UC Berkeley, Pomona College settle with Jewish groups over antisemitism allegations
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- UC Berkeley will pay an Israeli visiting professor $60,000 and rehire her after she was rejected due to her Israeli identity during Gaza protests.
- Pomona College agreed to a nonmonetary settlement that includes hiring a Title VI civil rights coordinator and creating a task force on Jewish campus life.
- Both settlements come in a time of Trump administration pressure on California universities to address antisemitism allegations tied to pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Two prominent California higher education institutions said Wednesday they have reached settlement agreements with Jewish groups or individuals who filed complaints about alleged antisemitism stemming from pro-Palestinian campus protests in 2023 and 2024.
UC Berkeley said it agreed to pay an Israeli sociologist and dance researcher $60,000 for an incident in the fall of 2023 in which the instructor said she was not invited back to teach a course despite the success of the class.
Yael Nativ, who was a visiting professor in 2022, sued in state court, alleging she was rejected because of her Israeli nationality. At the time, protests against Israel’s war in Gaza were growing on campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
Last year, a formal campus investigation found that she faced discrimination. Nativ filed the suit after she said she asked the university to follow up on the investigation results by rehiring her and taking actions to prevent similar future incidents. She alleged she did not receive an adequate response.
The university on Wednesday also issued an apology to Nativ and said she has been invited to teach the same class “in a semester of her choosing.”
“I respect and appreciate Dr. Nativ’s decision to settle this case,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons said in a statement. “She is owed the apology I will provide on behalf of our campus. We look forward to welcoming Dr. Nativ back to Berkeley to teach again.”
Pomoma College settlement
At Pomona College, the campus entered in a nonmonetary settlement over a federal complaint filed last year with the Education Department alleging civil rights law violations during its response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. During one tense 2024 protest, demonstrators occupied an administrative office, leading to arrests. The college later relocated its commencement to Los Angeles because of an encampment setup on the campus stage where it was originally set to take place.
Some Jewish students said the protests created a “hostile environment” for them and accused college leaders of not fully responding to their complaints or enforcing campus free speech and nondiscrimination rules.
A federal judge late Friday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA for alleged civil rights violations over antisemitism, its recognition of transgender people and use of race in admissions.
The college said it will hire a Title VI civil rights coordinator, create a “task force, committee or advisory council” on Jewish life and antisemitism, mandate Title VI training, advocate for engagement with Israeli and Palestinian educational institutions, and make updates to protest, masking and ID policies. Title VI is the part of federal civil rights law that outlaws discrimination based upon race, color and national origin.
In addition, Pomona said it will consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when determining whether conduct is antisemitic. The definition is controversial among some groups, including left-leaning Jewish groups, who say it casts a too wide a net in defining anti-Jewish actions and words. The college will update its webpages about nondiscrimination to say that the word Zionist “is often used as a codeword for ‘Jew,’ and depending on the factual circumstances, may be evidence of antisemitic intent.”
Both settlements involved the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which represented the Israeli professor and filed a complaint last year with the Education Department regarding Pomona College. In the Pomona case, Hillel — a Jewish student life organization — and the Anti-Defamation League were also part of the complaint.
Cal State and UC have face campus protest and intense rebuke by faculty, students and staff for sharing employee personal information with the Trump administration as part of investigations into alleged antisemitism.
While the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was involved in mediation, the Pomona case settlement was a private agreement among the parties.
Pomona College President Gabi Starr said in a statement that it entered into the settlement “because the college takes seriously its obligation to evaluate complaints about discrimination and to see if there are additional steps we can take to strengthen a welcoming and supportive learning environment for our students and everyone at Pomona.”
Starr said that at “every step in the discussions over these last several months, the college stressed that any agreement must protect free speech (including peaceful protest), academic freedom and open inquiry; and must help us protect all our students, including Jewish and Israeli students, from discrimination and harassment. In every way, the agreement reached does so.”
In a statement, Brandeis Center Chairman Ken Marcus said that the “action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future, and we hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights.”
Marcus was the former head of the civil rights division at the Education Department during President Trump’s first term and also worked for the George W. Bush administration.
Under federal scrutiny
Berkeley and Pomona campuses have been under scrutiny by the Trump White House for their handling of pro-Palestinian protests, though the campuses have dodged the magnitude of investigations, grant suspensions and legal actions that have faced high-profile Harvard and UCLA.
The UC faculty went to court to fight Trump’s funding cutoffs and won. Why has the university system tried to negotiate instead?
The Trump administration in July suspended $584 million of UCLA’s medical, science and energy research grants after saying it found the campus to have violated Jewish students civil rights during last year’s pro-Palestinian protests. It then demanded a roughly $1.2-billion settlement fine and wide changes to campus policies.
A federal judge lifted nearly all the suspensions in response to a UC faculty-led lawsuit. The same judge blocked the UCLA settlement proposal and said she believed it was likely illegal.
UC has signed no agreement with Trump and said it cannot afford to to pay the fine. At the same time, it has indicated it is open to discussions with the government over civil rights concerns on campus.
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