The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it has launched a civil rights investigation into allegations of antisemitism at the University of California, saying its attorneys believe there is a “potential pattern” of discrimination against Jewish employees at the state’s flagship higher education system.
The investigation would determine whether UC “engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race, religion and national origin against its professors, staff and other employees by allowing an antisemitic hostile work environment to exist on its campuses,” the department said in a statement.
Reports of antisemitism have grown across the UC system since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza. The department’s decision did not cite specific incidents at UC campuses and did not single out campuses aside from a brief mention of UCLA.
“This Department of Justice will always defend Jewish Americans, protect civil rights, and leverage our resources to eradicate institutional Antisemitism in our nation’s universities,” Atty. Gen. Pamela Bondi said in the statement.
Chad Mizelle, acting associate attorney general and the department’s chief of staff, in the statement cited a “disturbing rise of antisemitism at educational institutions in California and nationwide.”
The department said it would work with the Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, a multi-agency group established last month, to research UC.
Task force member Leo Terrill, who is also a senior counsel in the Justice Department’s civil rights unit, said in a statement that the post-Oct. 7 landscape has led to an “outbreak of antisemitic incidents at leading institutions of higher education in America, including at my own alma mater at the UCLA campus of UC.”
Terrill said that “the impact upon UC’s students has been the subject of considerable media attention and multiple federal investigations. But these campuses are also workplaces, and the Jewish faculty and staff employed there deserve a working environment free of antisemitic hostility and hate.”
This story is developing and will be updated.
