to take effective action, the Trump Administration is undoubtedly aiming to induce UCLA to settle this lawsuit, adopting ever more draconian limits on academic freedom and free speech, to the detriment of all of us, including Jewish faculty and staff.

We write to make it clear: we do not accept the claim that anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian speech is by definition antisemitic; we contest the DOJ’s claim that UCLA is a “hotbed of campus antisemitism” because some students are expressing pro-Palestinian views; we condemn the government’s efforts to stigmatize and scapegoat our colleagues and students who are Muslim and/or people of color in our name; we condemn the steps that have already been taken to chill and punish free speech on campus; and we fear for the steps that may follow in response to this lawsuit.

We watched as the university settled a lawsuit regarding antisemitism against students that was based on similarly specious claims, which contributed to the growing catalogue of stifling and punitive measures that have been taken in the last year. Students have faced lengthy and disproportionate suspensions, bans from campus, and the loss of employment and health insurance, sometimes without due process or in violation of the university’s usual process, as part of the crackdown on pro-Palestinian protest speech.[5] UCLA has also suppressed protest with police violence, placed new limits on student and faculty speech, and withdrawn support for academic research that appears potentially aligned with a pro-Palestinian perspective.[6] None of this is acceptable.

We urge the DOJ to drop this lawsuit. We urge the university to defend itself, and defend our community, by challenging the factual and legal bases of this claim and by refusing to take additional harsh measures to suppress pro-Palestinian speech or to define it falsely as antisemitism.

We dissent from this cynical attempt, ostensibly in our name, to harm the university we treasure.

Sincerely,

[77 signatories below as of March 6, 10:21pm]

[1] As one federal judge explained in granting a preliminary injunction last year against the federal government, there is “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration has a “playbook” that involves using pretextual charges of antisemitism to extort universities including UCLA. AAUP v. Trump, 3:25-cv-07864-RFL, Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction, November 14, 2025, at *1–2.

[2] The lawsuit also also includes specific factual assertions that would be unlikely to hold up in court, such as the claim that 15–20 different pro-Palestinian demonstrations, each involving hundreds of people, took place on different days in front of the medical school, yet almost all of them mysteriously garnered no news coverage. The complaint backhandedly suggests that there was an “infamous Jew exclusion zone” on campus (para. 52), but interestingly, never actually attempts to defend the claim that any Jewish student was ever blocked from entering any campus building because of their religion or political views, a widely circulated and debunked claim that the DOJ may now recognize will not hold up in court. https://balkin.blogspot.com/2025/08/making-policy-based-on-falsehoods.html

[3] Max Davis-Housefield, “A Timeline of the Encampment Attack, April 30–May 1,” The Daily Bruin, May 1, 2024, https://dailybruin.com/2024/05/01/a-timeline-of-the-encampment-attack; David N. Myers, “I’m a UCLA Professor. Why Didn’t the Administration Stop Last Night’s Egregious Violence?” The Forward, May 1, 2024, at https://forward.com/opinion/608479/ucla-violence-campus-protests/; Robin D. G. Kelley, UCLA’s Unholy Alliance, Boston Review, March 18, 2024, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/uclas-unholy-alliance/. In a case filed in 2025 (Boosinger v. Regents), some participants in the 2024 encampment protest are now suing UCLA for its failure to protect them.

[4] Although the complaint spends far more of its pages on student speech, it also discusses some examples of speech by faculty and invited speakers, all of which is also protected by the First Amendment and federal and state law, as well as by principles of academic freedom.

[5] See e.g., Poppy Press, “UCLA Suspends and Bans Students without Due Process,” June 6, 2025, https://poppy-press.org/2025/06/06/ucla-suspends-and-bans-students-without-due-process/; Palestine Legal, UCLA: Drop All Disciplinary Cases Against Pro-Palestinian Student Protesters, January 29, 2026, https://palestinelegal.org/news/2026/1/29/ucla-drop-all-disciplinary-cases-against-pro-palestinian-student-protesters; see also Blair v. Regents of the University of California, 24STCV27623, Order on Defendants’ Demurrer and Motion to Strike, Nov. 4, 2025, at *14–18 (allowing a lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Southern California in defense of the right to protest to move forward, based on—among other claims—the claim that two participants in the encampment protest were subjected to ongoing university disciplinary proceedings that violated due process and other constitutional requirements in addition to violating university procedures). The DOJ repeatedly suggests in its complaint that no student has been “disciplined for antisemitic behavior” (p. 3) and while it is unclear what that means, it is clear that numerous students—including Jewish students—have faced exceptionally harsh discipline for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests.

[6] Lauren Nguyen, “UCLA Student Code Undergoes Updates in Hearing, Timeline, Appeals Processes,” Daily Bruin, Feb. 18, 2026, https://dailybruin.com/2026/02/18/ucla-student-conduct-code-undergoes-updates-in-hearing-timeline-appeal-processes; Jaweed Kaleem, “UCLA Enacts New Campus Protest Rules, Several That Mirror Trump Demands,” Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-19/ucla-protest-tpm-new-policies. On the final point see e.g. AAUP v. Trump, 3:25-cv-07864-RFL, Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction, November 14, 2025, at *22 (describing how “[t]he UC has already begun withdrawing support for ‘risky’ speech”—for instance, the court notes, Graeme Blair’s proposal for “a project concerning academic freedom in the context of pro-Palestinian speech” was initially approved and funded, but UCLA withdrew that funding in August 2025, which ultimately scuttled the project).