US Justice Department sues UCLA alleging antisemitic educational environment

[u/awaythrowawaying]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-justice-department-sues-ucla-alleging-antisemitic-educational-environment-2026-05-26/

[u/justafutz]

It seems more than a little strange that we’re talking about how UCLA let students set up Jew free zones on campus for weeks, and your response is to say “well what about this incident where counter protestors got fed up and a clash broke out?” Whataboutism isn’t my favorite thing.

Yes, UCLA is where two sides of protestors got into a clash. The stories differ. What’s notable is that one side was enforcing a “Jew free zone” on campus, and the other was responding to that. Whoever was violent or started the violence should be investigated (and was). That has nothing to do with the fact that for weeks prior to that, the university turned a blind eye to an illegal encampment enforcing Jew free zones on campus. One of those is deliberate indifference, which is legally a civil rights violation by the university, while the other is just incompetence in a single incident.

In fact, if the university had cleared the encampment as required by law to protect the civil rights of its Jewish students, the clash wouldn’t have happened.

So in a way, thank you for bringing up yet another reason that UCLA’s failure to protect Jewish students spiraled into a clash that harmed even more people. Just more evidence of why it’s important to enforce rules to protect civil rights properly.

[u/nycbetches → u/justafutz]

You should read the article I linked. The university had declared the encampment illegal and gave the protestors ~8 hours (overnight) to dismantle it. The counterprotestors attacked at the beginning of those 8 hours. The university police were standing by and, according to videos, did nothing to stop the attack. Why? I would think this would also be something the federal government would want to investigate. 

Surely your argument isn’t that citizens are entitled to take the law into their own hands when campus officials have clearly set forth a path forward…

 What’s notable is that one side was enforcing a “Jew free zone” on campus, and the other was responding to that.

The encampment they attacked wasn’t a “Jew-free zone,” in fact, there were Jewish protestors inside it, they had a seder…

You are conflating several different things. It is true that some people in the encampment refused to allow access through the encampment to people who were supportive of Israel (not just Jewish people). It is not true that the encampment was declared a “Jew-free zone” or that all of campus was a “Jew-free zone”. It’s important to stick to the facts in these discussions.

[u/justafutz → u/nycbetches]

That’s one version of the story about a single clash. That’s disagreed with by other sources. I think this timeline is important. I trust the NYT as much as a wet mop, considering its brutally awful coverage of this issue. The timeline is helpful. For example, it lists out how in the days before the clash, the encampment had repeatedly harassed and violently attacked Jewish students and others. The day before the clash, a Jewish female was assaulted and left bleeding from her head and admitted to the ER. She was kicked and pulled by the hair by the encampment’s participants.

It lists how that the encampment was declared illegal, but not cleared, on May 1, before the clash, because of their continued attacks on students that even UCLA could no longer ignore after weeks of violence and harassment. The dispersal order came **after** the clash, not before. While the timeline ultimately agrees on who instigated that specific clash, that doesn’t change much when you look at the context and the fact that if UCLA had protected its Jewish students’ civil rights for weeks prior, there would never have been a clash at all.

But it’s weird to talk about the clash without mentioning that for weeks, Jewish students were excluded from campus based on their beliefs with the creation of a “Jew free zone” on campus. That’s not my view, it’s the view of a federal judge, and the view of UCLA, which admitted as much.

We’re not about to do tokenizing Jews to make the point somehow okay. The encampment and the students in it spent weeks blocking Jewish students and faculty from campus and from their classes. That’s a civil rights violation. Pointing to tokenization by those Jews who did denounce their faith to join is irrelevant. This is like saying that if an encampment targets and blocks Black students from class until they say “we support segregation”, it’s okay because a few fringe Black students have supported resegregation (which is, believe it or not, a real thing). It’s nonsense. Imagine setting up an encampment that forces visibly Muslim students to denounce Islam, or agree to globalize the murder of Muslims, and everyone says it’s okay because they had some token maybe-Muslims host Eid inside.

The normalization of antisemitism is bad.

You don’t get to exclude Jewish students for weeks from their campus unless they’re willing to denounce their faith. A federal judge made that clear and UCLA didn’t dispute that it was happening. I have no idea why you’re suggesting it would be okay. I haven’t said it’s okay to be a vigilante. You can actually read above where I said that violence should be investigated, and *was* investigated.

What is unusual is that I can say that, but you are excusing Jew free zones on UCLA’s campus by tokenization. Not good.

