Campus Antisemitism and Speech Codes

The University of California, Berkeley has agreed to pay $1 million and overhaul its antisemitism policies to settle a 2023 lawsuit brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which alleged widespread antisemitic harassment of Jewish students after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. Under the settlement, the $1 million reimburses the Brandeis Center’s outside attorneys’ fees, and Berkeley will explicitly prohibit discrimination and harassment based on actual or perceived religion, shared ancestry, shared ethnicity and national origin, specifically covering Jews and Israelis, while formally adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The university must also clarify on its harassment-prevention website that “bans on Zionists” have historically been used as a pretext to exclude Jews and require its Office for Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination to examine whether “Zionist” or “Zionism” is being used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis when evaluating complaints. The suit cited incidents including an assault on a student draped in an Israeli flag and a break‑in where a Jewish graduate student received a note reading “F--k the Jews, Free Palestine from the River to the Sea,” and alleged many Jewish students were afraid to attend class. UC Berkeley says the deal reflects its long‑standing commitment to combat antisemitic expression, noting its recent "B" grade and "excellent" rating for Jewish life in the Anti‑Defamation League’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card, while Brandeis Center chair Kenneth Marcus calls the settlement a “major milestone” and warns that institutions cannot carve out an “anti‑Zionist exception” to their conduct codes.