RSS
Legal Nonprofit Launches Civil Rights Blitz Against Campus Antisemitism in California
Illustrative: A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has launched a legal blitz in California, announcing on Thursday that it filed three federal civil rights complaints against California State Polytechnic, Humboldt (Cal Poly), Scripps College, and the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County.
“While an increasing number of schools recognize that their Jewish students are being targeted both for their religious beliefs and due to their ancestral connection to Israel, and are taking necessary steps to address both classic and contemporary forms of antisemitism, some shamefully continue to turn a blind eye,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement announcing the actions. “The law and the federal government recognize Jews share a common faith and they are a people with a shared history and heritage rooted in the land of Israel.”
According to the Brandeis Center, the three complaints are being supported by several co-litigants — with Jewish on Campus (JOC) being a party to the Cal Poly complaint; the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Arnold & Porter LLP to the Scripps College complaint; and StandWithUs and the ADL to the Etiwanda School District complaint.
Cal Poly is accused of allowing Jewish students to be subjected to “vicious antisemitism,” standing down while pro-Hamas activists doused them in fake blood and committed other acts of intimidation, such as antisemitic graffiti and hate speech. Rather than correcting the hostile environment, the Brandeis Center and JOC alleged, the university recommended that those being targeted hide any indicators of their Jewishness and even terminated their participation in a club fair as an alternative to disciplining a pro-Hamas student who physically harassed them at the event.
At Scripps College, in Claremont, California, a Jewish student was allegedly ordered to remove her Star of David and routinely taunted with antisemitic tropes accusing Jews of being “immoral,” rapacious, and exercising “control” over media. Living openly as a Jewish woman has become an unrelenting tribulation for this student, the Brandeis Center and Arnold & Peter added, noting that she has seen her social network collapse due to her attending Shabbat dinners and “studying Torah with the campus rabbi.” In addition to allegedly neglecting to respond to these indignities, Scripps has been accused of showing further disregard for the civil rights of Jewish students by helping pro-Hamas agitators evade accountability for behaviors such as vandalism. The situation, the groups said, has prompted many Jewish students to leave the country to participate in study abroad programs rather than remain on campus.
The Etiwanda school district case recounts the experience of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was allegedly assaulted on school grounds — being beaten with a stick — told to “shut your Jewish ass up,” and teased with jokes about Hitler. According to the court filings, one student said such behavior would have never happened were she not Jewish. Despite receiving a slew of complaints about the discriminatory treatment, a substantial amount of which occurred in the classroom, school officials have allegedly eschewed punishing her tormentors.
The Algemeiner has reached out to Cal Poly, Scripps College, and the Etiwanda school district for comment and will update this story if they respond.
Cal Poly told the Lost Coast Outpost, a local media outlet, that it is “reviewing the federal complaint and will, of course, fully cooperate with the [US Department of Education’s] Office of Civil Rights in any investigation.” The school added, “Hatred or discrimination in any form, including antisemitism, is contrary to our core values. The university unequivocally condemns all acts of hatred, bigotry, and violence, and we are committed to keeping safe our students, staff, and faculty of all religions. We will continue to work together to foster a learning and working environment where we can all feel safe, included, and respected.”
According to leading voices behind the federal complaints, administrators at many educational institutions are not doing enough to combat anti-Jewish discrimination.
“Too many of our nation’s young minds are being corrupted by the disease of antisemitism. It is the duty of K-12 educators and administrators to provide the necessary education to inoculate them — not indoctrinate them,” StandWithUs chief executive officer and founder Roz Rothstein said in a statement. “As long as students continue to find themselves on the receiving end of anti-Jewish hate and bigotry from their peers or teachers, and their appeals to administration continue to fall on deaf ears, we will continue to show up and support them in holding their schools accountable.”
The ADL’s vice president of national litigation, James Pasch, added, “ADL and our partners will not sit idly by as Jewish students are attacked for their identity — from our college campuses to our K-12 schools, our educational institutions have an obligation to protect their Jewish students and ensure that all its students receive an education free of harassment and discrimination.”