[u/justafutz → u/[deleted]]

But your timeline supports exactly what I just said.

It feels like you may not have read what I said. I think that seems somewhat clear as well from how little you responded to. For example, I said:

While the timeline ultimately agrees on who instigated that specific clash, that doesn’t change much when you look at the context and the fact that if UCLA had protected its Jewish students’ civil rights for weeks prior, there would never have been a clash at all.

But you didn't answer that, for some reason.

U.C.L.A. declared the encampment illegal and ordered students to disperse on the afternoon of April 30. The attack by the counterprotestors happened that night into the early hours of May 1. I don’t think that is disagreed with by any sources.

There are plenty of people who disagree with it and were there. But that's fine. It's not really relevant to the point. The point is that UCLA allowed weeks of an encampment excluding and assaulting Jewish students unless they denounced their faith, and you are bringing up a single clash after those events, and a day after a female student was kicked and assaulted and sent to the ER, as if that is somehow relevant.

I'm not okay with whataboutism to deflect from the denial of Jewish students' civil rights.

This is absolutely incorrect. From your own link

Warning them that they will face consequences is not a timed dispersal order. Read the link again:

Police in riot gear massed on the UCLA campus and ordered a large group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators inside a fortified encampment to leave the area or face arrest late Wednesday

That was the dispersal order, given on May 2. This is borne out by other sources. The declaration that it was unlawful did not force dispersal.

Is it your opinion that this justifies or excuses attacking the encampment and sending multiple students to the hospital? If that isn’t your opinion, why is it relevant?

Once again, it seems like you're not reading what I said. You're responding to virtually none of it, while also trying to change the subject to a Jew-free-zone-enforcing encampment getting into a clash on a thread about UCLA's deliberate indifference to antisemitism on campus.

As I said:

I haven’t said it’s okay to be a vigilante. You can actually read above where I said that violence should be investigated, and was investigated.

You seem to have missed this.

I find this so offensive that I can’t really respond to it while being moderate.

OK. I'm sorry you find facts offensive.

I will just say that I do not agree with you that Jewish people protesting for a free Palestine is “denouncing their faith.” And I do not agree that it is tokenization either. I’m guessing you’re 45+. I’m younger, and in my generation, many Jews do not identify as Zionists. Polling bears this out. I guess you think we’re all “tokens”?

We're not going to sit here and talk about "free Palestine" and ignore the way Jewish students on campus were treated. What you think my age is, is irrelevant. What Jews "identify" as, remains irrelevant as well.

It's important to first establish the facts. The encampment was very much a Jew-free zone, and pushed to establish Jew-free zones on campus. This is something a federal judge already established, and UCLA already admitted:

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.

This is something UCLA did not dispute.

Nor was this about "a free Palestine", unless you mean the chant "from the river to the sea," which is originally "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab". The destruction of Israel is an explicit goal, yes, as is the removal of Jewish rights to self-determination, and the Arabic chant is explicitly about ethnic cleansing.

Now, let's talk about the encampment itself. It was not ignorant of the history or goals. It was explicit. The report of the antisemitism task force established by UCLA makes this clear.

Jewish students wearing a kippah (yarmulke) or a Star of David were refused access. Others were forced to renounce their Zionism, which is a central tenet of Judaism, the actual faith, that most Jews consider integral to their faith as well (offshoots of religions exist, but that doesn't change the overall point that you can't exclude religious people because some offshoots exist). These protestors were excluding Jews, and tokenizing a handful to say "but they didn't exclude all Jews" is not relevant to that fact. If you started targeting Muslims who are wearing religious garb, you'd get into similar trouble. Or you should. But you seem to be arguing it's fine as long as you only target some.

If I were to block visibly Muslim students from their classes unless they agree that Muhammad appointed Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor (i.e. if I exclude Sunni Muslims but allow in Shiite Muslims), it turns out I'm still creating a Muslim-free zone, and still denying people civil rights based on their religious beliefs. The same is true of Jews.

Now, let's not forget what the encampment said, either, since I mentioned the discussion about "free Palestine" and how you downplayed the antisemitism on full display from these students targeting Jews wearing religious items.

