The Justice Department also found the California university violated federal civil rights law
UCLA agreed to pay more than $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Jewish students who said the university allowed anti-Semitic discrimination during the spring 2024 anti-Israel encampments, which included a “Jew Exclusion Zone.”
Just hours after the settlement was inked, the Justice Department announced that it found UCLA violated federal civil rights law by failing to “respond to complaints of severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment and abuse that Jewish and Israeli students faced on its campus from October 7, 2023, to the present.”
In June 2024, Yitzchok Frankel, then a second-year UCLA law student, filed a lawsuit alleging he was “harassed and blocked from approaching the encampment by antisemitic activists, all with the assistance of UCLA security.” He was later joined by two additional Jewish students and a medical school professor, and the Justice Department’s notice of violation on Tuesday also pointed to findings in the Frankel suit.
Under the settlement, UCLA will contribute over $2.3 million to eight Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel at UCLA, while another $320,000 will go toward UCLA’s Initiative to Combat Antisemitism. It will also dole out $50,000 to each of the plaintiffs and pay $3.6 million of their legal fees.
In addition to the payments, UCLA will also enter a consent judgment that prohibits it from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students, faculty, and/or staff”—including discrimination based on one’s “religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel”—from university programs or spaces. The agreement will be in effect for 15 years.
UCLA is only the most recent elite university to resolve lawsuits brought by Jewish students. In January, Harvard University agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, which considers “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” a form of discrimination. Barnard College likewise struck a deal in July to hire a Title VI coordinator to review discrimination complaints.
UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, Mary Osako, said Tuesday’s settlement marked an “important next step.”
“We have reflected candidly on our progress and are working to expunge antisemitism from our community in its entirety,” she told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “This work, and today’s settlement, represent an important next step as we build upon our past efforts and stride toward fulfilling our promise of being an exemplary university.”
In August, U.S. district judge Mark Scarsi blasted UCLA for its refusal to take responsibility for protecting Jewish students.
“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Scarsi wrote (emphasis his). “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.”