The Brandeis Center has spearheaded litigation for dozens of complaints of antisemitism in recent years, taking on large, powerful institutions, as well as lesser-known ones, across the US. Recently, it achieved the pausing of the Santa Ana Unified School District’s (SAUSD) implementation of an ethnic studies curriculum that, according to the lawsuit, district leaders in California intentionally hid from the Jewish community to conceal its antisemitic content.
Just weeks prior, the Brandies Center negotiated the resolution of a lawsuit which accused Harvard University of violating the rights of Jewish students by failing to discipline a professor whom a third-party firm had deemed guilty of mistreating Jewish students.
The organization’s legal actions further its mission to combat antisemitism in educational institutions, Marcus noted in Thursday’s press release, saying, “Schools that continue to ignore either aspect of Jewish identity are becoming dangerous breeding grounds for escalating anti-Jewish bigotry, and they must be held accountable.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Legal Nonprofit Launches Civil Rights Blitz Against Campus Antisemitism in California first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Trump Administration Impounds $250 Million From UCLA, Citing Antisemitism
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
The Trump administration has confiscated a nine-figure sum in federal funds from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), citing numerous complaints of antisemitism on the campus — some of which the institution recently settled in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
The federal government impounded, according to various reports, some $250 million to punish the university’s alleged exposing Jewish students to discrimination by refusing to intervene when civil rights violations transpired or failing to correct a hostile environment after the fact. The move comes only a couple days after UCLA agreed to donate $2.33 million to a consortium of Jewish civil rights organizations to resolve an antisemitism complaint filed by three students and an employee.
On Thursday, UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk, a descendant of Jews who left Germany in the 1930s, said the loss off funds is “a loss for America” while arguing that it will not help in addressing antisemitism.
“With this decision, hundreds of grants may be lost, adversely affecting the lives of and life-changing work of UCLA researchers, faculty, and staff. In its notice to us, the federal government claims antisemitism and bias as the reasons,” Frenk wrote in a message to the campus community. “This far-reaching penalty of defunding live-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination.”
He continued, “We share the goal of eradicating antisemitism across society. Antisemitism has no place on our campus, nor does any form of discrimination. We recognize that we can improve, and I am committed to doing so. Confronting the scourge of antisemitism effectively calls for thoughtfulness, commitment, and sustained effort — and UCLA has taken robust actions to make our campus a safe and welcoming environment for all students.”
Many antisemitic incidents occurred at UCLA before the institution was ultimately sued and placed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
Just five days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. Other incidents included someone’s tearing a chapter page out of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, titled “Loudmouth Jew,” and leaving it outside the home of a UCLA faculty member, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staging a disturbing demonstration in which its members cudgeled a piñata, to which a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was glued, while shouting “beat the Jew.”
Later, pro-Hamas activists erected a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus during the final weeks of the 2024 spring semester and chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it. UCLA allegedly refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, prompting allegations that it allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property. The antisemitism complaint that was settled earlier this week argued that the university violated its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
On Tuesday, the university announced that it agreed to pay $6.45 million in total to settle the lawsuit.
“Antisemitism harassment and other forms of intimidation are antithetical to our values and have no place at the University of California,” UC Board of Regents Chair Janet Reilly said in a statement. “We have been clear about where we have fallen short, and we are committed to doing better moving forward. Today’s settlement reflects a critically important goal that we share with the plaintiffs: to foster a safe, secure, and inclusive environment for all members of our community and ensure that there is no room for antisemitism anywhere on campus.”
On the same day, the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division ruled that UCLA’s response to antisemitic incidents constituted violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic antisemitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: the [Department of Justice] will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
Michigan Senate Candidate Sits Down for Interview With Anti-Israel Streamer
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed Launches Bid (Source: WLNS 6 News/Youtube)
Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for the US Senate in Michigan, recently appeared on the platform of controversial anti-Israel social media personality Hasan Piker, raising questions about the candidate’s positions on the Jewish state.
