The UCLA community is gearing up for the start of the fall quarter in late September, following several pro-Palestine demonstrations on campus at the end of last school year.
After a violent clash at the campus’ Palestine Solidarity Encampment in late spring resulted in multiple injuries and prompted investigation, UCLA officials are buckling down on campus safety while trying to balance protesters’ First Amendment rights.
The events come in the wake of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, where high-profile pro-Palestine demonstrations and occupations, as well as counter-protests, have emerged on college campuses – including University of California schools – nationwide.
Campus activism across the UCs has been a mixed bag. Some pro-Palestine demonstrations – including at UC Riverside – were more peaceful, while others – such as at UCLA and UC Irvine – included student arrests, building occupations and police activity.
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A campus-wide letter from outgoing UC President Michael Drake, sent Aug. 19, directed the leaders of the 10 UC schools to enforce a ban on encampments and wearing identity-concealing masks on campus.
“Freedom to express diverse viewpoints is fundamental to the mission of the university, and lawful protests play a pivotal role in that process. The Free Speech Movement was born at the University of California,” Drake wrote. “While the vast majority of protests held on our campuses are peaceful and nonviolent, some of the activities we saw this past year were not.”
Drake’s letter comes after a federal judge ruled this month that UCLA must take steps to ensure equal campus access for all students, preventing alleged “antisemitic zones” such as the encampments in April that reportedly blocked Jewish UCLA students from some parts of campus.
In response, UCLA’s local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which helped organize the protests, called the new encampment ban “literally comical” that officials “are taking away our right to free speech in the same email they talk about the free speech movement.”
The court order, issued on Aug. 13, from U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi follows a recent civil lawsuit by three Jewish UCLA students who claimed they were harassed and excluded from critical parts of campus during the first Palestine Solidarity Encampment, set up in UCLA’s Dickson Plaza, in late April.
In the June lawsuit, the Jewish plaintiffs, one undergrad and two law students, allege that UCLA allowed the pro-Palestine protesters to repeatedly block them from accessing key buildings on campus, including classrooms and Powell Library. The students said the protesters created a Jewish “exclusion zone,” which they claim UCLA helped enforce by hiring private security officers and supplying metal barricades outside the encampment.
The students also claimed that UCLA denied them the full benefit of school programs on the basis of their Jewish faith, and argued their education is suffering because of alleged discrimination.
The plaintiffs’ motion for the temporary injunction against the encampments discusses what they call “UCLA’s ongoing and egregious failure to provide Jewish students with equal access and equal treatment on its campus.”
There are about 2,500 undergraduate Jewish students at UCLA and 500 Jewish graduate students, according to Hillel at UCLA.
In his order, Judge Scarsi called UCLA’s “hands-off policy” during the spring demonstrations “unimaginable” and “abhorrent.”
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this,” Scarsi wrote. “Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.”
Attorneys said that Scarsi’s injunction, now in effect, is the first such ruling in the nation against a university.
The university initially filed an appeal on Aug. 14, the day after Scarsi’s order was issued in a Los Angeles federal court, but withdrew the appeal Friday, Aug. 23. Officials said the university “will abide by the injunction as this case makes its way through the courts,” The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student-run newspaper, reported.
Dan Gold, the executive director of UCLA Hillel, said the group has yet to issue an official statement on the judge’s ruling and lawsuit since the fall quarter has yet to start. Gold said the group is taking time to look through everything, “all the ramifications” of what these decisions could mean for Jewish students at UCLA.
But Gold echoed plaintiffs’ concerns around the students’ alleged exclusion from campus activities. He said he’s heard stories of students being excluded by their peers in UCLA social clubs, or shunned from being able to express themselves by wearing jewelry or religious garb.
Many Jewish students, wanting to talk about their faith and experiences connected to Israel, also led to their voices “being excluded” from conversations, Gold said.
As students prepare to return to school, he added, UCLA Hillel as a group will be “pushing and demanding that our school and our student body embrace dialogue,” Gold said.
Supporters of the pro-Palestine activists, however, have accused UCLA officials of having a slow response to the violence that occurred at the pro-Palestine encampment near Royce Hall over the spring.
On April 30, UCLA officials declared the campus occupation unlawful, and asked protesters to leave immediately or risk discipline, such as suspension or expulsion.
But in the late hours of the evening, violence broke out as counterprotesters initiated fights and attempted to dismantle the pro-Palestine encampment, according to reports. Projectiles were thrown and fireworkers were set off, and some reported tear gas and physical fights between opposing groups.
