Aftermath of pro-Hamas group’s occupation of a University of California, Berkeley administrative building. Photo: Michael Wai Lee via Reuters Connect
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on Wednesday filed a legal brief challenging the University of California, Berkeley’s (UC Berkeley) motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of failing to address antisemitism on campus.
The Brandeis Center is the plaintiff in the suit, which it brought in November to prove its contention that UC Berkeley willfully refused to discipline student efforts to expel Jews from campus groups and pressured Jewish students and faculty into denouncing Zionism after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
The complaint provided several examples of antisemitic harassment and exclusion on campus before Oct. 7, however, including a bylaw banning Zionists speakers that 23 Berkeley Law groups adopted in Sept. 2021; campus groups Women of Berkeley Law and the Queer Caucus requiring support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel to join its ranks; and the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice banning Zionists from submitting articles and speaking at its events.
Jewish students, the Brandeis Center added, were victims of a double standard, being the only minorities not protected from discrimination by the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
UC Berkeley argued in a motion to dismiss the case, filed in February, that its anti-Zionist students were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and that not disciplining them was “consistent with long-established constitutional principles.” It added that it has not had sufficient time to address the issue and said the Brandeis Center’s “claims should be dismissed.”
Now, the Brandeis Center, in addition to challenging the motion to dismiss, has amended its original complaint, arguing that antisemitism at Berkeley is worse than when it first sued it and that the school’s attempt to dismiss the suit is audacious.
“Amazingly, the UC Berkeley Regents have the nerve to claim that they shouldn’t be held accountable because they haven’t had enough time to investigate the situation,” Brandis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said on Wednesday. “It’s been now more than half a year since their system president admitted that they have a problem, and yet they haven’t had enough time? When the university makes this sort of argument to a court of law, their opposition brief is the least of what needs to be dismissed.”
Rachel Lerman, the Brandeis Center’s vice chair and senior counsel, noted that several months after the complaint was filed UC Berkeley saw an event which it later described as a “black mark” on its history. In February, a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
“UC Berkeley’s inaction has had consequences: Jewish students on campus continue to be physically assaulted spat at, and subjected to discrimination,” Lerman said. “UC Berkeley cannot abdicate its legal obligation to create a campus environment that is free from harassment and discrimination. The Brandeis Center will continue to use legal recourse to stand up for Jewish students and faculty at UC Berkeley and across the country.”
UC Berkeley has denied the Brandeis Center’s allegations, arguing that the school has “long been committed to confronting antisemitism, and to supporting the needs and interests of its Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” A school spokesperson has cited as evidence the school’s establishment in 2019 of a “groundbreaking” Antisemitism Education Initiative.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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