El-Sayed, a physician and former Detroit health director, is mounting a 2026 progressive campaign for the open Senate seat in Michigan. His appearance on Piker’s stream, which aired on YouTube and Twitch, covered a range of topics from health care to foreign policy. But his decision to appear on a stream by Piker, who has an extensive history of repudiating Israel and defending the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, has drawn scrutiny.
The two did not talk in depth about Israel or the ongoing war in Gaza during the interview. However, Piker stated that anti-Israel politicians can now succeed in American politics as opposed to previous generations, pointing to the ascendance of New York City Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani, who has made activism against the Jewish state a cornerstone of his political career. Piker encouraged El-Sayed not to “back away” from condemnations of Israel, claiming that “a lot of people agree” with the far left on the issue.
Piker has an extensive history of repudiating Israel as an “apartheid state” and defending atrocities committed against its civilians. In a 2024 livestream, Piker minimized sexual assaults committed against Israeli women at the hands of Hamas, saying “it doesn’t matter if rapes f—king happened on Oct. 7.” He has also defended violence by both Hamas and the Houthis, a Yemen-based Islamist terror group, as legitimate “resistance,” and said he doesn’t “have an issue with” Hezbollah, which pummeled Israel with an unremitting barrage of missiles and rockets from southern Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state.
El-Sayed has also positioned himself as a fierce critic of Israel. The progressive champion was a prominent supporter of the “Uncommitted movement,” a coalition of Democratic officials which refused to support the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign over her support for Israel. However, El-Sayed later clarified that he would support Harris over Donald Trump in the general election.
El-Sayed has been especially critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. On Oct. 21, 2023, two weeks after the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, the progressive politician accused Israel of “genocide.” He also compared Israel’s defensive military operations to the Hamas terrorist group’s conduct on Oct. 7, writing, “You can both condemn Hamas terrorism AND Israel’s murder since.”
In comments to Politico, El-Sayed criticized Democrats’ handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that they should become the “party of peace and justice” and said that they “ought not to be the party sending bombs and money to foreign militaries to drop bombs on other people’s kids in their schools and their hospitals.” He called on Democrats to stop supporting military aid for Israel, saying “we should be spending that money here at home.”
RSS
German Foreign Minister Tones Down Palestinian Recognition Talk on West Bank Trip
Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul gestures next to a member of clergy during the visit to the town of Taybeh, a Christian village in the West Bank, Aug. 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Sawafta
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul sought to tone down previous comments about his country’s position on Palestinian statehood during a trip to the West Bank on Friday, saying Germany had no immediate plans to recognize a Palestinian state.
Wadephul’s comment followed sharp criticism from Israeli officials over his earlier suggestion, before he left for the trip, that Germany could respond to any unilateral Israeli actions with recognition of a Palestinian state.
Far-right Israeli government minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had written on X: “80 years after the Holocaust, and Germany returns to supporting Nazism.”
After meeting Israel’s foreign minister, prime minister, and president on Thursday evening, Wadephul explained on Friday that Germany did not plan to recognize a Palestinian state immediately, “as that is one of the final steps to be taken” as part of a two-state solution.
Wadephul’s attempt to clarify his remarks highlights Germany’s longstanding difficulty in taking a clear position on the issue, caught between growing international pressure on Israel amid the Gaza war and Germany’s own post-Holocaust commitment to ensuring Israel’s security.
He called on Israel to ensure safe access for United Nations agencies to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, saying the current restrictions were worsening the crisis.
“The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza must end now,” Wadephul said, stressing that aid distribution through the UN needed to resume without obstacles.
He said Germany would provide an additional 5 million euros ($5.7 million) to the UN World Food Program to support bakeries and soup kitchens and fund a field hospital in Gaza City.
Asked about Israeli concerns that aid could be diverted by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, Wadephul acknowledged that misuse could not be fully ruled out but said it was no reason to block relief efforts.
“The best way to prevent Hamas from misusing supplies is to deliver more aid and ensure full coverage for the population,” he said.