Law enforcement did not get involved until hours later, according to reports from the Daily Bruin. Officials canceled classes at the Westwood campus for the rest of the week.
UCLA’s SJP chapter also accused officials of standing by and watching while counterprotesters violently attacked the encampment.
In a post in early May on Instagram, SJP leaders said that campus officials “stood by and collaborated with the Zionist lynch mob and (Los Angeles police) to brutalize its employees who are demanding divestment, an end to repression and policing, and an end to the genocide in Palestine.”
Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, said previously that the university is working to address the claims in the plaintiff’s lawsuit.
“We have applied lessons learned from this spring’s protests and continue to work to foster a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination and harassment,” Osako stated.
Eugene Volokh, a professor with the UCLA School of Law, said that the civil suit makes it so that if UCLA were to become aware of some parts of campus being “closed off” to Jewish students or faculty, the school “has an obligation to make sure that those places are equal or, essentially, closed to everyone.”
Volokh added that the court order emphasizes that the university cannot allow students to be excluded for being Jewish or supporting Israel.
But, Volokh said, “there is no First Amendment right to say, ‘I’m going to stop you from going to this particular portion of the campus.’”
Graeme Blair, a member of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) and an associate professor of political science, said he feels that true safety concerns last spring were experienced by the pro-Palestine protesters, activists from many different backgrounds – Jewish included.
FJP was among the campus organizations that helped organize the Palestine Solidarity Encampment and related demonstrations throughout the spring.
Blair said the encampment was initially a place where anyone could freely come and go, and that “none of the barricades were set up” in its early days – until organizers had to start patrolling participants.
In the days leading up to the violent clash on April 30, Blair said, the protesters inside the encampment were subjected to racial, sexual and violent epithets by counterprotesters. Activists were “being doxxed and targeted on social media.”
“The reason that they had to set up (barriers) is that UCLA failed to provide a safe space for those activists,” Blair said, noting that the university “has taken little action to protect students” from harm.
On Aug. 8, FJP filed an amicus brief disputing the evidence presented in the Jewish plaintiffs’ initial complaint, claiming that no one “was denied entrance to the Palestinian solidarity encampment based on their identity.”
Blair said the lawsuit refers to “a small number of incidents in which students were asked not to come into the encampment.”
He felt that plaintiffs were wrong in calling the encampment a Jewish “exclusion zone,” because many Jewish activists and groups were involved in organizing the pro-Palestine protests, such as Jewish Voice for Peace UCLA.
Attorney Thomas Harvey, who filed the brief on behalf of FJP, said on Aug. 16 that the court order “raises serious concerns because it conflates religious and political beliefs.”
Plaintiffs’ “‘proof’ of antisemitism at UCLA is so flimsy that it dilutes the word’s meaning in a way that is actually harmful to Jewish people everywhere,” Harvey wrote. “The injunction they produced paves the way for the eradication of all pro-Palestinian activity on campus.”
UCLA FJP called the lawsuit an “effort to suppress free speech of Palestinian solidarity activists” in an Instagram post on Aug. 16. The group also said the plaintiffs in the suit “equate political support for Israel with protected religious belief.”
Other Southern California Jewish and Muslim organizations weighed in on the lawsuit and court injunction.
The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) questioned Judge Scarsi’s ruling, saying in a statement that it “perpetuates the false narrative that the university’s anti-genocide student encampment was antisemitic.”
Legal director Amr Shabaik said the injunction “fails to consider the realities of the encampment … and the attacks that the encampment had to endure and protect itself against.” UCLA Jewish students and faculty were participants, along with Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students, Shabaik said, noting that a peaceful and “well-documented” Passover Seder was observed inside.
But officials from the Jewish Federation Los Angeles said they were “grateful” for the ruling, saying that it “sets expectations for UCLA administrators that Jewish students will be guaranteed equal treatment and will not be excluded in any way due to their religious beliefs, including their support for Israel.”
“We applaud this critical ruling and will continue our work with campus and student leadership throughout our region to ensure that Jewish students are included, protected, and safe on campus,” the Aug. 14 statement read.
Blair, the UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine member, expressed his hopes that UCLA and the whole UC system “will take actions to make sure that all the students are safe, but also able to express their views and do what they’re supposed to do on campus – which is to learn about and talk about what’s going on in the world.”
Staff reporters Clara Harter, Allyson Vergara and City News Service contributed to this report.
Editor’s Note: Reporter and SCNG intern Gabrielle Gillette is a gender studies and English student at UCLA, and metro editor for the student-run newspaper, The Daily Bruin.
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