The graffiti from the encampment included phrases like "Fuck all Jews", "Israelis are native to Hell", and more. Jews said that they were repeatedly targeted on campus with the k-word, and statements like "Fuck you Jews, hope you fucking rot in hell where you all belong", which UCLA's administration ignored. A Native American Jewish woman with a sign reading "Hamas supporters are not welcome on native land" was assaulted by a mob while UCLA police stood by. Jewish students reported being approached by encampment members who told them they support Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group that wants Jews wiped off the planet. Calls for globalizing the intifada, i.e. calls for violence against Jews globally, were rampant.

Nor do I appreciate your attempt to assume my age and use it as some sort of argument. I'm not going to dox myself. What I will say is that the UCLA task force surveyed Jews on campus and found that most Jews say antisemitism is a problem on campus, and only 9% of Jews on campus felt no connection to Israel at all, 14.5% said a little connection, and over 75% said somewhat (18%) or very much connected (57.7%). Even polls that don't find high identification as "Zionist" because of the way that certain people have distorted the meaning of the term find that ~90% of Jews believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state (only 7% say no), and that number remains over 75% even for 18-34 year old Jews. So while they may not identify with the term that these encampment folks have used as a marker to assault them, the vast majority of Jews believe in the idea of Zionism, and excluding Jews from campus is creating a Jew-free zone.

But to get back to my point, if there are Jewish people in the encampment, by definition it cannot be a “Jew exclusion zone.” Hopefully we can agree on that

"If I allow a few Muslim tokens into my encampment who are willing to denounce their own faith, while excluding all other Muslim students from their classes and campus, it's not a Muslim-free zone" is not an argument I buy. I don't think anyone else does either. And a federal judge and UCLA have already ruled you are wrong.

[u/persian_mamba → u/justafutz]

Just want to say I'm reading every word you said so far and I appreciate you not getting dragged out of your main point

[u/nycbetches → u/justafutz]

 Officials at UCLA declared the pro-Palestinian encampment illegal for the first time on Tuesday [April 30] and warned protesters that they faced consequences if they did not leave.

warned protestors that they faced consequences if they did not leave.

if they did not leave.

That’s a dispersal order by any definition, lol, kind of weird to argue that it isn’t. They literally said “leave or there will be consequences.” And then they brought in the riot police after giving people some time to leave without facing immediate consequences. I don’t know how you can argue that the school wasn’t ordering the students to disperse. Not immediately, but within a short period of time.

Anyway, I will just say I disagree with you on multiple points and I haven’t seen you really engage with my points at all, so I think any further conversation at this point is counterproductive. 

[u/justafutz → u/nycbetches]

That’s a dispersal order by any definition, lol, kind of weird to argue that it isn’t. They literally said “leave or there will be consequences.” And then they brought in the riot police after giving people some time to leave without facing immediate consequences. I don’t know how you can argue that the school wasn’t ordering the students to disperse. Not immediately, but within a short period of time.

It's one thing to order dispersal by a particular time, it's another to declare something illegal and warn of consequences without ordering dispersal. I think that's pretty clear. The order to disperse was given after the clash. I've explained the distinction.

I haven’t seen you really engage with my points at all

The article we're talking about concerns allegations of UCLA's deliberate indifference and acquiescence to antisemitism on campus.

Your response was "But there was a clash where some of the encampment people excluding Jews from campus were allegedly attacked by counterprotestors, aren't you mad about that?"

I responded to each and every thing you said while pointing out the deflection. I not only engaged with your points, I took them on directly, provided sources, quoted each and every word you said, and directly responded to them. All while pointing out that this is a deflection from the main point, which is that for weeks UCLA allowed the encampment and its attendants to set up Jew-free zones on campus.

For you to now claim I haven't engaged with your points is appalling. I responded to each thing you said, and provided data (something you did not), while you insisted that I must be ignorant because I'm old (not something you knew or know).

I agree further conversation would be counterproductive. But that would be the case unless you begin addressing the subject and the arguments and data I provided. I think between the two of us, readers can see who was taking arguments head-on, and who was deflecting from the establishment of Jew-free zones on campus, the assaults on Jews, and the violation of Jewish students' civil rights to discuss one clash that took place on campus after-hours under disputed circumstances.

[u/IllustriousHorsey → u/nycbetches]

Engaging with your points does not require agreement. He very thoroughly engaged with your points. It may not be pleasant to realize you’ve been proven wrong, but as the old phrase amongst from the cancellation era goes, it’s a learning moment.

[u/nycbetches → u/IllustriousHorsey]

No, he didn’t engage with my points. I asked several direct questions which weren’t answered. Furthermore, I have yet to hear how something can be “an X exclusion zone” when “X” is present there. 

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