Antisemitic agitators aided by UCLA say students, professor, task force

Three Jewish students from UCLA, alongside a Jewish professor, have filed an amended complaint regarding their lawsuit against the university, saying it played a role in helping antisemitic agitators exclude them from campus.

The new amended complaint filed goes into detail on how UCLA failed to end antisemitism on campus both during and after the rise of the initial "Jew Exclusion Zone," how each was involved, and the memorializing of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Protests against Jews escalated on American college campuses as the warring factions battled in the Middle East.

UCLA, in particular, had encampment setups put together by activists in the heart of campus known as the "Jew Exclusion Zone." Hundreds of students witnessed real-life segregation of Jewish peers and professors.

The complaint attached photos that read, "REMEMBER OCTOBER 7TH WAS NATIVES BREAKING FREE," from the UCLA Cultural Affairs Instagram.

Unable to attend classes, study in the library, or experience college life as they knew it, the administration hired security officers to keep those who would not agree to disavow Israel's right to exist away from the area, the complaint says.

The new amendment mentions the school's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report, criticizing the way the university handled the situation, surveying 428 members of UCLA's Jewish community, and documenting over 100 reports of physically being attacked or threatened.

The Task Force noted, "Jews and Israelis have been victims of discrimination and harassment on the UCLA campus, and the University should commit to remediation rather than fighting the case."

"UCLA should throw in the towel and finally admit that the administration not only allowed antisemitic encampments but encouraged them," said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students and professor in a statement. "A federal court and now UCLA's own antisemitism task force have denounced UCLA's blatant facilitation of Jew-hatred on campus and called for the school to stop fighting in court. UCLA should agree to make the court's order permanent and protect its Jewish students and faculty rather than discriminate against them."

Becket is a nonprofit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. According to its website, it has a win rate of 100% before the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi had ordered the university to end its part in assisting antisemitic agitators excluding Jews from parts of campus, calling the university's actions "abhorrent" and "unimaginable."

"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 in the Aug. 18 order.

The order said under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students if the university knows others would be excluded due to religious beliefs.

It also said, "UCLA does not dispute this. 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."

According to its website, UCLA is the seventh largest employer in the Greater Los Angeles region, generating $9.3 billion in regional economic activity. In 2023, it had nearly 146,000 freshman applicants, more than any other university in the country.